Software Beat: Between The Lines posted by Martin

In my previous griping about the state of screenwriting software, I said I wanted a native Mac OS X program that was cheap, and saved in an open-sourced, or at least human readable format. Today I stumbled across an obscure program called Between the Lines, currently at version 1.0, that seems to fit the bill. Does it? I hope to answer that, and more, on the first installment of SOFTWARE BEAT.

BETWEEN THE LINES

I found a reference to the program somewhere online—hey—screenwriting software I’d never heard of! And for OS X alone! Whoo-hoo!

I downloaded the demo, which seems to be created by http://www.storymind.com/, which has the distinction of being one of the worst designed websites I’ve ever visited. The graphics are illegible, the layout and feel cheesy, and the overall effect busy and hard to find what you’re looking for. If they were a client of mine, I’d remind them of the golden rule of websites: user experience is your brand. I’ll bet they could quadruple their business by hiring a good design team.

But I digress. Somewhere on their site, you can download Between the Lines, an awkwardly named OS X application. At least, ostensibly you can. Despite the fact that the “purchase this software” link in BTL links to storymind.com, I couldn’t actually find anywhere on the site to buy and/or download the software. A Google search reveals this spot, which is where I grabbed it.

First impressions: Oh man, you guys need a new icon! OS X (and, now Windows and Linux as well) apps are often judged by the coolness of your icon. Yours: fugly. And not in the cool way. But, I’m game. I click on it and open the program.

TOOLBAR NONE

My gripes about the website appear to spill over into the app—it’s clunky looking, with a total of eight (nine if you count the drawer) icons across the toolbar that use the exact same icon. Just a little software 101 here—different icons are kinda necessary for instant recognition of what you’re doing. Otherwise, I need to read the labels every time I try to use a function. Nobody actually reads the labels when they’re working, which means that you’re gonna be hitting the wrong button all the time here.

What are the buttons? Usually software has a hierarchy of information. The title bar on OS X software holds icons for prominent functions—save, open, etc. The title bar of BTL, instead, holds modes for the typing engine—INT, EXT, comment (comment? Let’s play a little Sesame Street which-one-of-these-does-not-belong here), etc. All of these are available through a menu as well, and through key commands—so there is really no reason to put them here, but here they are anyway. A quick comparison to Final Draft reveals their much-smarter mode of thinking—the modal commands for script definitions are available through a pull-down menu.

A drawer pops out to the right that lists your scenes—and has two buttons—our friend, the document button for EDIT, and extremely oddly, a green horizontal line for “delete.” Why oh why a green horizontal line? I guess it’s a “minus” sign, but green means go, baby, not stop. And Apple has a perfectly good busters symbol to use that everybody knows gets rid of stuff!

BETA BLOCKER

I had to check a few times—this, the icon—is this a beta or alpha app that I stumbled across? Nope—it says version 1.0, copyrighted 2004. Let me just say that if they had called it beta, I might have tempered some of my comments with enthusiastic go-team-go suggestions, but anybody who releases software in this state deserves to be spanked. As I will continue to do just for the outrageous fun of it, and in hopes that I’ll actually spark the developer to do better work—I mean, we’re all pulling for you on Spitball! We want your software to succeed—and if you do it right, I think there’s a real market for it. (HINT: Spend a few weeks / months reading these docs: http://developer.apple.com/ue/ — they’re free and will tell you everything you need to know and more).

BY AND BYE

So, let’s move past the toolbar I was presented with the title page pre-filled in with generic info—not on a separate page, such as with Final Draft or the other big boys, but at the top of the scroll. So, I fill in my title SCRIPTY MCSCRIPTERSON, and then I tab to go to the next field — OOPS—tab actually tabs. Okay, I use the arrow keys and move it down to the BY and hit erase. I might want to say WRITTEN BY, or BRAINSTORMED BY or CREATED FROM WHOLE CLOTH BY, but suddenly all goes dark and BTL goes down. CRASH! Turns out you can’t actually erase the pre-installed BY without crashing the program. Hmmm—that doesn’t bode well.

But, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Do people really change the BY line that often? Can we leave that as a given (assuming, though, that it doesn’t crash the program)? Okay—we’ll move on—-I type in my name, and then go to the body of the screenplay. The first files you open are pre-filled with a faux-script that has tips, instructions and ideas for using the software. Included is a scriptnotes feature, along with a cool little green arrow. It is cool—must be clip art—but it’s sort of bright. You’ll never miss a script note, but I’ll bet your eye will dart to it all the time as you’re working along. I would push it back to a light grey, and then give it the green tint when somebody mouses over it.

RIGHT—BUT HOW DOES IT WRITE?

Okay—the writing, I hear the voices screaming—what about the writing? Well, I decided to start a new, blank document to get rid of all the cruft and start with a blank page. Oh—I guess any time you start a new document it auto-fills all of that helpful base information. Well, that sucks. I guess you have to start a doc, erase everything, and then you can start writing. Don’t you love software that makes you do a little work? So, I select all on the title page, which does select all, and feeling a bit gun shy after being bested by a simple preposition, I hit delete. Hmmm—well, the title is gone, but nothing else—the infamous “by” and name stayed. I move to the first page, select all the cruft and hit delete. Ah! Okay, now we’re talking. Content gone.

So, I start typing. Oh—wait, it tried to make my INT into a character dialogue heading. Uh-oh—so, hit the button for INT. It automatically inserts a script note in front of the heading. Type the heading. Man, it feels sluggish—the typed character is at least a word behind my typing fingers at any given time. Well, I was crunching something else, so my computer was a bit slow—I try again and it’s fairly responsive, although not quite as a normal text processing engine. Not as fast as Final Draft, or text-edit for that matter. It must be crunching as you’re typing.

I get into some dialogue, and things move pretty quickly. Type a character name, it return and it drops to dialogue. If you need a parenthetical you’ll need to hit the button (now, which one was it? I have to read the damn text!), but in a nice feature, if you hit the tab key after typing your name, it will change the mode to heading and/or action.

Oh, but why go on. You know that I’m just going to rag on the writing part too. Fill in your own complaints here, and let’s move on.

CAN IT BE SAVED?

Two words: Proprietary (fucking) format. You can export until you’re blue in the face—but I want the native files to be plain text human readable. I used to write on an old Epson computer, and those files are gone forever now. I’m thinking that 30 years down the line, so might your program I still want to read my files then, and I don’t want to save a stupid export for every file I make. That’s ridiculous. If you ain’t open and human readable, you get a big raspberry from me. Here’s my new mantra: SAVE IN A HUMAN READABLE OPEN-SOURCED FORMAT.

WHY RELEASE THIS SOFTWARE?

I’m not a total cynic, but part of me is really wondering—did they push this onto the market hoping that people who don’t know what they’re doing buy it because the price is much cheaper than the big packages? I would hate to think that this is true, but we’re either left with the option that the software engineers really don’t know what they’re doing, or they trying to cash in. Let’s hope the latter isn’t true at all.

MUCH ADO ABOUT DESIGN

I know I harped on design and usability here (everybody with me: the experience is the brand!). But tell me, what else is there? If this was a retail store, you would have backed out slowly after walking in. Basically what we have here is a nearly unusable product, but one that claims to have a great philosophy—getting rid of the cruft of all the other screenwriting programs, and giving a clean interface. Yes! I want that—but it has to be combined with a knowledge of what’s current and most usable on OS X. The programs I use most every day disappear and let me do my work in them without actually having to think about them. Some time spent with an interface designer with this program could mean the difference between it tanking, and it taking off. If this was pulled from production, re-worked and re-released, I would happily retract everything I’ve said here. I will trumpet it to the high heaven.

And the great thing is—nearly all of the best Mac Developers are very cool people who are open and not phased by competition. They will help you if you ask for it. Get thee some tickets to Mac Developer Conference this spring. Just hang around out front with a sign “Need help with interface. Will give credit and thank you publicly.” Don’t even pay the entry fee.

Or even better: Open Mail on Tiger. I know, I know—the buttons. Huge controversy—well, do as I do and hit the minimize button for the toolbar. Look at panes, look at the lack of borders—look at the gear menu tucked nicely at the bottom of the sidebar. Now, copy it. Copy everything (except the buttons—hire a good icon designer to do that—and make you a cool icon. It’s worth it! Ask this guy.). Measure every window. Copy it all. Let this be your guide, padawan programmer. Go forth and { may the curly brackets be with you.}

But until then, Spitball! gives it the hock-phoey rating. The lowest we can muster.

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