[Axo1ot1]

I write screenplays a lot. I'm currently working on two features and a short. Screenplays are formatted in a very specific way so that they're all standardized and easy to read and the 1 minute a page rule works generally well.

Two programs currently have the market cornered on screenwriting software: Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter. Everyone I know uses final draft because everyone thinks Movie Magic sucks complete ass. Well I'm here to tell you that FD sucks a ton of ass too. I was getting annoyed with some of the bugs it has, so I went to check their website to see if they'd updated version 7 at all, and i found that the only update available was over a year old and I'd already installed it.

This app is so bad. The cursor will totally move right in the middle of typing and there are more visual bugs with the way it shows you your script than I care to mention. It's stupid because all it really does is make formatting easy, keep track of your characters and locations so that you don't have to type them all the way out (think autofill), and spellcheck (w00t). Why should such a janky product have the market locked down the way this does? The answer is that it shouldn't.

I'm no coder, but it seems to me that this is not a huge programming task. All someone really needs to do is start with something like TextEdit as a baseline and add formatting and character management. There's spell check is built right into the OS, so there's no reason not to just use that. Once you've done that you could slap a $50 price tag on it and rake it in, or open the source and give a gift to the world by digging the grave of a company that seems to have stolen its business model from Microsoft.

If anyone is interested in doing this or knows someone who might be, IM my ass and I can tell you exactly what a good bare-bones script word-processor needs.

[Angus_D]

Yeah, calling people nerds is a great way to get them to help you.

[Axo1ot1]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Yeah, calling people nerds is a great way to get them to help you.

it is if they're smart enough not to take it as an insult

[iREZ]

Yeah.....you not smare enough nerd. Gotta agree here with Axo1ot1, he got me to use FD for a screenplay that I've been messing around with for a year and it does blow big time ass.

[monkeybrain]

Have you looked into the screenwriting templates for Pages? (there's a thread about it). I don't know anything about it, but it could be useful to you.

[philm]

In this week's MacUser (UK edition) there is a nice worked example of doing this using Styles in Word.

[wataru]

Originally posted by iREZ:
Yeah.....you not smare enough nerd.

You are teh w1nnar!

[dootbran]

Have fun!

Seriously, most programmers have no clue about the workflow of writing a sceenplay and unless it just happens to become a great way to meet chicks I doubt many are going to start.

[bseely]

Maybe post some screenshots of what you do and do not like about both programs? Maybe some videos using Snapz (or whatever you've got)? Nerds will need to see how these programs work (both well and not well) in order to improve them - especially if said nerds aren't familiar with screenwriting...

[Simon X]

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[Chuckit]

What is so wrong with Final Draft? (I'm not arguing. I don't own it and seriously want to know what's so horrible about that would not be wrong with a bare-bones Cocoa script composer.)

And just to clarify, I say this because I'm actually considering writing this program, since I have written a few scripts in my time (not professionally � student stuff) and thus have some idea of what it should be like.

[wadesworld]

If you guys are really interested in someone writing a new program, you need to at least take the time to write a complete description of what you want.

Wade