Hi Everybody,

I recently started researching screenwriting software and want to share some of my findings.

Celtx is mentioned several places on this board, and I did give it a try, but some aspects of
the software made me a little uncomfortable. I don't really want to save my script online,
and I'm not looking for a collaborative environment, as I plan on writing and developing my
original idea by myself for now. So I kept looking. It seems that "Final Draft 8" is the industry
standard, but at $250 I wanted to find a more cost effective solution. Also, I'm a programmer
by trade, so an open-source screenwriting package gives me both peace of mind and
ability to modify the software if I feel it lacking someplace.

With that in mind, I found a solution called "Trelby." It was written by an engineer who felt
Celtx didn't quite fit his needs, and IMHO Trelby seems to surpass Celtx's capability for writing.
Trelby does not have integrated media. For that need (eg. comic book storyboards) Celtx seems superior.

I did download the Trelby source code, and managed to build my own Windows distribution locally.
Trelby seems to be quite a useful piece of software, and so I'm sharing with you now.
I'm still quite new to screenwriting, but so far this seems to fill my need.
Trelby can import Text, Celtx, Final Draft, Fountain and Fade-In.
Trelby can export scripts in PDF, RTF, Final Draft XML, HTML, Fountain and Formatted Text.

If any of you have experience with Trelby, please share it. I would love to hear your opinions, good or bad.

Regular Trelby distributions for Windows, Linux and a MacOS-beta can be downloaded from their official site: http://www.trelby.org
For those of you
who are Python programmers, the GPL source code is online at github here:
https://github.com/oskusalerma/trelby

Also I found an interesting write-up on Trelby here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/trelby-free-screenplay-writing-software-windows-linux/

Finally, I found some really good concise notes taken from "The Screenwriter's Bible" by David Trottier.
You can read those notes here: http://www.monarchknights.com/teacherwebpages/tiernan/documents/ImportantScreenplayNotes.pdf


I hope you find this info useful.

-Lee