Re: Screenplay formatter?

--- In [email protected], dmccunney <dennis.mccunney@...> wrote:

> How big is the average screenplay?

Doing a quick check on 110 page screenplays in .txt -- they're about
175k.  But you wouldn't necessarily need the whole thing in your Palm
or in one file.  32k is enough for around twenty pages, which is more
than enough for one writing session.
 
> I don't know offhand if pedit can be programmed through pscript to do
> what you want.  But one basic difference between pedit and WordSmith
> is that pedit only edits Palm Memopad records.  Depending upon which
> Palm OS version you have, those are 4K or 32K in size.  Wordsmith can
> edit Memopad records, Palm "doc" files, or converted RTF files, and
> the latter two don't have the length restrictions.
> 
> I use and love WordSmith, and I'm tickled that screenwriters use it,
> but I'm not sure I'd want to try crafting a screenplay on a Palm OS
> PDA.

I got one screenwriter hooked on it.  He works several jobs, set
designer, cameraman and screenplay writer.  Sometimes he has idle time
and wanted to know if there was something smaller than a laptop that
he could write on when he had a few minutes.  I had an extra Palm III
a Palm keyboard and Office Depot sold out some packs of Handmark
Wordsmith cheap.  He keeps it in coat pocket and writes whenever he
has time.  

He's written over ten screenplays on it and he's got other
screenwriters in LA doing the same thing.
 
There's a company "ScriptRight" http://www.scriptright.com/ that sells
a formatter for Pocket PCs and claims that they'll have a version for
Palm soon.  (The problem is they've been saying that for around three
years now.)

So there is a market -- probably not very big one, but screenplay
formatters aren't a huge market even for desktops and laptops.

> What sort of problems are encountered dumping a WordSmith file into a
> screenplay formatter?

If you're careful you can avoid most problems.  For example if you
capitalize in the all right places the the screenplay formatter will
recognize most of what's supposed to be a scene heading or a character
name or an action paragraph.

The problem is sometimes you get in a hurry to get something down and
you don't get all the picky stuff right.  Then you need to go back and
correct it, before you paste it into the screenplay formatter or
correct it after the formatter gets it.

It's doable.  It would just be nice to have a formatter that worked in
the Palm.  

Thanks for your response.


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