Offline writing

Developer help
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Is there a tool that can be used to write articles offline?

It doesn’t even have to be a tool that directly integrates with Ghost, just one that would be easy enough to copy and paste over to Ghost when I’m online; without having to write in Markup…

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@kevin

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@naz @Kate @kevin - I’m just going to tag all those that have been really helpful :grinning:

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I sometimes use Google Docs (which you can use offline) if I’m editing/collaborating on a big doc. If I use the built-in heading structure it works fine. So, no need to use something fancy.

Images have to be done separately, but I have a workflow for optimising them for web use anyway.

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Thanks @dana - I’ll give that a go.

Interested in your image workflow - if you’re willing to share it?

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Haha of course, it’s not voodoo!! It’s just SEO/user experience-centric optimisation. The goal is to make a big image into an SEO-optimised small JPG (about 100KB is the target), so the web page is fast loading, and easily found via search on Google Images. (Haven’t worked out how to do alt tags in Ghost yet)

I generally:

  • Reduce dynamic range in the photo (usually by fixing highlights/shadows
  • Reduce resolution to max width 1200-1500
  • Export as JPG if it’s not already (unless it’s mostly image-free, in which case PNG)
  • Run it through ImageOptim (an open source app) at 70% quality.
  • Rename the file so it has keywords I’m optimising for

Still bugs me I can’t add alt text to images in Ghost… :frowning:

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Thanks!

Can’t you add an alt tag by using the HTML plugin?

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I think you can - link

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Yeah, I’ve done that. I got worried about future and cross theme compatibility of stored posts. I add figure class manually (because it’s more than just an img), I’d have to rely on that class not changing in the future. I’d rather have the post stored as however Koenig stores it.

Actually I have no idea how it stores it… I assumed it was in some meta format… Maybe it’s the same thing, will research.

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Ah ok yeah I see what you mean. It’s a shame you can’t add some kind of custom helper and use that for repeatability.

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You can now write using IA Writer + a bunch of other things

((Most of these allow offline access ! ))

1 Like
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Ah awesome. Don’t suppose you know of any supported IA Writers for linux? That article mostly mentions Mac.

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I’m not sure. The new API supports Zapier, so you could probably find something on Zapier.
Personally, I would just use a normal text editor and write in Markdown :slight_smile:

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I’ll have a look and see if anything fits the bill, thanks for bringing the new features to my attention.

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@omisnomis you could use WINE in combination with iA, or not?

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Thanks @KranzKrone - I decided to try Ghost Writer. It doesn’t integrate with Ghost (I don’t think), but it’s Open Source and supports Markdown - so I guess I am going to write in MD after all :slight_smile:

1 Like
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I use Ulysses for writing offline and on the go. They have ghost integration and worth every penny.

I use Ulysses religiously now in my writing.

1 Like
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Unfortunately no Linux version :slight_smile:

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