Highland, our screenwriting app for Mac, revved up to version 1.5 today. It’s in the Mac App Store right now.
Version 1.5 is the biggest update to Highland since its debut. New features include:
- Syntax highlighting of Sections, Notes, Boneyards, Title Pages, bold, and italics (where available)
- Three formats: Screenplay, Stageplay, and Manuscript
- A4 paper support for our European friends
- Beautiful new graphics
- Many, many tweaks and bug fixes
The biggest change is honestly philosophical.
When we launched, we saw Highland as a “screenplay utility” focused on converting between PDF, Fountain and FDX formats. We thought screenwriters would use other text editors to write, then finish in Highland. (In fact, Nima Yousefi wanted to cut the editor view from version 1.0.) I wanted users to be able to make small changes without leaving the app, so we built a very basic text editor into the app.
Surprisingly, a lot of people just wrote in Highland. I was one of them. For the past few months, I’ve written everything new directly in Highland. It’s fast and it works.
For version 1.5, it works even better. We’ve added syntax highlighting — a huge help with sections and notes. We’ve added support for A4 paper sizes.
And we’ve expanded the types of documents you can create.
For Big Fish, I needed the ability to format stageplays. A Certain Famous Author wanted to use Highland for manuscripts, so we built that in as well. Ninety percent of users will probably only need the screenplay functionality, but you can now use Highland for a wide range of writing projects.
Highland 1.5 is in the Mac App Store. It’s a free update for all users.
