When comparing Write! vs Spacemacs, the Slant community recommends Spacemacs for most people. In the question“What are the best text editors for UNIX-like systems?” Spacemacs is ranked 14th while Write! is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose Spacemacs is:
Spacemacs is just a well-configured Emacs distribution with community-sourced best in class plugins and layers selected to take the setup pain out of Emacs. Evil mode gives the Vim bindings and modes for fast editing, while Helm makes everything discoverable to make learning to be more productive simple and unintrusive.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Allows easily switching between working on multiple files
Write! has tabs at the top and a tree view on the left that allows quickly switching between different files.
Pro Interface doesn't get in the way of work
The interface is minimal, when it's windowed there are no buttons or toolbars, so it doesn't distract from work. When it's in fullscreen, there's just text, no interface at all.
Pro Endless undo/redo
Write! uses a file format that saves all versions of a document. Meaning even if the app is closed and then opened up again, Write! can restore any previous version of the document.
Pro Can double as a to-do list app
Write! has a to-do list mode that allows creating lists of items in groups (tabs) that can be ticked off when completed.
Pro Picks up where you left off next time you start the app
Write! saves the state that it's in when closed and restores that state when opened. You can pick up working on documents in the exact same place you left off - same documents open, same cursor placement, etc.
Pro Preconfigured emacs distro
Spacemacs is just a well-configured Emacs distribution with community-sourced best in class plugins and layers selected to take the setup pain out of Emacs. Evil mode gives the Vim bindings and modes for fast editing, while Helm makes everything discoverable to make learning to be more productive simple and unintrusive.
Pro VIM Keybindings with EMACS ecosystem
EMACS ecosystem and language support is best in show. The EMACS is a great IDE that was in search of a good text editor. Spacemacs makes EMACS have a good text editor.
Cons
Con You need to login to the App, and it reconnects to their server
There is no offline use.
Con Not free
There are free markdown editors for windows, this is not one of them.
Con Needs better folder document management like Ulysses
Con Needs nested folders
Con Bad MarkDown features
Not worth $20, the markdown editor sucks.
Con In beta
The app is not yet complete. A lot of the promised functionality is not yet implemented.
Con Emacs is slow
Emacs is single threaded which means that if you enable all the great features you might be used to from Vim, it will run noticeably slower which can be quite frustrating at times. There are efforts at a concurrent Emacs, but they don't seem to be going anywhere.
