After a bit of a programming marathon, DubScript now lets you *EDIT* screenplays using the Fountain screenplay standard (http://www.fountain.io)! Swipe right to go to edit mode. Then swipe left to have DubScript auto-format your screenplay for reading. You can also share Fountain-formatted scripts with others. And DubScript exports your .fountain script to .fdx (Final Draft) too.
So I forgot to update the blog, but three more betas have been put out with all kinds of new and exciting things:
1.0 beta 28
• Update for Jellybean 4.1
• Built using latest Android tools
• Request new SD access permission
• Code cleanup
• Beta extended to Dec 31, 2012
1.0 beta 29
* Targets Jellybean 4.2
* Newer compiler tools
* Beta extended to March 31,2013
* Minor bugfixes
* Code cleanup
1.0 beta 30
* Beta extended to March 31, 2013 (fixed)
* New default font: Courier Prime (courtesy of Quote-Unquote Apps)
a crash that would happen if you rotated the screen and changed the orientation as it was loading (when you get the spinny "loading" message).
support for the trelby "notes" feature. Actually turned out pretty cool. Thanks to user "daniel" who pointed it out. I had previously elected not to support notes, but figured "why not"?
There was some weirdness due to a bug in Android (I think) where some "action" lines weren't fully extending to the edge of the screen in portrait mode on small screens such as phones. I think I fixed this, but my solution may have an unintended side-effect on Froyo devices-- namely a white "highlight" background on the action lines. If you see this, and it's annoying, let me know.
So b25 has a few improvements that will hopefully make DubScript work better with other applications. DubScript better registers its supported file types with Android, so now if someone emails you a "fountain" or "trelby" script, Gmail should recognize DubScript knows what to do with it and allow you to save the file and then view it.
So for those of you who haven't heard, John August 'n friends introduced the world to an extended version of his "Scrippets" markup language for WordPress. The markup rules, designed to let you write a screenplay with any text editor, is called Fountain, as in the shortcut street in LA (though I prefer 6th street).
I took a look at the syntax for this markup, and though there seemed to be some ambiguities about preferred behavior in places, I decided to give it a go anyway. The result is a usable-though-incomplete implementation. The supported features are as follows:
DETAILS
Scene Headings (including forced via starting line with ".", but not Scene Numbers)
Action (tabs and spaces, as with all DubScript formatting, are NOT preserved however.)
Character - (can be forced as action with two spaces afterwards)
Dialogue - (and single linebreaks are preserved.)
Parentheticals - should work.
Dual-Dialogue (Works. With parentheticals, etc.)
Transitions (including forcing with ">" -- (so long as you don't end with "<")
Centered text (works. See above)
Emphasis/Italics/underline Seems to work okay. (may or may not show up depending on selected font, some of which don't support italics or bolding. Oh, and escaping asterisks with backslashes doesn't work.)
Title Pages are unsupported, though displayed as text. DubScript still hasn't figured out a good way to implement Title Pages, so this is going to wait until it can be made uniform.
Page Breaks are indicated with a horizontal line
Line breaks-- breaks should be respected, but numerous sequential line breaks may be displayed as a single one. I should probably test this a bit more, but there you have it.
Leading tabs/returns - In breaking with the standard, leading tabs and returns are NOT (yet?) preserved.
Notes -- not displayed, but are basically ignored
Boneyard - ie, commenting out sections of the script -- should work. the /* and */ wrapped around text should effectively make them "disappear"
Sections/Synopsis- are simply ignored. No support here.
With a typical "Fountain" script, I'd guess 90% or more is going to look right. The sample I used looks 100% to my eyes, but possibly doesn't use every single feature. So give it a download, and tell me what you think!
So I forgot to post a few weeks ago that I'd updated DubScript to version b22. Here's what you got with that:
1.0 beta 22 -
* more professional (?) "About" screen
* new font-- GNUTypewriter
* built with new SDK- now targets Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3
And this week, b23 was pushed to the market. The big thing here is initial support for Trelby files.
1.0 beta 23 -
* Initial support for .trelby screenplay files. Trelby (www.trelby.org) is a free, multiplatform, open-source screenplay-writing program introduced to the world in Jan, 2012.
* Minor tweaks to UI
Thanks to Anil Gulecha over at Trelby for reaching out to me. Enjoy, and as always, post any bugs or words of praise to the forum.
For those who want 'em-- this batch of screenshots (all from an Android emulator. No real-life devices... yet)-- you can see what the app looks like in Android 2.2 (Froyo), 2.3 (Gingerbread), and 4.0.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Plus there's a sneak-peak at support in b23 for a new font-- GNUTypewriter.
