Writeful - writing feedback

Post details of freeware that are found to be not portable here. Posts in the submissions forum relating to freeware found to be not portable should also be moved here.
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webfork
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Writeful - writing feedback

#1 Post by webfork »

Summary: Kind of a cool program but sweet Jesus does it need a lot of juice to run what is basically a super fancy thesaurus.
Writefull is an app that gives feedback on your writing by checking your text against databases of correct language. You can use Writefull in any writing tool - from MS Word to Gmail. Simply select a piece of text, hit the short-key to activate Writefull, and choose one of its many options:
  • Check how often your selected text is found in the language database, and see how it is used in context.
  • Hear how your text is pronounced.
  • Translate from any language into English.
  • Enter two chunks and compare how often they are found in the database. Also see how they are used in context.
  • Find out which words are used most often in a gap in your selected text.
  • See which synonyms of a given word are used most often in your selected text.
Cross-platform with clients available for Linux, Mac, and as a Chrome plugin.

Sites:

http://writefullapp.com/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-S ... able.shtml

I tested the "standalone" zip file v3 beta 19.

Status: Not portable, writes to AppData\Roaming and by default tries to install itself to run at startup

Other stats:

Electron-based so as with most of those programs it's huge.

Privacy: Poor. The program keeps cookies and a cache, and has no ability to modify these without just outright deleting the AppData folder, so it should be assumed that this program doesn't care about user privacy any more than Chrome.

Resource usage: High. Mine ran 4 processes for uh ... reasons, each of them taking an average of 30 megs. It's Electron-based so I guess that's what you deal with

Footprint: High. 55.8 megs compressed, 156 uncompressed.

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On a side note, I dunno why almost every program I seem to test lately ends up not being portable. *shrug*

Specular
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Re: Writeful

#2 Post by Specular »

Thanks for the overview. Appreciated the breakdown of privacy and resource usage.

Seems to be a program for checking the correctness of phrases by how many published writers use it. I do this every-so-often using Google so it's interesting to see it implemented into its own thing.

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Re: Writeful

#3 Post by webfork »

Specular wrote:Thanks for the overview. Appreciated the breakdown of privacy and resource usage
Sure thing -- I was actually inspired by Smaragdus' very thorough approach and I'll try to do that more going forward. Also, I've been trying to come up with a rig that does more thorough testing, including whether a program phones home during it's use and with whom. I'm a thin shadow of what Baas used to do in terms of testing.

It's on a remarkably long list of things I'd like to do connected to portable software and this site. Even working full time on this every day, I'd be surprised if I ran out of stuff to do in a year.

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Midas
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Re: Writeful

#4 Post by Midas »

webfork wrote:Even working full time on this every day, I'd be surprised if I ran out of stuff to do in a year.
  • That would make two of us, for sure... :o

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Re: Writeful

#5 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote:
webfork wrote:Even working full time on this every day, I'd be surprised if I ran out of stuff to do in a year.
  • That would make two of us, for sure... :o
Strangely, as a lot of things come together in my world, my ability to dedicate time decreases. So even as my ideas/plans/concepts to apply to the site have never been better, my ability to implement diminishes.

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Midas
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Re: Writeful

#6 Post by Midas »

As I age, I have been noticing pretty much the same. It would seem the degree of focus required to accomplish anything is the first thing that slips from an old mind... :(

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Re: Writeful

#7 Post by webfork »

Old thread update: development has essentially moved into a Word (and Overleaf) plugin. That definitely solved the issue of intense system resource usage but not exactly what I had in mind.

You can still download and run the program from softpedia but a lot of components of the program are likely outdated and a security risk, while the program itself by it's nature requires Internet access. I'm not sure of a workaround here.

Image

The program is freemium with extra tools purchased through Gumroad (no idea how much it costs). There's not much on the website about that but you can find details in the manual:
https://www.notion.so/Writefull-for-Wor ... d3efdd9b4b

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