EMERGENCY: Screeenwriter, RTF and French characters

[rougetaureau]

Wow, i just found a major bug in Screenwriter 2000, and it seems to still be a problem in Screenwriter 6.

See, one of my oldest script (the first one actually) just got the attention of a producer, by way of an actor.

I was using Screenwriter 2000 then. Now the producer wants to prepare a work session, and he needs the script in one of two formats: Final Draft or RTF.

So i re-installed SW2K, saved the script in RTF.

Oups... the French characters are all wrong.

Brief look in the FAQ at the Write Bros site. "Known issue that we expect to correct in the future."

Well, we are in 2011, so i am not holding my breath.

But i do have a trial exe of SW6, so i decide to give it (another) try.

Same problem.

Is there any way around?

I mean, apart from saving in RTF from the PDF i have?

[Manchester]

A couple of ideas. But note, they are guesses.

But first, you didn't say if you're using Windows or Mac. All of the following is based on my experience with Windows. I don't do Macs.

1. Within your screenwriting software, try changing the font from the default MM Screenwriter Courier to another mono-spaced Courier font. It could be an interpretation problem with the specific font you're using. See if that fixes the problem.

or

2. I have Movie Magic 6, the paid version. I don't know if you can do this in the trial version. Or in 2000. If it is possible, try this: File | Export to | Plain text. Then, see if that file looks good/right characters when you open it as a txt file (with Notepad, etc.). If it does, open it in MS Word (or some other word processing software) and then use Word to save that txt file as rtf.

_

Addendum: I just did a test with French chars and as you said, with MM6 the French characters get screwed up going straight to rtf.

Then I did a test using my suggestion #2 and it worked fine: MM6 --> export to txt file --> MS Word --> Save As rtf

If you cannot get #2 to work for you using your Screenwriter 2000 or MM6 trial version, PM me your e-mail address and then you can send me your script and I'll try to do that conversion for you.

[rougetaureau]

I think i find a way!
Basically, i took out the headers and footers of the page display in SCW
then just copy and paste in Word

since you can make a selection of all text formatted in the same way
it seems quite easy to do such a selection, create a style from that selection, then change it to a suitable formatting. Then you move on to the next style (say: dialogue)

EDIT:

Worked like a charm.
Even the scene numbers are easy to recreate.
Since a search for "text formatted in the same way" will result in a selection including action paragraphs and scene headers, do the following:
Search for "INT." strings, then replace all occurences by "INT." with Format:[Style SCENE HEADING]
then do the same for the EXT. strings...
This method worked for 130 of my 131 scenes on a 129 pages script.

[Manchester]

Originally Posted by rougetaureau

I think i find a way!
Basically, i took out the headers and footers of the page display in SCW
then just copy and paste in Word

since you can make a selection of all text formatted in the same way
it seems quite easy to do such a selection, create a style from that selection, then change it to a suitable formatting. Then you move on to the next stle (say: dialogue)

Glad you found a way to do it. Just FYI, if you Export To a txt file from Movie Magic, all of the formatting/indents are maintained. So, when you open up the txt file in Word, you don't have to reformat.

[ComicBent]

Just FYI, if you Export To a txt file from Movie Magic, all of the formatting/indents are maintained. So, when you open up the txt file in Word, you don't have to reformat.

Yes, but that is not the ideal way. You cannot edit the resulting file without messing everything up. And every manuscript that someone asks for will always need a little touching up before you send it off.

You can do it as Rouge suggested, but with a refinement.

Create a screenwriting template for Word, or download one that I created a few years ago for Word 2003 (I don't know if it works with more recent versions of Word).

Just do a copy-and-paste from Word into my template. You can then fairly easily go through and reformat every paragraph just by using the ALT+ shortcut keys for paragraph types (I have a list of them in the template). You will have to delete out a lot of extraneous blank lines, but all of this is not difficult. You can do the whole script in an hour or so and have an editable script, because the paragraphs all use styles.

You can then export to RTF. I can tell you, though, that RTF is one of the great disappointments in word processing. It never works right when you go from one program to another. I have seen some really atrocious results.

You really ought to have Final Draft in addition to MMS. Sorry to have to say that, but it is true.

On further reflection, I think that what Rouge suggested may be the easiest and quickest way to whip the script into shape. I still think, though, that doing it within a template might be better, since you will have some standard styles to use for final cleanup. I know from experience that you can use the "select all like" feature and then apply one of your template styles to those selections.

Best ...

[Manchester]

Originally Posted by ComicBent

Yes, but that is not the ideal way. You cannot edit the resulting file without messing everything up. And every manuscript that someone asks for will always need a little touching up before you send it off.

Ideal? By what measure?

The OP said he had an emergency need to get the file into rtf or FD. An emergency. If there's an ideal here, based on his actual post, that ideal would list speed at the top and what I suggested is the easiest way with, by far, the fewest steps. Not the only way. But under the circumstances that he described, the easiest and fastest. And, keeping the French characters.

As for whether anyone wants to tweak the file after that... OP said that the guy he's sending it to has FD. So, if that guy wants to tweak it, he can import the rtf into FD. That guy asked for rtf or FD, right?

So as for your ideal solution, once again you've made it about you - you set the measure by your own imagined goal, you pimp your own template or your own document on this or that, because they offer "the ideal way." Not good, not merely helpful, but ideal. Everyone else, they should STFU. Bravo.

Ideal was a toy company. They went out of business long ago.

[rougetaureau]

Thanks to Manchester and ComicBent, for quick solutions to a problem that eluded Write Bros for 11 years! No need to get harsh towards each other, everybody's right, and every thread is a goldmine for future references.

The fact that saving in "txt" preserves french accents (but not rtf) is quite a surprise to me. Indeed, if you do save in txt, and then adjusts your margins, you have a very quick solution that should be documented on the Write Bros site.

Afterwards, creating (or loading) a style sheet to tag every paragraphs (and then adjust their presentation) according to the screenwriting process is quite easy with modern word processors.

I am quite saddened by the fact that again, Write Bros do not support their software like i would hope. I do not know FinalDraft (having gone the MovieMagic way, with MM Budgeting and MM Scheduling a long time ago), but with Sophocles gone and MM6 not quite living to my expectations, i may give it a solid try. In my working environment, you hear FD more often than SW.

I think the lack of development with StoryView/4D has been, how do u say it, the final nail in the coffin?

How is the outlining process in FD? On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give Sophocles an 8 for its outlining process (off-screen scenes? chrono vs storyline sequencing? genius! one-line display, no multiple selection and the obligation to drag with the mice? pain in the a...). How would u rate SW6 and FD?

[ComicBent]

Final Draft does not have an outliner as far as I have discovered. A search of the index for "outline" does not reveal anything in version 7 and nothing useful in version 8.

Screenwriter has a built-in outliner. I am sure it is very usable once you get accustomed to it, but in my opinion it is primitive and clunky.

The dedicated screenwriting programs are basically good for two things only. They format scripts, and they let you generate reports. As for the formatting, the only thing that they do better than a word processor is that they handle breaks across pages with greater sophistication. Dedicated programs automatically put the character name at the top of the page when a speech carries over to the next page. Word processors cannot do this without special programming.

I mention all of this because I think that word processors offer better outlining than you will find elsewhere in a writing program. You can always do your writing in Word and then transfer everything to your favorite screenwriting program for polishing, format tweaking (the page breaks and continueds), and generation of reports.

The outlining feature in Word 2003 was quite good. I do not know how it is in more recent versions — but I assume it is at least as good.

Best ...