Yes, Stephen, I’ve opened a bunch of MMSW4 scripts and those Page Up/Down chevron buttons don’t work for me. Some of these scripts were originally created in Final Draft and imported into MMSW4. But all exhibit this behaviour in MMSW6.
I’m using a Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad Xeon with 5 Gb of RAM running OS X 10.4.10. I also have a G4 dual 800 running 10.3.9 but I haven’t tried installing on that. My iBook screen is on the fritz so I no longer install any new software on it.
My Macs are regularly maintained using TechTool Pro 4, DiskWarrior 4, iDefrag 1.6.1 and the ACP tools. I buy all of my software, and I never install demos, betas, or bubblehead widgets/freeware/shareware.
By the way, I’ve just discovered that there’s yet another version of the manual (entitled Screenwriter 6 Users Manual.pdf) on the disk image. This one is for both Windows and Mac and it’s the shortest of the three different versions. But from skimming through it quickly, it would appear to be far superior to the other two. So that’s the one I’m gonna use to get cosy with MMSW6.
Slightly OT but does anyone know (LL?) if you get a discount for Screenwriter if you own Final Draft? I own FD already but am always on the look out for a replacement, however, I am also fairly broke. Thanks!
Re the Pg Up/Pg Dn chevrons: they don’t work for me either. Do nothing at all. Tried it on imports, files from MMSW2000, and indeed on a new thing done from scratch in MMSW6.
BUT… Copy and paste from Scrivener into MMSW works perfectly apart from not recognising Shots (interprets them as Action, whether strict interpretation (MMSW users will know what I mean) is checked or not.
More than can be said for FD 7.x…
The return trip via copy-and-paste doesn’t work so well. If at all. But that’s not likely to be used much, I think.
So there’s a nice doublet of apps. Everything’s coming up roses, really.
BTW, copy-and-paste from Scrivener --> Montage (or indeed from MMSW --> Montage) is completely unformatted. So it’s MMSW & Scriv for me – not least because MMSW just seems really solid and reliable. The review cited earlier calls it the Lexus of screenwriting programs. Strikes me as more like a Range Rover.
(Again, BTW, copy-and-paste from a NovaMind screenplay window --> MMSW works fine; NovaMind --> Scrivener doesn’t. (The spacing, indents etc are fine but it’s all designated “General Text”. BUT if you paste from NovaMind into Scrivener and then paste from Scrivener into MMSW, the formatting finds its way back – except, again, Shots. So nothing’s lost really.)
I reported this Page Up/Down behaviour directly to MMSW tech support and they’ve confirmed that it’s a bug on Macs running Tiger (works fine in Panther, apparently).
I also found the same behaviour re Shots/formatting and Copy & Paste as you did. No matter, it’ll all come good in the near future.
Michael - regarding pasting from other scriptwriting applications in Scrivener: Scrivener doesn’t have any actual knowledge of scriptwriting elements, unlike dedicated apps such as MMSW, FD etc. Scrivener’s elements are just formatted to look like those elements. So, if the pasted-in text doesn’t match the formatting expected exactly, it won’t get recognised as anything other than General Text. In the new Scrivener beta (1.08b, available in the Beta Testing forums if you haven’t grabbed it already) you can set up your own script formats in Scrivener, and there is a section in the Help file on how to match up a script format with a script you have pasted in. So, in Scrivener now you can have it recognise pretty much any script. That said, in most scripts elements such as SCENE HEADING and SHOT have exactly the same formatting, so Scrivener won’t be able to tell the difference between them.
1.08b will become 1.1 very shortly - not much from stopping it becoming 1.1 now, really (although I’ll release a 1.09b in between as there have been some additions/bug fixes since 1.08b).
It’s good to hear that getting text from Scrivener into MMSW works well. I can’t say too much, but I’ve had contact with the (very nice) FD guys and hopefully Scrivener will be able to play better with Final Draft in the future.
I look forward to the MMSW demo becoming available so that I can test getting text from Scrivener in and out of it.
Oh, and to Stephen - welcome to the forum! Lord Lightning has been raving about MMSW around here for - well, forever.
P.S. I wonder if the page up/page down issue in MMSW is the same bug that Scrivener has encountered on occasion with scroll bar arrows not working? In each case that was a corrupted .nib file and I had to recreate the scroll view and resave the .nib. Dunno if it’s the same thing or a completely different issue…
Keith
I’m a long time user of Movie Magic. Originally started off on Script Thing. Thought that was excellent. At the time everyone said that Final Draft was the bees knees. After checking FD out a few times I was less than impressed and stuck with Script Thing despite its goofy sounding name.
When they upgraded to Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000 I upgraded. Have to say that noticed only a few differences. The interface seemed as intuitive as ever. Came in a nice big shiny box and had a delightful manual to read.
To no one in particular, if you’ve upgraded to the latest version from MMS2000, is it worth the upgrade or will any differences be negligble?
