How is a word processor like a carousel?

Carousel is a creative notetaking program that is inspired by TV typewriters and early word processors. It's built in DOS, for DOS (and DOS emulators like DOSBox and DOSbian for Raspberry Pi). But how did Carousel get its name in the first place?

Keeping track of all my ideas can make my head spin

At any given time, I've got at least five or six projects going or things I want to keep daily logs on. But I often struggle with keeping my notes separate AND organized AND not overly complicated. A different notebook for each topic? Folders on my desktop? What happens when I abandon one project and pick up three new ones?  Do I have full control of my data when I use cloud-based note-taking apps? What do I do with all these mostly-empty notebooks? I've built overcomplicated notetaking "systems" numerous times over the years. Those experiences led me to create Carousel.

My projects, in rotation

In Carousel, you set up topics that you want to write about. You can create one topic or as many topics as you like. Easily rename or archive them at any time as your ideas shift over time. Your group of topics is called your rotation. (Like a carousel... get it?)

Once you have your topics set up, Carousel launches a blank daily text file for your last-opened topic. You can start writing your next daily log right away, or you can rotate between other topics using the left and right arrow keys. This allows you to write down off-topic epiphanies without worrying about saving files, opening files, closing files, looking for files, reopening files... Everything automatically saves to disk, and you can easily go back to a previous topic entry without losing your place.

You can keep Carousel as simple as this, but there are also more advanced ways to configure how the rotation works, such as changing the rotation sort order and using color-coding to group like topics together.

I really like how Carousel keeps my ideas organized and accessible at the press of an arrow key. At the same time, it's flexible enough to adapt to my ever-changing interests, whims, and hobbies.

Recent improvements

Here are the latest bugfixes and improvements I've made to Carousel since my last post.

• Fixed issue where color submenu does not always load with the correct default value
• Fixed issue where options in topic submenus were not sorted based on user preferences
• Fixed issue with generating folder names that were not compatibility with older versions of DOS

What's next

• Improve preflight checks to reduce edge-case crash scenarios
• Get repro on and fix occasional crash after removing topic
• Remove unused code
• Write mini-manual for early access 
• Release first early access build

Hoping to get this into early-access folks' hands by early next week!