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by Travis Swicegood.
Original Post: Editing Mode
Feed Title: Travis Swicegood
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Feed Description: Posts on Git from Travis Swicegood, author of Pragmatic Version Control using Git.
In case you didn’t know, I use computers. A lot. Between working as a
programmer, writing books, and the occasional leisure time spent playing on
computers, the vast majority of my life is spent with a screen of some sort
in front of it. That time means I come across and try a lot of different
tools, and some of them actually make my life better.
One such tool I’ve started using extensively while writing my latest book is
Notability. It’s a note taking application that let’s you import PDFs
that you can write directly on top of. This is important because I can’t see
the typos from within my text editor.
Switching environments when switching tasks is an important concept I picked a
while back. For me, that switching comes when I build the book and switch over
to a PDF version on my iPad to read it. With Notability, I can take the PDF
version of my book and change rooms or sometimes just turn the chair around
away from the desk, and switch into “editing” mode.
I’m not alone in using an iPad for editing. I hadn’t found an app that
worked well for note taking though, so I often switched back to my text editor
to write notes. Having to mentally switch context back and forth and back and
forth as I physically switched devices hurt my productivity. Being able to do
it all in one app has made iPad editing much more feasible.
Once I’ve finished an edit pass and have a whole slew of changes to make, I
switch back to my computer with my iPad close by. Notability lets you change
the color of the pen you use, so I swap it out for green, and slightly larger
for impact, then start slashing through all of the red as I mark edits off.
The satisfaction from marking something off with a physical slash can’t be
overstated.
I’ve been using Notability for about a month now and don’t know how I managed
to edit without it. I highly recommend it if you have an iPad and are doing
any type of writing/drafting work.
Question for the Reader
I’ve been considering a series of short posts like this about tools that I
use and how they fit into my work flow. I love to watch people work and see
how they interact with their systems, though. Is this something that
interests you?
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