- Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Applications
- Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Apps
- Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Approaches
- Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Approach
This is a straightforward script-writing app that can be picked up and learned quickly. Its interface is elegant and utilizes keystrokes that will be familiar to any Apple user. By simply double-tapping the screen, you can switch between script elements, and files can be easily imported between Final Draft 8 or Celtx. Last month, I wrote about the retail version of screenwriting Mac App Highland from Quote-Unquote Apps, based on the Fountain markup language. The major selling point for Highland is its ability to melt PDFs into Fountain-based text files that can be edited and exported as either formatted PDFs or Final Draft (.fdx) files. Today, Slugline arrives, a new screenwriting Mac App now available for.
As of this afternoon, version 1.7.1 of Highland has exactly one review on its main page in the Mac App Store:
I honestly never knew how much time I was spending formatting and making pages look pretty, until I started writing in Highland. I’m a more efficient writer, focusing on what a writer should be focusing on: words. I’ve switched over to Highland for my latest screenplay and I can honestly say that I will never go back. Highland is where I will write from now on.
Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Applications
The highest compliment I can pay this program is that it gets out of my way. It makes me want to KEEP writing. Which is a writer’s dream.
Jmedwarren’s five-star review is so lovely that I almost don’t want to tell him the backstory: Highland wasn’t meant for writing at all.
Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Apps
When we announced Highland in 2012, we billed it as a “screenplay utility” for converting between formats: PDF, FDX and the newly-minted Fountain. You dropped a file on it and selected a new file type.
This is what it looked like:
The initial betas had no editing view, because we assumed users would write and edit Fountain using any of the excellent plain-text editors available. Likewise, we had no preview, because we were going to export a PDF or Final Draft file anyway.
In practice, we discovered that we often wanted to make small tweaks to a file we had just converted. For example, if we needed to modify title page information, it was a hassle to have to save the Fountain text, open it in iAWriter, fix it, then re-open it in Highland. Omni remover 3 3 0 key.
To avoid this round-tripping, we added a very basic editor and a preview. The user could switch between these views to see the changes reflected before export.
As the betas progressed, we changed the UI significantly, moving from two tabs on the top to the current sidebar.1 This is what version 1.7 looks like:
By the time we shipped — almost a year later — we saw ourselves largely as a companion to Slugline. They focused on writing while we converted files.2
Still, I started to be comfortable calling Highland a screenplay editor rather than a screenplay utility. Last year, I wrote:
Highland is a great bridge between apps, but over the last year we’ve found more and more users are simply doing their writing in Highland. It’s a full-featured editor, with spelling, versions and find-and-replace. Because it’s plain text, you can focus on the words and not the formatting.
When asked if someone could write a script in Highland, my answer was generally, “Well, you could. But that’s not really what it’s for.” I steered users to other apps as alternatives. As a company, we spent our time refining Highland’s underlying engine for parsing PDFs and dealing with edge cases.
But people kept using Highland like a traditional screenwriting app. Or perhaps it’s better to say they used Highland in lieu of a traditional screenwriting app.
People like our app store reviewer Jmedwarren saw Highland as primarily a writing tool, not a converter.
So with version 1.7 of Highland, we’re embracing the fact that we’re really a screenwriting app. We don’t do everything other apps do, but we do some things significantly better, enough so that we’re the right choice for some screenwriters.
Highland pros and cons
Here’s where Highland is actually better:
Focus. When you’re writing in Highland, it’s just the words. There’s nothing to distract you. You can’t fiddle with margins, or futz with how the pages break. Even the little bits of syntax gray themselves out so all you see is your text.
Speed. Highland is lean and mean. From scrolling to previews, Highland is blisteringly fast. Because it’s Mac-only, we optimize it using the latest Apple technologies. Because we separate editing from preview, you’re never waiting for a long document to reformat as you type.
It’s hard to market speed as a feature, because you don’t think of a screenwriting app needing to be fast. But in practice, Highland feels better under your fingers.
Typography. Highland features Courier Prime and Highland Sans, two typefaces we commissioned. Screenwriters shouldn’t have to look at ugly fonts all day.
