Weekend Read

On Rotation

March 18, 2014 Apps, FDX Reader, Weekend Read

Weekend Read’s [support site](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/support) encourages users to send in feature requests in addition to the usual bug reports. We try to answer every inquiry.

This week, we responded to a plea for landscape mode in Weekend Read by explaining that while it’s not out of the question, we had already tried landscape mode for the iPhone, and found it unsatisfactory.

The user disagreed — and threatened a negative review — arguing we should let consumers decide whether they want to rotate scripts to read them in landscape mode.

This got me thinking about landscape mode on the iPhone, and the apps that support it. As I started going through the apps on my first few screens, I realized that landscape on the iPhone is far from universal.

Notably, many of Apple’s own apps eschew landscape mode. Just as notably, many reading-style apps support landscape mode. So it’s certainly worth looking at the pros and cons of adding landscape support to the iPhone.

PRO: Lots of other reader apps allow landscape.

CON: We’re different than most reader apps. In Weekend Read, margins matter a lot for dialogue and transitions. We can’t just set every block left and move on. We would need to extensively test which margins look right for which font size. An extra complication is that we’d need to do it for both the smaller iPhone 4 series and the larger iPhone 5s.

PRO: We did landscape mode in the iPhone version of FDX Reader.

CON: Supporting landscape in FDX Reader was a pain in the ass. New developer tools make it somewhat easier, but Weekend Read is a much more complex app than FDX Reader, with many more views.

PRO: With the much-rumored larger iPhones, people might use them more like iPad minis, which are often in landscape mode.

CON: There aren’t bigger-screen iPhones yet.

CON: All new graphics, all new headaches. From the user perspective, it seems like allowing landscape rotation should be as simple as flipping a switch. And in fact, it sort of is in in Xcode. But when you flip that switch, you find that almost everything needs to be rethought and rebuilt, because it was designed for vertical orientation.

PRO: Users could choose even larger fonts. By sacrificing vertical space, we could let the user have letters nearly an inch tall.

CON: The text options screen is actually a good example of what would need to be rebuilt. Here’s the screen in portrait mode:

iphone WR portrait

The sample text lets you see in real time what the font will look like. Here’s that same screen in landscape:

landscape WR

We’d have to substantially rethink this view.

CON: The gestures are built for portrait. On Weekend Read, you can swipe right to get back to the Library. You can swipe left to show the Page Jumper. But in landscape, your thumbs are in the wrong place. It’s not a deal-killer, but it’s a worse experience.

CON: Twice the views to debug. Twice as many things to break.

CON: Very few people are asking for landscape mode. By far the majority of requests are for an iPad version. Allowing landscape rotation on the iPhone would push the iPad version back at least another two weeks.

Ultimately, every choice comes with a cost. Adding landscape to the iPhone isn’t impossible, but it means not doing something else, and right now the many “something elses” are worth a lot more.

You can find Weekend Read [in the App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8).

World-building

Episode - 135

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March 18, 2014 Follow Up, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, Weekend Read, Words on the page

John and Craig discuss how you create a fictional universe for your story, and the limits of how much can fit on the page. From location to language to wardrobe, choosing which details to make explicit is a crucial early decision. Too little detail and the reader doesn’t know how your story is special; too much detail and the story gets lost.

Also this week, Resurrection vs The Returned vs The Returned vs Les Revenants — just because it’s an original idea to you doesn’t mean it’s the first time anyone’s ever thought of it. We also provide exactly five minutes of follow-up on last week’s discussion about what should replace the current screenplay format.

And True Detective! Which we loved! It’s only because we loved it that we can point out ways it could have been stronger. Did the traditional once-a-week format help or hurt it? Probably both.

LINKS:

* Get tickets now for John’s [WGF panel](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/first-draft-feature/), From First Draft to Feature
* [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8) 1.0.2 is in the App Store now
* Slate on [Resurrection vs. The Returned](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/03/07/resurrection_the_returned_and_they_came_back_what_s_the_difference_video.html)
* [True Detective](http://www.hbo.com/true-detective) on HBO
* [Fiasco](http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/) by Jason Morningstar
* [Airmail](http://airmailapp.com/) for OSX
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Blake Kuehn ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_135.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_135.mp3).

**UPDATE** 3-21-14: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/scriptnotes-ep-135-world-building-transcript).

Highland 1.6 uses the force

March 14, 2014 Apps, Highland, Weekend Read

Hot on the heels of the [Weekend Read update](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8), we have a new [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12) in the Mac App Store today.

Highland 1.6 features all the improvements to PDF-melting from Weekend Read, including better support for PDFs created with Fade In and Celtx.

There are also a slew of little bug fixes, with more coming. I use Highland for all my daily screenwriting, so whenever I encounter an issue, Nima tackles it immediately.

