John August

Apps

Highland update fixes .fdx, adds Snow Leopard support

Apps, Highland, News

highland logoThe new beta of [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/) — released last night — tackles three major issues.

The first fix is exporting to Final Draft (.fdx). If you encountered a file that opened as bunch of (cont’d)’s, give it another try.

The second major addition: legacy support for Snow Leopard (OS 10.6). In order to make it work, we had to temporarily disable two features: printing and the quick-reference sheet. They’ll be back. We just wanted to get the beta into testers’ hands ASAP.

The third issue is extended Unicode support for larger character sets, including accents and diacritical marks. We want Highland to work on screenplays written in a range of languages, but our sample size is small. So as with any issue, if you find Highland is struggling with a given script, please send a report card.

If you already have the Highland beta installed, it will auto-update. If not, you can [download it from the site](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/).

Highland updates

Apps, Follow Up

Since the launch of the [Highland public beta](http://johnaugust.com/2012/highland-for-all) last week, we’ve gotten great feedback. Thank you to our second-wave testers.

I’m particularly happy with how our report card system is working. By gathering the information in one place, we’ve been able to see some clear patterns.

Not everyone is using Lion.
—-

We built and tested Highland on Mac OS X Lion (10.7), but a lot of Mac users are still on Snow Leopard (10.6). They’re getting crashes and odd behavior. That’s not okay.

We have two choices:

1. Go back and figure out support for Snow Leopard, or
2. Draw the line at Lion and get ready for Mountain Lion (10.8).

There are a few unannounced features we have planned for Highland that make sticking with Lion very appealing, but we haven’t decided yet.

One thing we know for certain: since we’re planning on selling the app through the Mac App Store, 10.6 is the earliest OS we can support.

Honest question: Why aren’t people upgrading to Lion? Are you holding on to some piece of software that will otherwise break?

People actually use Celtx.
—-

Several users filed report cards noting that PDFs created by Celtx weren’t importing properly, with wordsrunningtogetherlikethis. We should be able to take care of this issue. I’m just noting it because I have no real sense what percentage of the screenwriting software market Celtx (or the other apps) actually have.

Windows users want theirs.
—

Many screenwriters use Windows. Unfortunately, the work we’ve done for the Mac version doesn’t translate very well to the PC. I don’t think you’ll ever see a PC version of Highland.

[Fountain](http://fountain.io), however, is open-source and platform-agnostic. My hope is that we’ll see many screenwriting utilities for Windows, Linux and other operating systems.

Preview is working better than Export.
—

Many users are finding that Highland’s Preview shows what they expect, but the .fdx or .pdf has issues. We’ll make that a focus on upcoming releases.

Good news is useful, too.
—

We obviously need to hear when things go wrong, but it’s nice to know when things go right:

> Just about perfect. Not all the title page elements imported under the correct key identifier and centered text didn’t import as centered, but everything else was spot on.

Mixed news is also helpful:

> Looks great overall. Conversion from PDF is great. Unfortunately, a few of the “–Day” and “– Night”s got sent to the next line as action and not scene headings. A few parentheticals also stayed in dialog when it was after a few words and not directly after a character name.

It’s also reassuring when users seem to grok the underlying potential:

> I’m not sure exactly why I’m so excited about Highland, but I am. It most likely stems from the fact I dislike most screenwriting apps and have grown fond of writing in the Fountain format.

My hope is that Highland will help close the loop for screenwriters who want to work in Fountain, letting any text editor do just enough.

We hope to get new Highland betas out frequently. They won’t all be wonderful. Things will break as they get better. But with ongoing feedback, I think we’ll end up with something terrific.

Highland for all

Apps

After hundreds of scripts and tremendous feedback from our early testers, we’re making our new app Highland available as a public beta. Anyone who wants to try it out is [welcome to download](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland).

You’ll see that a lot has changed since I last [blogged about it](http://johnaugust.com/2012/say-hello-to-highland).

For starters, there are now two views: Edit and Preview.

Highland is still at heart a conversion utility, letting you move between Fountain, PDF and FDX files. But we realized in testing that users often need to make minor changes, and having to round-trip through another text editor was too much hassle. So we added a basic editor. It’s not nearly as feature-rich as true screenwriting apps, but it’s surprisingly capable.

You could write a whole screenplay in Highland. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you could.

In addition to dragging in files, you can now create a new file and paste in text — perfect if you’re bringing in material from Google Docs or Mail.

