I once saw an interview with Jerry Seinfeld and he was asked “Do you write your jokes using a computer or paper and pencil?” He answered something like, “Paper definitely. I can’t use a computer because if you’re not immediately typing something the cursor is constantly flashing at you going ‘C’mon, whaddya got? Give me something!’” I cracked up laughing because I knew instantly what he was talking about.
I definitely feel this when using Panda. It’s very distracting and there doesn’t seem to be a way to unfocus the editor. In other note-taking apps I’ve used (Notion, Craft, Obsidian), you can click with your mouse outside in the gutter area and it will unfocus the editor allowing me to just think about what I wanna write. Tried doing this with Panda, but this doesn’t seem possible.
Would love to be able to click in the empty gutter space to unfocus the editor so the cursor isn’t sitting there flashing at me.
Another thing I thought might be really neat is if after 5 seconds of inactivity (timer starts once typing has stopped), for example, the cursor would fade out making it’s alpha 0. Once you start typing again, the cursor appears immediately. If you stop typing the timer would start again. Just an idea. You could have a settings option that allows the user to turn this feature on or off and even set how many seconds of inactivity before the cursor fades out. Never seen this done before in any other app.
I should also add that intuitively I keep trying to hit esc to unfocus the editor. I think the best solution would be to allow the user to hit the esc key or click outside in the gutter area to unfocus the editor.
I’m sure you guys would come up with something better, just some ideas I thought of. However, just being able to quiet the cursor while I’ve paused typing would be really great.
Thanks for hearing me out.