AppCenter Spotlight: Quilter

Focus on your writing

On elementary OS? Hit the button to get Quilter.

The past several months have seen more and more apps being developed for elementary OS and distributed via AppCenter. In April and May I covered apps that were helping us beta test, in June I focused on Agenda by Dane Henson. For this month’s spotlight I’m taking a look at Quilter, a distraction-free writing app by Lains.

I chatted with him about what inspired Quilter, its future plans, and how elementary OS and AppCenter make writing and distributing apps better.

Lains, actually an alias for Paulo Galardi, is 24 years old and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. He has a major in Law, and is starting a Computer Science major next year. When he’s not developing apps, he’s generally playing games on Steam or chatting with friends on Telegram.

About Quilter

I’ve been watching Quilter progress and started using it for writing and drafting articles like this. It’s wonderfully focused; instead of a do-it-all text editor or a development-focused code editor, Quilter is an opinionatedly-simple space to write prose. It eschews note management, excess configuration options, and plugins for a focused writing space.

When asked about the inspiration behind Quilter, Lains told me it’s all about that focus.

Quilter was heavily inspired by the current trend of apps made for story writing while focusing on them, by removing almost all of the chrome, and directing your eyes to the text. So basically, it’s trying to solve the lack of a beautiful app that also makes you focus in your stories, with the aesthetics of the OS.

While Quilter is perfectly usable as-is, Lains has some exciting plans for the future that are sure to please fans of Markdown.

[Future plans include] a preview mode, so that you can see your story without Markdown so you see what you’re producing. Also, I’m studying how to make a custom highlighting work so you can highlight verbs, adverbs and adjectives so that you can structure your stories better.

I look forward to these more writing-focused updates to Quilter; I think they’ll set it even further apart from just a “text editor.”

Why elementary OS?

One thing Lains was happy to share was how elementary OS and its platform (including Vala, Granite, and AppCenter) made developing apps easier. He first talked about how it’s easy to rapidly implement apps:

The development speed. I mean, if you really grok Vala, developing these ideas you have into apps is FAST!

But not just developing; he also appreciates the speed of distributing through AppCenter and getting feedback about how well apps are doing:

AppCenter distribution usually occurs in the same day or 1 day after you publish your code for review for the testing team, and that’s awesome, since you can really make your app shine in no time. AppCenter also shows a trending space, so you can gauge how much your app is growing or not by-day.

In addition to Quilter, Lains is developing two other apps for elementary OS: Notejot, a sticky-note-like notetaking app, and Coin, a crypto-currency ticker applet. Both apps are available alongside Quilter in AppCenter. He seems to be happy with their success so far:

All 3 have been steadily grown in the fertile lands of the AppCenter.

Get Quilter

Quilter is available on AppCenter today for the suggested price of $2. The source code is also open and available on Github.

On elementary OS? Hit the button to get Quilter.

You can reach Lains on Twitter, Google+, and his website; be sure to let him know how you like Quilter!