The biggest change took the most time to implement: a robust report card system for tracking how well Highland is importing and exporting scripts. Because screenplays come with so many variations, we’re never going to convert every script perfectly. But with built-in feedback, we hope to keep improving with each update.

Highland is pretty stable, but this **really is a beta**, folks. It can crash. I say this not to scare you away, but to set proper expectations.

We’re not sure how long this public beta will last. Each build is designed to expire after 30 days, but with built-in updating, we’ll be able to send out new beta versions easily. Our goal is to have it available on the Mac App Store once it feels solid and ready.

Thanks again to our first-round beta testers for all their feedback. Now it’s time for the wider world to kick the tires, and let us know how it can get even better.

If you want to join in, you can [download Highland today](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland).

FDX Reader turns one

FDX Reader, Follow Up

fdx reader iconFDX Reader, our app for reading Final Draft scripts on the iPad and iPhone, came out a [year ago today](http://johnaugust.com/2011/we-made-an-app).

Usually, when people say, “I can’t believe it’s been a year!” they mean something like *look how time flies* or *it seems like only yesterday.*  

But when I say I can’t believe it’s been a year, I mean that I can’t believe it’s been *only* a year.  FDX Reader feels like something we did a very, very long time ago.

Why is my internal calendar so wrong in this case?

I have a few theories:

1. Digital things move faster.
—-

We’ve become accustomed to shorter and shorter attention cycles for digital goods. Consider [Draw Something](http://www.nowgamer.com/columns/nowgamer-team-blog/1388920/draw_something_a_licence_to_draw_money.html):

* Draw Something is a hit!
* Zynga buys Draw Something for $180 million!
* Draw Something is tanking!

The rise and fall of MySpace took years. The cycle for Draw Something has run about eight weeks.

Even though the time span has been incredibly compressed, our brains still try to ascribe a certain amount of time for a rise-and-fall cycle, so we subconsciously back-date events.

It’s not just apps that move faster. Many memes are essentially digital, and experience the same time-shift phenomenon.

Quick: When did [KONY2012 happen](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/kony-2012)? Was it before or after the [Mel Gibson/Joe Ezsterhas fracas](http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/joe-eszterhas-explodes-mel-gibson-you-hate-jews-36957)? And what about the [Sandra Fluke/Rush Limbaugh controversy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh–Sandra_Fluke_controversy)?

All of these memes burned bright and died out quick, leaving the embers to float in a sea of the recent past. ((Kony: February 20, 2012. Gibson: April 11, 2012. Fluke: February 29, 2012.))

2. My clock started when we began working on the app.
—-

Here’s what I wrote to Nima Yousefi on December 10, 2010:

> I think there’s an opening for an FDX Reader (called, perhaps, FDX Reader) that would simply register itself to iOS as able to open .fdx extension files. Then, when someone taps a file with that extension in Dropbox or Mail (or whatever) it can launch. That way, you don’t really have to worry about getting files to into it.

> What matters is the reading experience. Make it look nice, like the Instapaper app. Perhaps give the ability to add notes, but don’t try to become a screenwriting app.

> If that’s interesting to you, happy to go halfsies with you. Lemme know.

FDX Reader was our very first app. Not only did we need to figure out how to build it — the design, the coding, the testing — we had to learn how to get an app approved and released in Apple’s odd ecosystem. (Just getting an account set up is surprisingly convoluted.)

That process took a little over six months, so it’s reasonable that the app feels older to me.

3. So much has come after it.
—

In the past year, we’ve released the iPhone version of FDX Reader, several installments of [Bronson Watermarker](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson) for the Mac, the spec for the [Fountain](http://fountain.io) markup language, and successive betas of [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland). (Come back tomorrow for major news on that one.)

All that activity seems like too much to have occurred in just a year, so I’m mentally stretching the time period.

4. The less attention you pay to something, the further back in time you push it.
—-

We don’t really do much with FDX Reader now. Our last update simply upgraded the graphics for the new iPad. If as rumored the new iPhone has a larger screen, we’ll make whatever changes we need to make. But the app itself is basically done.

We built the app because Final Draft hadn’t come out with its own reader. Now they have. Ours still sells remarkably well — probably because we’re the only one that works on the iPhone.

You never forget your first time, and FDX Reader really has been a remarkable experience bringing an idea to life. In celebrating FDX Reader’s first birthday, I’ll invite you to [try it out](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8&ls=1) if you haven’t.

(Or leave us a nice review if you’re so inclined.)