Standards. Because we helped forge the Fountain standard, Highland does it well. We’re often the first to incorporate new specs, such as lyrics and forced character names. But you can always open Highland’s files in any plain text editor, so you’re never stuck with us. If another screenwriting app comes along that’s vastly better, you can jump ship instantly.
Dark Mode. I don’t understand why more apps don’t offer it. It makes writing in dark places — or public spaces — much more comfortable.
Eazydraw 9 1 6 x 2. PDF melting. This was Highland’s breakout feature. While other apps have added it, our PDF parsing is unmatched. It’s a tricky, thankless task, but a key part of both Highland and now Weekend Read, so we keep getting better.
Active development. Highland receives regular updates, sometimes twice a month, incorporating user-requested features in almost every build. We’re small enough to move quickly, but big enough that we’re not going out of business tomorrow. When things break — and they do — we fix them fast.
Created by working screenwriters. This is the hardest advantage to show, but probably the most important factor in why Highland works the way it does. I use Highland every day for actual paid work. I rely on it, so major and minor annoyances get addressed.
I’m not the only one using it, either. Justin Marks wrote me to say he was doing his latest feature largely in Highland, in part because it made working with lyrics so much easier.
These are some of Highland’s advantages, but there are things other screenwriting apps do better than Highland — or that we don’t do at all. Our work this next year will be figuring out what we can do to make Highland more useful without losing focus.
Outlining. I use Workflowy for outlining, but I’d love an integrated outliner that smartly leverages Fountain’s section and synopsis lingo. Slugline sort of does it, but its sidebar outline is mostly a navigator rather than a writing tool. (Still, Slugline’s sidebar is really useful for long documents, and I miss it sometimes.)
Revisions. Last week, I needed to turn in a draft with small changes. I really wanted to create starred changes in the margins without having to leave the comfort of Highland. We have ideas for dealing with revisions, both within the Fountain spec and on an app level, but it’s a challenging problem. For all my issues with Final Draft, it actually does a solid job with starred changes (and more complicated production features) once you understand how it works.
Collaboration. This is a topic for a longer blog post, but collaboration can mean both two people typing in the same document at the same time (like Google Docs) or the ability to suggest edits (like Draft). Both are useful. Both are difficult. But Fountain’s plain-text background is a huge help. Fully online tools like WriterDuet may be plenty for some writers, but I have a hunch there’s more to be done here, particularly for writers working on the staff of a show.
Title Pages. This is a Fountain issue as much as anything, but creating a title page in Highland is frustratingly hit-or-miss. We had good intentions; title and author metadata is part of the file itself, as it should be. But it’s very hard to get title pages to look the way you really want. We may call a mulligan and find a better way.
All of these issues are shortcomings, not showstoppers.
For my daily use, Highland is still a better way to write a screenplay. Particularly for my first drafts, I agree with Jmedwarren in that the best thing about Highland is that it gets out of your way.
We’ve redesigned the Highland site to reflect Highland’s role as a screenwriting app. Take a look and see how it works for you.
- The sidebar was prompted largely by plans for an iPad version of Highland. ↩
- To this day, Slugline still has a “Send to Highland” menu command. ↩
Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Approaches
Today we released Slugline 2, a massive update to the original Slugline for Mac.
Slugline 2 has a ton of new features, a new pricing model that includes a free option, and, well, is the reason you haven’t heard much from us in a while. We are very excited to finally share our hard work with you.
TLDR
Slugline 2 is a new app that replaces the old Slugline for Mac. It has a slick new UI, which includes a lovely dark mode. Big new features include:
- A drag-and-drop outline
- An awesome new timeline
- Color-coded notes
- Final Draft import/export
- Live Compare for tracking changes
Maybe the most important new feature is the price: Slugline 2 is a free download, and works without watermarks or limitations until you pass page six, at which point you can upgrade to Unlimited Writing.
All this without changing what made the original Slugline so beloved: Slugline 2 is easy to use, free from distractions, and based entirely on the plain-text Fountain screenplay format.
