1. Free Writing Software For Mac

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Screenwriting software are word processors specialized to the task of writing screenplays.

Overview[edit]

Features[edit]

While add-ins and macros for word processors, such as Script Wizard^[1] for Microsoft Word, can be used to write screenplays, the need for dedicated screenwriting programs arises from the presence of certain peculiarities in standard screenplay format which are not handled well by generic word processors such as page-break constraints imposed by standard screenplay format. Screenplay software often provides specialized shortcuts for quickly typing character names or slug lines, collaborating with other writers, adding production notes, character notes, easy outlining, scene reordering, and other tools to facilitate the creative process.^[2] Other features often required when writing shooting scripts include page-locking, scene numbering, revision-tracking, and production-related reports (such as which characters appear in a given scene or which scenes are set during the day or night).

Some screenwriting applications, such as Celtx and Sophocles, also incorporate production scheduling and budgeting features.^[3]

Another class of screenwriting software includes those that, rather than act as specialized word processors, attempt to direct the writer's storytelling process by utilizing story theory to facilitate the planning of a screenplay. Examples of this type of program includes Dramatica and Index Card.

Screenwriting software often also provides functions that allow writers to analyze their scripts for various characteristics. In 2018, developers began adding functions that allow an analysis of gender representation such as the Bechdel test, e.g. in Highland 2, WriterDuet and the forthcoming Final Draft 11.^[4]

Platforms[edit]

Screenwriting programs exist for all varieties of platforms and environments including traditional standalone desktop applications that run directly on a personal computer, web applications that run solely within a browser, and mobile apps that run on phones, tablets, and other portable devices.

Plain text markup[edit]

The Fountain markup syntax, co-developed by screenwriter John August, facilitates formatting screenplays directly from plain text, be it in dedicated writing software, email programs, or text generated through OCR.^[5] There is also a formatting package for LaTeX called screenplay.

History[edit]

The first screenwriting software was a standalone script formatter, Scriptor, from Screenplay Systems^{[citation needed]}. It took a text file generated by a word processor and inserted the proper page break tags. When used in conjunction with a TSR program such as SmartKey or ProKey—keyboard utilities that assigned a sequence of commands to keystroke combinations—the 'dot commands' that Scriptor required could be inserted semi-automatically. Additionally, keyboard macros could be programmed to properly indent and enter abbreviations—allowing a user to customize the working of the word processor.

SmartKey was popular with screenwriters from 1982–1987, after which word processing programs had their own macro features.^{[citation needed]}

An update to Scriptor understood the style sheets used in Microsoft Word for DOS. And so the need for key macro programs was lessened. Scriptor's limitation was that once formatted it was difficult to re-import the resulting text back into a word processor for further editing.^{[citation needed]}

The next generation of screenplay software hooked into Microsoft Word. Warren Script Application was initially released as a set of style sheets for Word for DOS. It was updated for Word for Windows circa 1988. gScript, a shareware script formatter/template, was released via CompuServe in 1989. It was included on the disk accompanying the book Take Word for Windows to the Edge, published by Ziff-Davis in 1993. It was subsequently updated and released commercially as ScriptWright.^{[citation needed]}

This third generation of screenplay software consists of the standalone script writing programs such as Movie Magic Screenwriter, Final Draft, and Cinovation's Scriptware.^{[citation needed]}

The latest generation adds online storage and collaboration and integrates with apps on mobile devices. Many software also integrate outlining tools as well as other creative support, and tools to further integrate the production process.^{[citation needed]}

List of softwares[edit]

