Sunday, November 13, 2005

Whoops! Screenwriter suddenly decided to put an extra page break on every page marked 'FIXED A-PAGE". There seems to be no easy automatic way to shed these extra page breaks, because I can't unlock an unlocked script.

I don't know what theory this program is operating under, but I really wish Screenwriter would stop thinking it knows more about screenwriting than I do.

UPDATE: Craig Mazin points out that there is a command to "flex A-Pages," but I still consider this hostile software behavior.

RE-UPDATE: "Flex A-pages" does nothing to remove unwanted "fixed A-Pages." It's greyed out. You still have to remove them manually. And there are 52 of them.

5:59 PM

4 Comments:

I took a class online over the summer through UCLA, and they wanted us to use Screenwriter, not Final Draft (which I've used for years). I downloaded a trial copy and HATED it. I refused to buy and submitted everything in pdf format instead of Screenwriter.

All is not well in Final Draft land though. I have more problems with 7 than I did with 5 or 6. How did they mess up perfectly good software? Still, even with problems, I find FD less irritating than Screenwriter.

By  Christina, at 7:57 PM  

Alex:

I suggest fire.

But then again, that's pretty much my answer to everything.

By  DMc, at 9:02 PM  

You're right, Craig, I clearly should have read the manual. On the other hand, I never had to read the Final Draft manual. It just worked about how you'd hope it would work. "Flex A-pages" may exist, but I would call it a non-intuitive command.

And the index on the manual is crap, so you have to read the entire manual and hold it in your head. And tech support is not available Monday morning at 2 am.

By  Alex Epstein, at 8:09 AM  

"non intuitive command..."

Yessss! The hallmarks of any good piece of "developed on the PC first" software.

100 ways to do something, every one of them requiring you to conform to the program, and not the program conforms to you.

Classic.

By  DMc, at 9:04 AM  

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