LifeHacker mentioned an awesome bare bones word processor recently for retro freaks called JDarkRoom. This java-based writer is a full screen text writer with no extra frills that could distract you from your writing obligations.

I thought I’d write this post with it; it sure brings back memories! A completely black screen with green text – no windows, menu bars or pop-up windows. Personally, I find it’s a wonderful tool to work with because it forces me to concentrate on content as opposed to wasting time formatting text and other things we do with our word processors when we can’t seem to get those juices flowing, like play with fonts and text colours. I also happen to prefer green (or amber) text on black backgrounds and usually change my word-processors to these colour-schemes.

Documents are saved as text files which you can then open in your usual word processor for formatting, spell checking and whatever else. Switching to your OS while writing is easily done, at least in Windows, with the ALT-TAB keys.

Since JDarkRoom is written in Java, it’s portable on a flash drive as long as the computer you plug into has the Java run-time. And at only 105 KB, it’s a great space saver for those with smaller drives.