TAKES: keep every version, hear which one you're on
A writing desk for alternate takes. Swap words, sentences and paragraphs in place, audition them with synthesized tones, then share, record, compare or print.
TAKES keeps several versions of a piece of writing in the same place. Select a word or a sentence and press T to write another take of it. The draft stays readable, and each place with alternates gets a slightly wavy underline, closer to an editor's pen than a spell-check squiggle. Paragraphs can have takes too. You can listen to the takes as well as read them. Focus a take and use the arrow keys: alternates ring high and climb a scale, and going back to the original lands on a low tone, so you can tell by ear when you are back where you started. The sound is synthesized in the browser. There are nine instruments, seven scales, a room with reverb and echo, optional typing sounds, and ambience such as the ocean at the jetty or rain on the window. Text you are not sure about can be dimmed (D) instead of deleted, or stashed (S) in an overflow column beside the page and dragged back later. Seven themes, seven typefaces, six underline styles and six presets change the look and the sound together. New in this update. Press C on a paragraph to see all of its takes side by side, with word counts and the words each take adds highlighted. Copy a share link and the whole draft travels inside the link, after the #, which browsers do not send to a server. Anyone with the link can read it. Record the take score to get a .wav of every take's tone in reading order. Print or save a PDF with only the chosen takes, or with take marks left in. The format is plain Markdown with three small additions: {{original | >chosen}} for inline takes, ((dimmed text)), and ::: takes blocks for paragraph versions. Drafts save only in your browser. There are no accounts, no uploads and no AI writing. The idea comes from Jason Fried's Write_On, which he described on September 30 as "alternative control" at the word, sentence and paragraph level. TAKES is an independent PointCast take on it.
