Dinkus
About
What Dinkus is and who makes it.
Dinkus is a distraction-free WYSIWYG markdown studio for Mac, built by Will McGugan.
A "dinkus" is a typographic symbol consisting of three asterisks (***) or a decorative illustration used to mark a break between scenes or paragraphs in a novel.
Not to be confused with "dingus" which is a placeholder for the forgotten name of an object or—in the US—a foolish or silly person.
On the topic of foolish or silly persons, I had the idea for dinkus when working on Ishmael, a writing app for novelists. Ishmael has a number of somewhat unique editing features that felt bigger than the one app. I wanted to bring them to where I do most of my writing, and that is authoring Markdown.
Markdown is a simple text-based format that doesn't need a visual editor—in the same way you don't need a toaster to heat bread. If you're a developer I know that you grok Markdown intuitively, but I think you'll enjoy editing Markdown as it was meant to be displayed. No preview pane necessary, and no risk of broken syntax.
The typewriter and focus modes come straight from Ishmael—two features designed to help you get in a flow state and stay there. These features and others in Dinkus make writing more enjoyable for me, and I hope you feel the same.