- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system:
- Date added: May 14, 2007
- Total Downloads: 21,692
- Downloads last week: 67
- See full specifications
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 29 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
The freeware Windows app Dark Room, based off the Mac software WriteRoom, looks a heck of a lot like the classic text-adventure game Zork. It's a black background with a CRT-style green foreground color for your text that aims to offer a distraction-free application for writing. There are few bells and no whistles: this lightweight text editor is without buttons, menus, or anything else that might disturb your concentration. You can either accept the default preferences and start typing into a new document, or hit Ctrl , to open up the Preferences.
Because Dark Room starts in full-screen mode by default, you won't be able to see the menus at the top of the application. To access the Preferences from the "View" menu, exit full-screen mode by hitting the F11 button, then select "View." From the Preferences dialog, you can change the color and size of your font, the color and size of the Dark Room "page" (the writable area of the screen), and the color and opacity of the background (behind the page), as well as a variety of advanced settings, such as the ability to open documents in Dark Room from the Windows context menu, multiple monitor support, neutral highlighting, and autosaving.
Basic text-editing features like "Copy," "Paste," and "Find," help you do slightly more advanced tasks, but that's about it. Users can't make global replacements, for example. Dark Room's shortcomings, though, only serve to enhance the sense of focus it can bring to your writing.
Publisher's description
From Dark Room Team :Dark Room is a full-screen, distraction-free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text. Dark Room is a clone of the Mac OS X application WriteRoom. The goal of the project is to capture the essence of WriteRoom, while keeping it simple and free.
Version 0.8b adds neutral highlighting and cursor blink-rate control.
What's new in this version:
Version 0.8b adds neutral highlighting and cursor blink-rate control.
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 4.3 stars out of 29 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 26 user reviewsSee all 26 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: Dark Room 0.8b
"Not the usual word processor"
Pros: Its different and hasn't all those features that distract you from, especially, creative writing.
Its for writing, not formatting, macros, embedding tables or pictures... its simply for writing
Cons: Some necessary features have to be done through shortcuts and so you do have to learn some tricks.
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: Dark Room 0.8b
Pros: This little novelty program takes you back to old times of DOS and pre-DOS word processing.
Cons: Can not be considered as a real word processor. While you can change fonts and their sizes, you lose any formatting while saving your file, as its saves it in only a .txt format. You can't print with it. Therefore, you must copy/paste your work into a real word processor when you're done typing. Also, MS Word and other processors allow you to change background and font colors into any you might want, so there isn't much practical use for this little program.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Dark Room 0.8b
Pros: It worked very fast, I didn't have any errors with it and I never was distracted by other programs. It also saves in notepad format.
Cons: It didn't have spell check, you can't put images in it and didn't have a lot of of features that were related to writing or to anything else.
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
Version: Dark Room 0.8b
"Plain, simple, small and allows concentration"
Pros: It is a very plain application. It does not need installation, I guess it is portable.
Black background is also good for not tiring th eyes.
Cons: full-screen mode and smaller modes may be confused. Once you press esc you can return to full-screen only by pressing esc again.
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Version: Dark Room 0.8b
Pros: I especially like the color combination. It's not a sterile white to hurt the eyes, instead it is a pleasant mixture of dark against dark. I'm a Children's Author and highly recommend this program as it is non-distracting, non-glare, just straight forward. My eyes become tired easily because I'm always on the computer, but with this program I am able to be productive longer. Many thanks to the programmers.
Cons: Wish it were more configurable, for instance font size, etc.
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