A Paid Update, a Free Download, and a Launch Special
Slugline 2 is a new app, which means that it’s effectively a paid update if you bought the original Slugline.
You can try Slugline 2 for free. If you want to go beyond the six-page free limit, you can upgrade to Unlimited Writing via an in-app purchase of $49.99 USD.
If all you write are short films, you may never need to upgrade! That’s entirely cool with us.
As a thank-you to existing Slugline writers, we have marked that down to $39.99 USD (20% off) for the first week only. This is the closest thing to an upgrade discount that we could do with Apple’s App Store mechanics.
Modernizing the Minimal
When we released it in 2013 (whut) Slugline seemed impossibly minimal. A screenwriting app without a toolbar? But time marches on, and lovely, minimal software is more the norm now than the exception. It was time for a makeover — and yes, Slugline 2 is even more streamlined than its predecessor — but it also makes it easier to access common tools, like document settings, display settings, and the more-powerful-than-ever Outline Navigator.
![Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting App Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting App](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/img/highland-hero-1@2x.png)
The Darkest Timeline
Our very first sketches for Slugline included a timeline visualization of your screenplay. We dropped this feature from 1.0, but we never forgot about it. Now that we’ve lived with it for a while, we wonder how we ever wrote without it.
Your Sections, Scene Headings, and Notes all appear on the Timeline, spaced according to where they fall in your page count. It’s the 30,000-foot view of your story, but it also provides amazing insights into your writing. Hover your mouse pointer over any part of the timeline to reveal page count stats for each Section or scene.
Dance with the Devil
Slugline 2 does a very nice job of importing and exporting Final Draft’s FDX file format, including Notes. Suddenly the name “Final Draft” feels perfectly appropriate.
Drag-reorderable Outline
Our number one feature request, and it only took us seven years. Yes, you were right, this feature rocks.
It’s the perfect complement to Slugline’s Fountain-based outlining, which is flexible enough to be either the very start of your writing process, or something you fold into your work as you go.
The Color of Note
Notes are, like everything else in Slugline, simple, powerful, and powered purely by text. They look like this:
[[Wrapped in double brackets.]]
We found that we would often prefix a Note to indicate its purpose, like this:
[[Setup: Indy is afraid of snakes.]]
[[Todo: Maybe cut this part down a bit?]]
In Slugline 2, those prefixes, ending in a colon, become Note Tags. You can assign colors to Note Tags, and even do some useful batch-processing to them. For example, you could select a range of text in your screenplay, and batch-convert the Notes tagged “Todo” to “Done,” and watch them all change color. Trust us, this feels incredibly productive.
With Live Compare, Your Changes Have Been Tracked All Along
Live Compare allows you to track and show the differences between two screenplay files. These differences are marked on the right-hand margin of the page, both as you write and when you Preview and print.
This simple mechanism is incredibly powerful for writers. It can act like “track changes,” marking your edits as you write. Or it can help you analyze the differences between two different drafts. It can even help you rectify changes from a collaborator. And its output is exactly what industry collaborators are expecting to see.
Don’t Pee in the Fountain
![Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting App Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting App](https://www.nyfa.edu/img/resources/scriptly-2.jpg)
We did all of this without breaking the perfect, elegant simplicity of the plain-text Fountain file format.
So Much More
Slugline 2 also features: A4 paper support (hello world!), scene numbering, formatting helpers, easier Title Page creation, preferences for new document settings, and ubiquitous auto-save.
An Overdue iOS/iPadOS Update
Also today, you’ll find an update to Slugline for iPhone and iPad. This update fixes some bugs introduced with Apple’s torrent of recent iOS/iPadOS updates, and brings mobile Slugline up to speed with Slugline 2’s new document settings.
Slugline 2 and Beyond
Highland 2 0 5 – Powerful Straightforward Screenwriting Approach
We’ve been making Slugline for over seven years now, and we’re as committed to it as ever. As always, we believe screenwriting should be simple, elegant, and open. We’ll keep working toward that goal, and, as always, we appreciate all your help, support, feature requests, and bug reports that make it possible.