dark room: a writeroom clone for windows

When my kids ask me what I do, some days I say "Daddy sits in meetings". Other days I say "I write stuff to teach people", still others I say "I herd cats". All are invariably correct, depending on the season.

On those days when I'm writing stuff, I try to avoid distractions. When the shades are closed, the overhead florescent lights are off and my is desk cleared, all that remains is the awful clutter of the Windows desktop.

That's where Dark Room comes in.

Its author describes Dark Room as follows:

Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.

Basically, Dark Room is a clone of the original WriteRoom that is an OS X (tiger) exclusive application. It is a child of necessity, as there were no viable alternatives in Windows to produce the same behavior. Sure, you can kind of emulate the behavior by jumping through a bunch of hoops in Word/Writer, but it isn’t the same. Also, you can do something similar in emacs, but who wants to learn a bunch of obscure keyboard shortcuts?

The goal of the project is to capture the essence of WriteRoom, while keeping it simple and just as free.

You can download Dark Room here. Now turn those lights off and get to work.