Optima — a text editor with style and spell checking

My role: 

Owner, developer

When: 

2016–2022

Optima is a desktop text editor that I developed with Electron for macOS and Windows. I launched it as a commercial product in 2016.

I built Optima for my own needs while working as a designer. When writing text, I would check the style in an external service to make it cleaner. Then I would check and fix spelling somewhere else. And before publication, I would use a typography correction tool. Or I need to turn it into HTML. Switching between tools became tedious, so I decided to build one editor with everything integrated.

Features

It uses Markdown as its underlying format while providing a WYSIWYG editing experience. The result is a simple, minimal editor that works entirely offline.

Optima integrates with an external Russian style-checking service and provides writing recommendations.

It checks spelling in both Russian and English.

Users can instantly share documents via links:

It also includes a typography tool for preparing text for publication:

The typography tool can be configured for either Russian or English typography conventions:

Monetization

To sell Optima as a commercial product, I built a lightweight checkout flow using my bank’s payment processing platform:

• Checkout integrated with the payment platform
• A CLI-based order management system
• Automatic license key generation and email delivery

Development and technologies used

Editor:

• Optima was built with Electron, React, Redux, and Quill.js.

Backend for payments and document sharing:

• Node.js with the Express framework
• MongoDB with Mongoose
• Mandrill for email delivery