Writing apps for the iPad seem to be improving. Not that I’ve the slightest interest still in buying one of the things. Happy enough with my Kindle for reading and a laptop for work. Also when the internet went down in Venice for an hour yesterday I was able to pick up my email <em>for free</em> through the 3G connection on the Kindle. Using data on an iPad abroad is very expensive – if it works, and some networks don’t even allow data roaming (or at least they didn’t at launch).

Here’s one of the newer iPad apps for writing from <a href="http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/writer-for-ipad/" target="_blank">Information Architects</a>. iPad Writer looks fine.

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<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/id392502056.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5870" title="iPad Writer" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/id392502056.png" alt="" width="490" height="228" /></a>

But notice one thing. That line…
<blockquote>What you need to write well is a spartan setting that allows you to fully concentrate on your text and nothing but your text.</blockquote>
This was the approach taken by a Mac app that drove me nuts too, <a href="http://www.the-soulmen.com/ulysses/" target="_blank">Ulysses</a>. What it meant in practice was: forget writing anything in italics. Italics, you see, are a distraction. Real writers should never have to think about formatting. Just words.

Well this one doesn’t. My books use foreign words that need to be written in italics. Occasionally I will use italics in text for emphasis too. In Ulysses that was virtually impossible. It’s doable in the current version with some fiddling. In iPad Writer it seems utterly impossible.

Why?

If writing without any formatting works for you, fine. But people who produce writing software should realise that for some of us italics – not bold, nothing fancy – are essential. Leaving them out means we can’t think of looking at their product. In general I agree that writing is about words, not formatting. But a piece of software that refuses to let me type a simple italic is simply of no use at all.