What I Want · 26 March 2001
A nice, svelte Macintosh app for writing and formatting online text. No bloat, no greeting card templates or assistants, just a workspace that feels like word processor and writes markup at the same time, and understands CSS. It would switch views between formatted text and code view, à la Dreamweaver or GoLive, but without the dumb tricks and sluggishness.
Select some text, hit a keystroke to wrap <cite> or <strong> or <span class="">. Select text, hit a key and be presented with a dialog to paste a hyperlink, title="", and target="" attributes. Type in a dodgy character, and its Unicode entity is automatically generated.
Wysiwyg page editors are gummed up with features no writer needs, and word processors are hopeless at generating markup. Text editors are great for coding, but it’s murder to write and revise copy littered with tags. There should be something in between.
It would sell in the millions.
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