Hands up if you remember WordPerfect 5.1, lauded by many as the peak of word processing perfection, with an extraordinary set of features hidden behind a screen without menus or toolbars, which featured a single, blinking cursor and a few document stats along the bottom, and ran on a PC that basically did one thing at a time.

It seems almost bizarre now, in these days when software designers pile on the screen furniture in an attempt to make things easier or more interesting, and sophistication is measured in the number of applications your PC can run at once, but if you find yourself distracted by chat windows, e-mail notifications and endless stuff scattered all over the screen, then the time has come to get acquainted with Writeroom.

Billed as the program that delivers 'distraction-free writing' for the Apple Macintosh (requires OS X 10.4 or later) Writeroom opens with a disconcertingly blank screen and a rectangular blinking cursor. The green on black text sits in the centre of the screen with generous margins either side as well as top and bottom, which allows you to focus on what you're writing rather than thinking about anything else.

There's literally nothing else on the screen until you move the cursor to one of the edges: roll it to the bottom to see a character, word, line or page count, to the side for a scroll bar and to the top to open the menu bar. Behind the scenes there are the usual options for setting font, spacing, alignment, smart quotes and so on, along with spell checking, search and replace and a nice scale option which lets you increase the magnification of the main typing window. It's not Word - or even Pages - but then it's not supposed to be.

In full-screen mode it's easy to change the margins if you need to see more text on the screen, as well as altering the background colours (so you can even reproduce the classic white on blue favoured by WordPerfect back in the day); you can also set the cursor style, highlight the current line and enjoy 'typewriter scrolling' which moves the text up the screen as you type based on a notional line in the middle of the screen.

Writeroom saves documents as plain text and, for anyone who wants a clean look but needs quick access to other items on the desktop, you can quit full-screen mode and work in a more conventional TextEdit-style window. Finally, if you want to suck-it-and-see, Writeroom is available on a fully functional 30-day trial.

Verdict
Although other Macintosh word processors offer a full-screen mode, nothing comes close to Writeroom in terms of elegance and execution. This fast, unfussy and inexpensive program offers a welcome alternative to today's top-heavy software and allows anyone who needs to write to get on with the job, free from distractions.

Company: Hogbay Software

Tags: writeroom textedit personal computer macintosh ommwriter wordpress information architects text editor