Description
JDarkroom is a text editor written in Java. It can be run with the Java SDK by executing it as a jar file (or you can set it to executable and theoretically your system should just run it.)
The appeal of JDarkroom is that it lacks features. Visually, it has zero bells, zero whistles, zero anything. There are no buttons. Not a single button. There's nothing but you and the text. You can use hotkeys to change the color of the software, open a file, create new, save as, etc, but that's it.
Comparisons to other things I've used
It's a lot like Gottcode's Focuswroter, which is a lot more popular. What I don't like about focuswriter is that I find myself getting distracted with customizing the theme -- it's so obscenely customizable that the customization itself breaks my "focus" in "focus-writer". Also, checking my statistics, project targets, all that jazz. I used Focuswriterfor a couple of years, but never loved it.
Scrivener is worth the money and I found it quite helpful for storing my notes. Ultimately, though, it was not able to come with me with my transition to Linux. Despite the fact that Scrivener has *every* bell and whistle you can imagine, I have found over the past week that I am equally as productive in Jdarkroom. Even though I no longer have any of the bells and whistles, it's not any more difficult to write.
Is it worth it?
It's free, so yes. If it was not free, I don't think it'd be worth very much money, but I like using it because it's charmingly archaic.