• Arc Studio Pro - Professional screenwriting software with automatic formatting, real time collaboration and drag and drop outlining features. Free and paid versions available.
• Beat - Free and open source screenwriting app for macOS, with drag and drop outlining, scene card and timeline views. It uses the Fountain plain text format.
• Causality - an original approach emphasizes visual story development outlining and simultaneous scripting movement while tracking causalities (cause and effects) of key plot points; simultaneously display of 3 story elements: Snippets(Script)/Story Logic (White Board)/Timeline, plus visual Characters tracking. Quickly breeze though an outline, simultaneously write out story Snippets as the ideas come. Exports into Final Draft, Fountain, and PDF, and loaded with extra features, with multi-language support, plus collaboration and other features coming soon. Free and Paid versions for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. ^[6][7]
• Celtx - Free to register, but requires paid subscription for the full collaborative version. Browser-based, with apps for Mac OS X, IOS, and Android. Includes a comic book script-writing mode.^[8]
• DramaQueen - Software for script writers and novelists. Offers working with storylines, turning points, different structure models, a storytelling guidance, character profiles, story-charts and character arcs.
• Dramatica - Name of a theory and software suite created as part of a project by Chris Huntley and Melanie Anne Phillips.
• DubScript Screenplay Writer- A professional screenwriting software for Android with features such as auto-formatting and Google Docs fixing. A free version is available with a watermark header on printed output/PDF and optional subscription. DubScript also outputs to most major screenwriting formats.^[8]
• Fade In Professional Screenwriting Software - Professional screenwriting software for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux, with mobile versions for iPhone, iPad and Android. Imports and exports Final Draft as well as most other major screenwriting software formats.
• Final Draft - Professional screenwriting software for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.
• Highland - Highland is a screenplay utility for Mac that seamlessly converts PDF screenplays into editable Fountain or Final Draft files, and back again. It’s also a text editor, so a screenplay can be written directly in Highland.
• JotterPad - A powerful professional screenwriting app for Android. Includes paid Fountain support, export to Final Draft and print formatted script to PDF.
• KIT Scenarist - A free and open source screenwriting software for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux, which includes story development tools, corkboard, screenplay editor and statistics module. Includes paid service for real-time collaboration and versions for Android and iOS.
• Montage - Screenwriting software for Mac only.
• Movie Magic Screenwriter - Integrated professional screenwriting software. Available on Mac and Microsoft Windows.
• Page 2 Stage - Free open-source software, designed specifically for Windows. Available in a variety of languages.
• Practical Scriptwriter - Professional script writing software for Windows. Formats cover Film, Stage, Radio and TV.
• Prewrite - Free browser-based tool for writers to develop story ideas into a screenplay, scene-by-scene—visually with timelines, cards and inspiring images. It tracks story beats, characters, emotional context, plot threads, and provides advanced analysis tools for insights into story structure. Provides importing and exporting features that work with Final Draft and PDF file formats.
• Script Studio (formerly Movie Outline) - Creative writing software for Mac and Windows designed by produced screenwriter for writing and professionally formatting movie scripts, teleplays, stage plays and novels. Includes story and character development features.
• Scripts Pro - iOS-based app which allows a writer to edit scripts in text file format via Dropbox and iTunes transfers.^[8]
• Scrivener (software) - A powerful writing tool that helps writers concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.
• Screenwriter-mode - Major mode for the GNU Emacs free text editor. Includes commands and tools to format scripts as plain text files.
• Slugline - It is a screenwriting app for Mac, iPad and iPhone. It uses the Fountain plain text format.
• Story Touch - Story Touch is a complete software for dramatic development and creation. Graphs and color pallets will provide a veritable X-ray of a script.
• Storyist - Storyist is a creative writing application for Mac OS X and iPad.
• StudioBinder Script Sides - StudioBinder is a TV & film production management software which has an inbuilt screenwriting tool called 'script sides'.
• Tooleybook - Free online book writing software ^[9]
• Trelby - A free and open source screenwriting program for Linux and Microsoft Windows. (Development at a standstill, but still viable and available for download.)
• WriterDuet - Real-time collaborative, online-offline professional screenwriting software.^[10]

Discontinued[edit]

• Adobe Story - An online collaborative screenwriting suite by Adobe.^[11]
• Celtx free desktop version - Has become cloud-based requiring paid subscription for the full version.
• FiveSprockets - A discontinued free, online, collaborative story-development and scriptwriting web-software.
• Scripped - Professional browser-based screenwriting text editing software. (now defunct and no longer accessible)
• Sophocles - commercial story-development, scriptwriting, and scheduling package. (discontinued)

