'UX Write' for iOS Promises Powerful Word Processing for Long Documents

UX Write [App Store], a new iOS word processing app by UX Productivity, aims to compete with Apple's own Pages, Dataviz's Documents to Go and other heavy-hitting word processing apps currently available in the App Store. UX Write touts several features to streamline the writing process for long and complex documents, including unique cursor and text selection controls, extra punctuation keys on the iPad, and powerful style formatting tools.

The full list of features is as follows:

- Styles: Separate content from presentation, and easily achieve consistent formatting throughout your whole document.

- Outline editor: Easily navigate and rearrange sections

- Automatic numbering and cross-references: for all headings, figures, and tables

- Automatic text reflow: Document layout and text size is adjusted to suit your screen size and orientation, for an improved reading and editing experience

- Extended keyboard (iPad only): Extra keys for punctuation and formatting, plus swipe gestures for cursor movement and text selection

- Painless file synchronisation: Full integration with Dropbox and WebDAV. Documents are kept in sync automatically.

- Printing and PDF export

- Built on the latest web technologies: HTML5, CSS3, and WebKit

A demo video showcases UX Write's major features:

UX Write faces tough competition in the App Store. At this time, UX Write can only create and edit HTML files though the ability to work with Microsoft Word and LaTeX files is coming in the future. At $14.99, it is currently more expensive than Pages and Documents to Go that both offer more features in total than UX Write though may arguably be less intuitive and efficient at working with long documents comparatively. Additionally, rumors indicate that Microsoft may be developing a version of Microsoft Office for the iPad that could be released in November.

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gorskiegangsta

86 months ago

Such useless posts above me.

Does anyone really need a text editor other then pages on their iPad? I don't use my iPad to write anything now that i have a Macbook Air.

Interesting logic. So no one needs a good word processor on the iPad because you don't see a need for one. Talk about useless posts...

Rating: 8 Votes

Snowy_River

86 months ago

Does anyone really need a text editor other then pages on their iPad? I don't use my iPad to write anything now that i have a Macbook Air.

Uh... Good for you. Not everyone has a MBA, though. For those that have an iPad for portability and an iMac for heavier duty computing jobs, having a good WP is a very desirable thing. Granted that Pages is pretty good, but I keep hoping for more. (I'd like to see the same level of functionality that Pages had 10 years ago on the Mac make it to the iPad version...)

Rating: 4 Votes

coder12

86 months ago

I like the idea of more text editors with more power for the iPad. Pages can be light, and this seems like a moderate step up actually.

Rating: 1 Votes

Mad-B-One

86 months ago

Does anyone really need a text editor other then pages on their iPad? I don't use my iPad to write anything now that i have a Macbook Air.

Yes, I think I will need the MS Office suite as soon as it hits the iPad. Just for compatibility. Pages is not bad per se, but due to my work, I'm used to MS Office and as long as they get it stable and smooth, I'm in! I'm not draging more than an iPad into a library etc.

Rating: 1 Votes

Amazing Iceman

86 months ago

So far, I have not found a better word processor than Pages. It may not have all the features a desktop word processor has, but still it has a lot more features than QuickOffice and the other contenders.
Today, I needed to create a Work Order form, and found Pages to be complicated and not too accurate, So I gave Inkpad a try; it serves it's purpose very well; a few minor complains, but overall, it's a winner.

Let's see what MS Office for iPad brings us.

Rating: 1 Votes

old-school

86 months ago

Looks great. I wish the app store gave 30 minute trials.

Rating: 1 Votes

Don Kosak

86 months ago

I bought it.

Seems pretty well executed. And I'm very particular about Apps.

I like the way they did formatting -- makes it much easier to use styles.

I like the way they implemented the "slide your finger around the keyboard area to rapidly move the caret or select text" feature.

The autocorrect replacement they came up with is much better IMHO than the native iOS autocorrect.

The Dropbox seems very solid, and lets you keep folders off line for traveling or whatnot.

I wish there was a way to "hide" margins quickly. I know you're editing in WYSIWYG and I appreciate the fidelity they achieved -- but showing the left and top margins when screen real-estate is so valuable is a little wasteful. I'd like to be able to turn them on or off. (My work around is to set margins to 0 while writing and change them back when saving as PDF or printing, but that's awkward and alters text-flow/paging, so it's not ideal.)

I think I'm going to get a lot of use out of this App. It's already moved to a prominent place on my iPad's home screen.

I haven't tried it out on my iPhone (it is a Universal App), but I expect I won't use it as much on my phone.

I use my iPad as my primary computer quite often, and although the Pages App is good, I don't like it as much as Pages on my iMac. UX Write looks like it might fill that gap.

Rating: 1 Votes

Digital Skunk

86 months ago

Looks great. I wish the app store gave 30 minute trials.

Same here. At $14.99 it needs one just incase I don't see me using it more than Pages. Or the App Store needs an easy squeezy return policy.

I'll wait to see what MS Office for the iPad offers before I sink another $10+ into a word processor for my iPad.

Rating: 1 Votes

signs

86 months ago

I think it looks exciting!

Pages is a masterpiece in weighing what to leave in or out of the feature set, BUT that doesn't help you when you want to travel with your long documents, or load a document with enough tables in Pages and it becomes unusable.

I think the touch UI paradigm is begging for programmers to explore how to do full fledged functionality in it. One half of the solution definitely is sensible simplification (something like the UNIX discipline, but for the touch age), but the other... well, this is a step! I can't wait to try it out.

When it's achieved, I think our bicycle for the mind will have arrived at a new level - immediacy and portability are SO important!

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No. I categorically and utterly disagree. Just like Word, Pages is a tool for publishing and formatting a document. Tools like Scrivener (http://literatureandlatte.com) are a whole workflow for researching, writing, and publishing documents.
[...]
MS faces risks if their iOS product is either limited in its functionality or entirely too capable of replacing the desktop version. How will they walk that tightrope?
[...]
Those who don't need frequent translation to MS Office users can do far better with this new generation of tools -- especially since they will have innovative ways of using multiple devices for inputting and aggregating works.

Excellent and interesting points, thanks! Things are definitely changing in Office land, I believe. Especially for all those who depend on producing long-form text these days!

Rating: 1 Votes

Navdakilla

86 months ago

I don't have a MB Air. In fact, I have a netbook and a laptop, both maybe used 10x since the original iPad came out. Too heavy, too loud, too fragile. Yes, fragile. The iPad does forgive more drops caught with the shoe than any laptop (plus you don't have to go to the ER because your 17" hit your big toe). My son (turning 3 this month) is using my iPad 1 since the iPad 2 came out. Trust me, it falls... has the Apple foam sleeve around it and looks almost like mint. There is one tiny scratch on the display I caused with a key on accident once. That's it. Also, the battery power and instant-on is just way beyond what most notebooks can do. I understand that the MB Air is coming close, but for me, iPad is the way to go. I switched and never looked back.

Agreed to this all

Rating: 0 Votes

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