Trelby Tutorial Plus No Attempt

The FD people have literally done the bare minimum updating there software (plus no attempt at NLE interoperability, which, while irrelevant to me, will shortly be essential in the industry, I suspect).

Trelby gets the job done, and I wonder if anyone has had success running it on a Mac.

Theres no official version, but its written in Python with-IIRC--a wxWidgets-based GUI; so I wonder why it cant run generically on Unixes other than Linux.

So far Ive installed every relevant library I can think of on OS X via Mac Ports without success (windowing fails but no errors or exceptions are raised).

I just want a word processor that can react faster than I can type--and I type slow--that has good--damn good--spell check ( a feature lacking in both Trelby and FD).

My big moan about those programmes though is that they dont treat the script as formatted data, which would make so many more things possible.

As it is, theyre generally weaklyunstructured which means you cant do much useful beyond words.

If you could break down locations, props etc it would be handy.

With Celtx you can kinda, but again it all depends on formatting, not structured data, so can go awry.

You can break down your scripts using Final Drafts Tagger but its something that should really be integrated into Final Draft itself - hasnt bothered me too much but I can see why some people feel FDs stuck in the 90s:).

Its fast though. (The spell checks over-reactive, which is a pain as I keep having to add words to the dictionary, but Im not a big user of spell checks.) Theres also the possibility of using something like OpenOffice or Microsoft word with a template, sure the continueds dont break pages so well, but itll integrate with other office software.

As far as integration, what do you want it to do with an NLE exactly Adobe has something that integrates with their software.

If Trelby is run on Python, it should be able to run on Mac and Windows.

But, maybe the program accesses the computers databases in other ways, and uses more than just Python.

Let me know if there are any specific features important to you.

My first task (test, if you like) was the need to paste old stuff which I had chiseled on rocks when very young.

Ive now been with FD ever since and FD9 means I also have it on my iPad which is more than useful as it auto saves it into Dropbox.

A screenplay is not, like a novel, an end it itself to be read by the end user but rather a template for a film, and if you DONT use FD, your work will eventually have to be pasted into FD by the production accountant in order to do the budget.

My production accountant (Brian Gibbs - The Reader and The Others) needs it in FD for these reasons.

It has the screenplay format and its extremely versatile, especially because in one document I can collect all the storys material: research, previous draft, etc.

The only downside is that it doesnt have the analysing tools I find useful in Final Draft (report or navigator) but you can always export it to Final draft if you need it.

If youre on Windows or Linux, you can still use fountain markup.

Dont waste your time with complex proprietary systems like Final Draft or Celtx, unless your produced demands it.