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'Select the Perfect Script Software WritersDigest.com'. WritersDigest.com. 2008-03-11. Retrieved 2018-01-03.
2. ^'What is the best free screenwriting software for screenwriters?'. Script Reader Pro. 2020-06-06. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
3. ^'Celtx is Now an All-in-One Video & Movie Planning System'. No Film School. 2016-01-06. Retrieved 2018-01-03.
4. ^Ryzik, Melena (21 May 2018). 'Is your script gender-balanced? The new test helping filmmakers get it right'. The Independent. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
5. ^'John August and Stu Maschwitz Release 'Fountain,' a Handy Screenwriting Tool/Markup Language'. No Film School. 2012-02-14. Retrieved 2018-01-03.
6. ^https://www.hollywoodcamerawork.com/causality.html
7. ^https://medium.com/infodump/a-working-guide-to-screenwriting-software-384abe163545 'A working guide to screenwriting software' Julian Simpson Mar 17 2018
8. ^ ^abcEaton, Kit (2015-02-04). 'Video Feature: Easy Ways to Get Your Movie Idea Out of Your Head'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-01-03.
9. ^https://tooleybook.com
10. ^https://nofilmschool.com/2014/09/writerduet-pro-makes-collaborative-screenwriting-app-available-offline-much
11. ^https://helpx.adobe.com/story/kb/end-of-service-adobe-story.html

Why is this AppleScript stuff called scripting? The answer is unclear, but it was probably a marketing ploy to keep people from thinking about programming. While real people tend to think of programming as some arcane ritual that only nerds can master, it’s really just a way to tell the computer what to do. Unfortunately, telling a computer what to do can be very, very complex. Fortunately, Apple has been at the forefront of developing technologies — including AppleScript — that make telling computers what to do easier.

Think of your Mac as your servant, a very efficient, very fast, but not too bright aide-de-camp who really wants to make your life nicer. All you have to do is tell it what to do in a very simple language that it can understand: AppleScript.

The Mac is very nifty, but it can’t yet read your mind. So you have to tell it what to do. Of course, you already do that. After all, what is clicking menu items or dragging files around with the mouse but telling the Mac what to do? AppleScript makes life nicer by letting you tell the computer once, by writing a script, rather than by pointing and clicking every time you want to do something.

That’s really all scripting is — writing a set of instructions for the Mac. Imagine sending a friend a set of directions to your house or telling someone over the phone how to do something in iPhoto. In order to write a script, you just set those same instructions down in AppleScript. After you have the instructions down so that your Mac can understand them, you can have the Mac follow them any number of times. Think of scripts as add-on smarts for your Mac that let your Mac do the tasks that you want it to, when you want it to, and how you want it to.

Apple events aren’t just parties anymore!

You may or may not have ever heard of Apple Events, but they’re critical to the success of AppleScript. The good news is that while the details of Apple Events and the Object Model are fairly complex, Apple has succeeded in hiding all of that nasty stuff from you. In fact, you can spend your whole scripting life without ever once using either term. However, having at least a vague idea of what these terms mean gives you an understanding of how AppleScript works its magic.

Apple Events are just messages sent from one Mac application to another.

Yep, that’s all they are. The bad news is that just as you need to wire your house for cable, application developers have to work to make their programs support Apple Events. If they don’t spend the time, then their applications can’t send or respond to Apple Events. Such applications aren’t controllable from AppleScript scripts.

To make life more exciting, not all scriptable applications are the same. Some support only the four basic messages — Open, Print, Quit, and Run — which is essentially the same as not being scriptable because you don’t have any real control over what the application does. Other applications are so scriptable that you can change their basic behavior through scripts.

Levels of scripting

There are four officially recognized levels of AppleScript support:

• Scriptable: This term covers any program that has some level of support for Apple Events.