### The force is strong with this one

Highland is the first app to support the basically-official Fountain 1.1 spec, which adds several new features:

– Forced character elements
– Lowercase character extensions
– Forced action elements
– Lyrics

The ability to force a **Character** element is helpful for names that require lower-case letters (i.e. McDONALD), and for non-Roman languages, where a character might be named something like 黒澤.

To force a Character element, precede a line with the “at” symbol: @

@McCLANE 
Yippie ki-yay! I got my lowercase C back!

McCLANE

Yippie ki-yay! I got my lowercase C back!

The parser will remove the @ and interpret McCLANE as Character, preserving its mixed case. We picked @ because everyone is already accustomed to thinking of @name referring to a person.

**Character extensions**, those notations like (on the radio) which live on the same line as a Character element, are no longer required to be uppercase:

Sometimes you really want two lines of **Action**, with no blank line between them. You’re going to for a style — but Fountain doesn’t know that. So instead you get:

BOOM

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

In Fountain 1.0, we allowed the user to force Action elements with two trailing spaces.

BOOM{two spaces}

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

This has turned out to be problematic in practice. The spaces are invisible, and can be introduced by accident as you write. Highland and Slugline users got confused. Hell, I got confused, and I co-created the syntax.

In the end, we’d like more transparency and less invisibility. Using spaces to force Action is now deprecated.

Instead, you can force Action by preceding a line with an exclamation point:

!BOOM
BOOM BOOM. Closer.

The parser removes the ! and interprets BOOM as Action.

BOOM

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

Highland has had **Lyrics** for a while now. Nothing has changed.

For screenplays, we use the same basic margins as dialogue, but set the text in italics. For stageplays, we move the lyrics to the left margin and set them uppercase.

You create a Lyric by starting with a tilde ~.

~Willy Wonka! Willy Wonka! The amazing chocolatier!

~Willy Wonka! Willy Wonka! Everybody give a cheer!

Lyrics are always forced. There is no “automatic” way to get them.

###What’s next

[Fountain](http://fountain.io) is an open-source project, and continues to evolve. Right now we’re discussing:

* Flagged changes (the equivalent of asterisks in the margins)
* “Logical pages” independent of device or font
* Multi-cam formatting
* Better title pages

Some of these are deferred issues (multi-cam), while others are just things we got wrong (title pages). As with Lyrics, we’ll likely use Highland to experiment with some of these ideas before they become official parts of the spec.

An upcoming build of Weekend Read will feature the new Fountain 1.1 elements, but you can get started with them in Highland today. [Enjoy](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12).

Weekend Read gains new powers, new scripts

March 13, 2014 Apps, Highland, Weekend Read

[ product photo ](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog) Weekend Read has an update in the App Store today. Version 1.0.2 greatly improves PDF reading and adds a lot of new content. It’s free, so [go get it.](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8)

[As promised](http://johnaugust.com/2014/weekend-read-learning-from-launch), this release tackles issues with screenplay PDFs originating in Celtx and Fade In, and has much better support for A4 paper sizes and international characters.

We also worked with The Black List ([blcklst.com](http://www.blcklst.com)) to allow members to read watermarked scripts inside the app.

If you have script that didn’t look right under the old build, delete it and load it back into your library. There’s a good chance it will work now.

Ripping apart and reassembling PDFs is an imperfect art, so we’ll never be able to read every screenplay PDF. ((Some PDFs are nothing but images, while others use watermarks that deliberately prevent text-parsing. And some are odd for their own odd reasons, such as Asghar Farhadi’s script for The Past. It looks normal to the human eye, but under the hood it’s anything but.)) But this build gets us closer than ever. And because Weekend Read shares code with [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12), these improvements will carry over to the next build of our flagship Mac app, which should be out soon.

While bug fixes are great, I’m most excited about our new content.

###Filling the shelves

A great reader needs great writing, so we rebuilt the For Your Consideration section in a way that lets us add new material — new scripts, new outlines, entire new categories — in real time. We’ll use this ability to feature both established screenwriters and folks you’ve never heard of. And because so much of the best writing is happening in television, we will regularly include pilots and series as Featured Shows.

– Our first Featured Writer is Rian Johnson, who brings us his scripts for Brick, Looper and The Brothers Bloom.

– Our first Featured Show is Hannibal, offering all the scripts from the first season, courtesy of show creator Bryan Fuller.

– We’ve also included the transcripts for every episode of [Scriptnotes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scriptnotes-podcast/id462495496?mt=2).

Our plan is to add and replace content frequently, so if you find something you like, make sure to add it to your library so it doesn’t disappear on you.

One final note: As a developer, one downside to frequent app updates is that each new build hides the reviews from earlier users. So if you love Weekend Read, please consider [leaving us a review](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8), even if you already did for version 1.0.1.

Thanks, and enjoy the read.

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