by If you do a lot of writing on your iPad, you know how important a good word processing app is. Whether you’re using a Bluetooth keyboard or have somehow mastered the virtual one, ultra-minimal interfaces and smart features have made writing on the iPad a joy, with apps like iA Writer and Write for iPad transforming the way we work.
You probably don’t think you need another one, but that’s only because you haven’t tried Editorial. With rich formatting and powerful automation features, Editorial isn’t a stripped-down tablet app with a pretty face – it’s one of the best text editors we’ve ever used, on our iPads or anywhere else.
There’s a lot to learn in Editorial, so expect to refer to its exhaustive help document quite often. An expanded Markdown-styled keyboard adds a thin row of commands and punctuation marks that Apple loves to hide on its own interface, and tracing your finger along it doubles as a cursor for easy text selection. It’s not cluttered or unwieldy, and we actually found ourselves using the shortcuts it supplied, unlike those in some of the other apps we’ve tried.
A swipe to the right reveals the accessory panels, which includes a live Markdown preview window and a built-in web browser. Everything from line spacing to text width is customizable, but Editorial’s real power is in its workflows. Anything you need to do – from counting words within a selection to searching Wikipedia – can be configured through a series of actions that may be as simple or complex as you want. A few are bundled to get you started, but if you’re into tinkering to create the best possible personal experience, then you’ll likely have as much fun experimenting as we did.
Editorial syncs with Dropbox and supports a variety of file types, but we can’t help but wish there was an iPhone or Mac companion with iCloud support. Also, the reliance on workflow scripting makes it somewhat tricky to do simple tasks, such as sending attachments and sharing between apps.
The bottom line. With advanced workflow commands that can really change the way you approach writing on a tablet, Editorial may well mean as much to the iPad as Microsoft Word meant to the PC.
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