• Recordable: These applications let AppleScript automatically build a script by watching you work. It performs this feat by watching the Apple Events generated by your actions — selecting a menu item, using the keyboard, and so on — and translating them into AppleScript commands by using the application’s dictionary.

• Attachable: These fine examples of advanced software engineering let you attach scripts to various items in the program. For example, BBEdit has a special script menu that contains scripts you put into a specified folder.

• Tinkerable: These applications are few and far between, but they go one step beyond attachable by letting you change the basic way the program behaves with a script. For example, if you don’t like the way a certain menu command works in a tinkerable program, you can write a script that replaces the default action of that menu item with the action you want to perform.

Fortunately you can easily tell if an application is scriptable. You can use the Script Editor to look for applications with dictionaries. From the Script Editor, choose File –> Open Dictionary. You get a window which lists all the applications that the Script Editor thinks are scriptable. It turns out this method isn’t perfect though, so if you really want to be sure an application isn’t scriptable, click the Browse button in the lower-left corner of the Open Dictionary window and use the resulting standard Open dialog to locate the application you’re interested in. If the application you’re interested in isn’t grayed out, then it’s scriptable. To see an application’s dictionary, just click the Open button in the Open Dictionary window or the Choose button in the Open dialog.

A dictionary is a description of the commands that a program responds to and the types of values — called classes — that it understands. A word processor may have a paragraph class while a drawing program probably has a line class.

Just because an application is scriptable doesn’t mean you can use it in your scripts. Some scriptable applications have so few scripting commands that they’re not really very useful.

The Object Model is a way to define information in a modular manner. You’ve probably used the Object Model many times in everyday life. That’s right, even if you’ve never used a single script, you’ve probably used something very much like the Object Model. Let me give you an example: You’ve probably said something like, “Look at the second paragraph in that article” or “The second word in that paragraph is misspelled.” Both of these statements represent information in a modular, container-oriented fashion. In the first example, an article — one type of object — contains paragraphs — another kind of object. In the second example, a paragraph contains words.

Free Writing Software For Mac

An application doesn’t have to implement the Object Model in order to be scriptable, nor is the definition of the Object Model so precise that you can define a “correct” implementation of the Object Model for a given application. In fact, you’ll find that you never really have to worry about the Object Model. What you will care about is whether an application defines enough information objects to let you script it effectively. A word processor without a word or paragraph object would be a bit tough to work with.

What can you do with a script?

Make a movie. Of course, if you don’t have $120,000,000 lying around to finance a big-screen extravaganza, you can settle for saving time by automating things you currently do manually.

Writing a script is just telling your Mac what to do with words instead of by moving and clicking the mouse. You might tell a coworker what job needs to be done verbally — that’s like using the mouse on your Mac — or you might write him or her a note — probably e-mail these days — and that’s like using AppleScript. AppleScript is just a really simple language that your Mac can understand.

AppleScript itself is not very powerful. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature! AppleScript was designed to be the glue to control and integrate the activities of various Mac applications, including the Finder. Istat pro app for mac free.

This is one of the most forgotten Mac facts. The Finder is just another application, like Excel or Word.

Because AppleScript lets you control applications, you can do all sorts of neat automation with very little AppleScript experience. But right now, you’re just a beginner, so what can you do? Selecting, sorting, and printing records in a FileMaker Pro database only takes six lines of AppleScript. Changing your desktop picture is also really easy, it only takes these three script lines:

tell application “Finder”
set the_pic to choose file “Select a desktop picture”
set desktop picture to the_pic
end tell

Pretty easy to read, right? This lets AppleScript know which application you want to send the indented lines to. The first indented line lets you pick a file. The second indented line tells the Finder to set the desktop picture to whatever you picked.

One last simple example: Making a script that wakes up every 15 minutes and warns you to take a break so that you don’t come down with repetitive stress injuries (RSI) is easy. Now you could spend $30–$50 for a commercial product, or you can spend 15 minutes writing yourself a script.

The bottom line is that even with very little scripting experience, you can write scripts that save you time and make your life a little bit better — unless, of course, you like doing mindless and repetitive tasks on the Mac.