John August

Apps

Fountain, 10x faster

Geek Alert, Highland, Screenwriting Software

We’re keeping Nima Yousefi busy working on Highland, but he’s found time to push a major update to [Fountain](http://fountain.io/), the open-source format and code library that [makes the magic possible](http://nimayousefi.com/2012/06/fountain-update/):

> It came to our attention that on iOS devices the parser’s performance was less than stellar. In fact, it was pretty terrible.

> Long story short, now there’s FastFountainParser. It’s a traditional line-by-line parser and roughly ten times faster than the old one. So, that’s a win.

What this means for screenwriters: Fountain-based screenwriting apps for the Mac and iPad will be much, much faster.

Also included in the package: our libraries for HTML export and pagination.

> It splits large dialogue blocks up across pages, adding the appropriate MORE and CONT’D, and is smart enough not to split in the middle of a sentence.

Fountain is designed to be completely agnostic — you can write Fountain in almost any app that generates text. That said, specialized apps can do amazing things, and we want developers to have a consistent base to jump off from.

I’ve had the chance to try out some of the forthcoming apps. You’re going to love them.

Less IMDb: Faster and cleaner than ever

Apps, Less IMDb

Ryan spent much of this last week updating [Less IMDb](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/less-imdb), our browser plug-in that makes IMDb approximately one billion times better.

Version 1.2 sniffs out some of the new cruft that IMDb has packed into its title and people pages, hiding it away so you can see the credits. Ryan has also streamlined how it works, so you’ll find pages loading faster than ever.

Here’s a [little screencast](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv0A5XUOpBg) I did that shows what it does and how to install it:

For Chrome, you can install it from [our site](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/less-imdb), or with one click from the [Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/necddehinbndjblnhmgcodpobjfpblle?hl=en-US). Well done, Google!

For Safari, it’s three clicks from [our site](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/less-imdb). It’s also available on Apple’s [Safari extensions gallery](https://extensions.apple.com/), but without an easy link. Bad Apple.

If you have an earlier version of Less IMDb for Safari, it’s a good idea to uninstall it first to prevent possible wonkiness. Instructions are in the video.

Less IMDb was the first thing we made as a company, and it still gets the most traffic to the site. We don’t make any money off of it, but goodwill is its [own currency](http://myothercareer.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/less-imdb-safari-extension/):

> Their Less IMDB Safari extension is a godsend. It gets rid of nearly all of the garbage and delivers the streamlined UI that’s as close to how it used to be as possible.

And that’s why we made it.

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.
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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.