On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Anil Gulecha anil.verve@gmail.com wrote:
Commercial editors sell for 100s of dollars, when really a simple text editor will do. Infact this format has been used over the past century, and most scripts were written on typewriters. yet there does not exist a simple and good free screenwriter.
Here's the help I'm looking for from the geany developers.. help write a simple plugin that assist with writing .screenplay files. This will essentially boil down to defining 6 types of texts (s/a/c/p/d/t), and making sure that when new content is added to a dialogue, it wraps at the appropriate margins.
This sounds like a job for LaTeX (and LyX).
If you look on Wikipedia [1], you will notice that they mention a LaTeX package called 'screenplay'. I also find a second one on CTAN [2]. You might want to investigate those and see if they can output PDF with typesetting that conform to your requirements. If so, then you will want to investigate writing a corresponding *.layout file for LyX [3], a cross-platform open-source frontend to LaTeX; this will enable you to use the LaTeX classes within a familiar, broadly MS Word-like environment but without the usual bloat.
LyX already ships by default two screenplay LaTeX classes, 'hollywood' and 'broadway' (and their corresponding *.layout files); they also come with LyX examples and templates. See [4][5][6][7]. You may also want to search the LyX wiki [8] for 'screenplay'.
Anyways, I'm confident that what you're looking for is LaTeX (and LyX) support for writing screenplays, and apparently you already have several solutions available. Both tools boast a widespread adoption and are free in most ways. Good luck Liviu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenwriting_software [2] http://ctan.org/search/?search=screenplay&search_type=description [3] http://www.lyx.org/ [4] http://screenwriting.goeszen.com/free-screenwriting-software.html [5] https://richardfcrawley.wordpress.com/2007/08/21/lesser-known-applications-f... [6] http://www.lyx.org/news/20000315.php [7] http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org/msg09505.html [8] http://wiki.lyx.org/