John August

Apps

Don’t search with your eyes

Arlo Finch, Books, Highland, How-To, Projects

This week, I’m editing the manuscript for the second [Arlo Finch](http://arlofinchbooks.com). I do most of my edits on paper because I find I catch a lot of mistakes I’d otherwise miss just scrolling on the screen.

One of the frustrations with this process can be trying to match up the errors you’ve found on paper with what’s in the file. You’re constantly scrolling, looking for the trouble spot. [Highland 2](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2-beta/) has a sidebar navigator and inline page numbers, both of which can help. But I’ve found the fastest solution is to stop scrolling altogether and use the built-in search function.

Let’s say you’re fixing a typo, like a missing ‘d’ on *the door had been **force** open.* It’s halfway down on page 183, but that doesn’t matter.

Hit Command-F and type *had been force* then return.

Boom. You’re right there. Fix the mistake and keep going.

Note that you want to search for a string of words, not just the one with the typo. You may have used *force* a dozen times, but you’re almost certain to have typed *had been force* just once.

In Highland 2 — and most Mac writing apps — the Find command starts searching from wherever your cursor is, so if you’re working through edits in order, you rarely have to be particularly narrow in your search query. Even if you use *its claws scraped* more than once in your book, it will always give you the next one first. That’s likely to be the one you want.

This technique probably saved me half an hour today, and a lot of eye fatigue. So try it out next time.

Movies Dodged a Bullet

Episode - 319

Go to Archive

Books, Follow Up, Formatting, Highland, Scriptnotes, Three Page Challenge, Transcribed, WGA, Words, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig speculate about why the film industry fared better in the transition to digital while the music industry struggled.

We also follow up on the WGA elections, hearing John’s priorities as a new board member. Lured back into the intrigue of MoviePass, we discuss new information on this business model.

Then it’s another installment of the Three Page Challenge, in which we discuss listener-submitted pages of their screenplays.

Finally, we answer the most provocative of listener-questions: how do you name your files?

Links:

* [WGA Section of johnaugust.com](http://johnaugust.com/wga-board)
* [I’m Joining the WGA Board](http://johnaugust.com/2017/im-joining-the-wga-board)
* [CEO Mitch Lowe Pulls Back The Curtain On MoviePass And Explains Its Economics](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2017/09/18/ceo-mitch-lowe-pulls-back-the-curtain-on-moviepass-and-explains-its-economics/) from Forbes, by Rob Cain
* Three Pages by [Steven Wood](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Wood_3pgs.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Elizabeth Boston](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Boston_3pgs.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Dan Pavlik](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Pavlik_3pgs.pdf)
* [Submit](http://johnaugust.com/threepage) for the Three Page Challenge
* [Austin Film Festival 2017 Film Slate](https://austinfilmfestival.com/festival-and-conference-aff/festival/film-slate/)
* [Conversations with Friends](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0451499050/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Sally Rooney
* [Meet Cute](http://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/juno-temple-jon-bass-meet-cute-short-film-1201878128/) – Short Film on Indiewire
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive) will be available again in a few days!
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

Credits:
Produced by Megan McDonnell
Edited by Matthew Chilelli
With Nima Yousefi and Dustin Bocks

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_319.mp3).

**UPDATE 10-2-17:** The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/scriptnotes-ep-319-movies-dodged-a-bullet-transcript)

Separating scenes in Highland

Apps, Fountain, Highland

Jose, one of our [Highland 2 beta testers](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2-beta/), wrote in with a feature request:

> I’d love the ability to print individual scenes, with page breaks after each scene. It can be useful to physically rearrange scenes once printed.

We could add that as a command, but how often would users really want to do that? Rarely-used features are cruft. They make apps more complicated than they need to be, both for users and developers.

Luckily, it’s remarkably easy to do what Jose wants with any Fountain app, including the original [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12).

### Step one: Think what it would look like

In [Fountain syntax](http://fountain.io/syntax), a page break is simply three equal signs: ===

Meanwhile, scene headers start with either INT. or EXT. ((You can also force a scene header by starting with a period: .DEEPER IN THE VOID. You can find these by searching for a return followed by a period.))

So in order to put a page break between each scene, you want to replace every instance of INT. with…

===
INT.

…and then do the same with EXT.

### Step two: Make it look like that

Within Highland, you can do it with two passes of Find and Replace, choosing Replace All. It’s helpful to copy-and-paste the second part, since Mac’s default find and replace fields only show you a single line.

find-and-replace

It took less than 20 seconds in all.

If breaking scenes into individual pages is something you do all the time, it’s easily automated. Here’s an AppleScript to do it: [Split Fountain Scenes](http://pastebin.com/eWmueJ8M).

As always, it’s a good idea to work on a copy of the file you can toss after printing.

Highland’s plain-text Fountain format makes little hacks like this easy. For example, another beta tester requested a way to print his [[inline notes]], which are removed by default.

There’s no need for him to wait for us to add a feature. We suggested he simply find-and-replace [[ and ]] with ++. He got the inline notes he wanted right away.

### How would you do this in Final Draft or Fade In?

With difficulty. I couldn’t find a way to do it without manually inserting page breaks at the end of every scene. If you figure out a way, let me know.

Less IMDb needs a new home

Apps, Less IMDb

iconLess IMDb, our browser extension for making IMDb less cluttered and more useful, was the very first app we made. ((Is a browser extension an app? Debatable. There’s code and logic, and it has to be installed in an app-like way. But compared to Highland or Weekend Read, it’s not nearly as sophisticated. It falls into the murky area between web and app design, which is part of why it was a great first project for us.))

Here’s what I wrote [back in 2010](http://johnaugust.com/2010/less-imd):

> They’ve made it more difficult to do the one thing I come to IMDb to do: look at credits. New sections for photos, videos and trivia (star signs!) push credit lists below the fold, forcing you to scroll.

> Rather than complain about it, Ryan and I decided to fix it.

And it worked!

In the early days of browser extensions, Less IMDb became very popular because it did exactly one thing well: rearrange layouts to get rid of the cruft, letting you focus on the stuff you’re more likely to actually want.

Six years later, the little yellow tab remains in the upper-right corner of my IMDb windows, silently re-jiggering things. Remarkably, despite all the changes of technology, the extension still works.

Mostly.

Except on Firefox and Chrome.

And even on Safari, layouts will occasionally break spectacularly. IMDb pages aren’t static; you never quite know what you’re going to get. When IMDb reskins entire sections to promote a big summer movie, our little extension gets confused.

Getting Less IMDb back into fighting shape across multiple browsers will take a savvy web person 10 to 30 hours, and it’s just not a priority for us. We’ll be launching [Highland 2](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2-beta/) soon enough, and that occupies every brain cell of design and coding talent.

But reworking Less IMDb might be a great project for someone else, which is why today we’re releasing all of the source code for it with an MIT license. You can download it here:

[Less IMDb source code](http://qapps.s3.amazonaws.com/LessIMDb.zip)

Everyone is welcome to use this code to make their own version of the extension. And if one of those versions is great, we’ll even give you the name if you’d like it. (You can find us on Twitter: [@qapps](https://twitter.com/qapps?lang=en).)

I’m really happy we made Less IMDb. It set a great tone and mission for our company: making useful things we wished existed.

I hope someone takes up the charge and can give Less IMDb the love and attention it needs to go another six years.