What is...
     ewriting, an ewriter and eWriter?

In early 1997, when I ported my 16-bit ewriter PocketPad into the 32-bit ewriter eWriter, I did a web search for (any case) “ewriter.” I found only one use of the term. It referred to a discontinued printer manufactured by Apple. Same case as I was using: eWriter.

In recent months, I have found more uses, with various typography and references. To generalize toward the generic, some use the terms ewriting and ewriter to refer to people who write for Web publication, whether or not in tagged text. Another stated or implied use is writing for eBooks, meaning content for hardware readers, not the eBooks I envisioned in 1996. My eBook (see the included eManual) was just a frameset page and .htm files. Later, Microsoft captured the main thought in compiled form with its HTML Help. Except for the first use mentioned, writing for Web publication, all of this writing does involve...

...ewriting. Ewriting is writing text an ewriting instrument makes easy to do “in the flow” of creative writing — whether or not that aid is available. At present, that means tagged text.

Ewriter has two uses: It’s a textwriter extended to be an htmlwriter and, beyond that, now, an xmlwriter. It’s a writing instrument that has extensions to do the writing that people will be doing in our webbed 21st century. Looking ahead right now, all those extensions will come out of the extended and extensible systems of punctuation you’ll learn to handle through writing with eWriter.

An ewriter is also the man or woman who sits down and does the kind of writing an ewriting instrument makes natural, if not easy, whether or not using such an instrument. It’s done inside a writer’s skulletarium.

EWriter...?

From typewriter to textwriter

From text “editor” to textwriter

A “duplex” textwriter with multiple wysiwygs

No toolbar or speed buttons

Extensible punctuation — & tagging as punctuating

 

Gene Fowler
Berkeley, California, USA
June, 2001