Text editor for Mac · Five dollars · Version 0.1
sabo typist
A text editor with no machine in it. No AI, no completion of any kind. It makes markdown, it makes it big, and it waits. When the piece is done, it sets it as a manuscript and hands you the Word file the magazine asked for.
macOS 13 and newerSigned and notarizedYours forever
- Sabo Typist
- Notes toward it
- Untitled
- Letters
- Groceries
# Sabo Typist
An AI-free text editor built for creative writing.
wide before deep
Nothing is fetched to decide. The decision is made before the request leaves.
Zero
It does not finish your sentences.
No inline prediction. No Writing Tools. No completion list on Escape. No smart quotes, no smart dashes, no autocorrect, no text replacement. It does not detect links or dates. It does not check your spelling unless you ask it to, and then it underlines and says nothing.
The cursor is a white bar. It waits. It does nothing until you type, and then it does exactly that.
Bruno / The Piece / 3
1
The page
Formatted for the people you are sending it to.
Turn the page on and the text sits on a sheet: US Letter or A4, one-inch margins, twelve point, double spaced, the first line indented, the running head where the guidelines put it. Pick who it is for and the page sets itself: a literary magazine, a publishing house, a news desk, a script, an academic paper in MLA, APA or Chicago. Or set every margin yourself.
Export makes the Word file. It is written by hand, not by the system, because the system’s writer drops the line spacing, and a manuscript is double-spaced or it is not a manuscript. Footnotes go to the foot of the page they belong to. The PDF is the same page. The markdown file underneath never changes.
⌘⇧F
Fuck the World.
Full screen. The list goes, the pocket goes, the word count goes, the pointer goes, the menu bar goes. Black, and your words in white, at whatever size you set. Escape brings the world back, if you want it back.
White on black by default. Two sliders set the background and the words, black to white and warm in between; ⌘⇧I swaps them. Sans, serif, mono, or any face installed on the Mac; ⌘+ and ⌘− until it is big enough.
# The cursor
It waits. It does nothing until you type, and then it does that.
- no completion
- no prediction
- no correction
> The sentence is **yours** to finish.
- The piece
- Notes toward it
- Untitled
- Letters
- Groceries
# The cursor
It waits. It does nothing until you type, and then it does that.
- no completion
- no prediction
- no correction
> The sentence is **yours** to finish.
wide before deep
Nothing is fetched to decide. The decision is made before the request leaves.
The list and the pocket
Documents on the left, snippets on the right. Both hide.
The list is your documents, in folders if you want folders, in the order you put them. Drag to reorder, double-click to rename, ⌘N for a new one, a minus on the row to delete it into a Trash that empties when you say. Each is a markdown file in a folder in your Documents, and any other program can open it. Drop a file on the list and it comes in.
Select something you keep needing and press ⌘⇧C: it goes in the pocket. Double-click it and it lands at the cursor. A list of sources, kept once, fills in where a note is from so only the page is typed. Paste into the page and whatever you pasted takes the page’s face: no fonts ride in from a web page or a Word file.
The gripes
The Least Helpful Text Editor on the Market
It will not help. Specifically:
- It will not suggest a word, a phrase, a tone, or a better way to put it.
- It will not sync. Your writing is in a folder on your Mac and nowhere else.
- It will not preview the markdown. The markdown is the text; you can read it.
- On the screen it shows bold, italic and a footnote, and nothing else. In the file those are stars and a [^1], so any other program reads them. The page is for paper.
- It has two colours and you set them, one slider each.
- No plugins, no themes, no accounts, no telemetry, no auto-updater. When there is a new version, it will be here.
Five dollars
Own it forever.
Pay once. You get a page whose address is your copy: it downloads the current version and every version after it. No account, no licence key, no check-in with anybody. It will never cost more than this, and it will never ask you again.
Version 0.1macOS 13 and newerRefunds on request, no questions