open source Archives - Adam Yamada

Trelby, the Best Final Draft Alternative

Recently I was talking with someone about Final Draft, the ubiquitous program used by countless screenwriters everywhere. This person did not really have any complaints with how Final Draft worked just that the $250 per licensee cost was high especially for a poor and struggling screenwriter. (That's 95% of screenwriters but everyone still buys the software.) They were curios if I knew of a good Final Draft alternative. Unfortunately I didn't but after doing a bit of Googling I found Trelby, a great free and open source screenwriting program and what seems to be the best Final Draft alternative I've seen out there.

Trelby has some great features such as;

Import from other script program formats like Final Draft, Celtx, Adobe Story, Fade In Pro, and Fountain.
Export from to PDF, formatted text, HTML, RTF, Final Draft XML, and Fountain.
PDF: There is a highly configurable PDF generator which supports embedding font that you want. You can also generate PDFs with custom watermarks which allows tracking number of file shares.
Name Database that contains over 200,000 names in multiple languages for coming up with character names.
Screenplay editor: Enforces correct script format and pagination, auto-completion, and spell checking.
View: Multiple views, including draft view, What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) mode, and a fullscreen so you don't need to worry about distractions while writing your script.
Reporting: Scene, location, character, dialogue reports.
Script Revisions: You have the ability to compare scripts revisions so you know what has changed.
It's Free: Licensed under the GPL, Trelby welcomes developers and screenwriters to contribute in making it more useful.

The issue I've heard with Final Draft is that sometimes it crashes and is bit complex to use. (At least from what I've heard as I don't own it.) Trelby is pretty easy to use and I have not issues using it. Trelby works fine on Windows 7, downloads flawlessly, installs easily, and is quite stable software. In addition Trelby works nicely on Linux Mint which is a plus but I'm not sure how many screenwriters are interested in writing scripts on Linux.

Is there a version for Macs? Unfortunately if you look on the Download page there is a Mac download image but it says “Needs work” and it seems they need someone to help out with porting a version to Mac OS X. Neither of the developer use a Mac according to the FAQ page. So for those that love Apple, which most screenwriters do, you are out of luck. If you have coding skills you are welcome to help port the Trelby Mac version though.

What's interesting about Trelby is the development history of the program.

Trelby was originally known as Blyte, and was written by Osku in 2003-2006 and sold as a commercial program by a company he founded. However, the sales of the program were not enough to justify spending most of his free time working on it, so in 2006 he open sourced it.

The program faded into complete obscurity for five years, until in late 2011, Anil Gulecha found it and started contributing improvements. This resurrected Osku’s interest in the program, and he started working on it again as well.

They decided to change the name of the program to Trelby, create a brand new website for it (the one you’re on now), bring the code up to date which it needed after five years of neglect, and try to create a development community around it.

The intersection of software developers and screenwriters is tiny, and is probably the reason for the lack of quality open source screenwriters. If you’re a part of that tiny group, why not join in?

While the development history of Trelby is interesting I am not exactly sure how Anil Gulecha and Osku Salerma funds it's development and pay for web hosting as there is no donation button on the website. There definitely should be though.

There are other Final Draft alternatives out there but most of them you have to pay for after a free trial. I am fine with paying for software but as I'm not seriously looking for the best Final Draft alternative among all the screenwriter program options I wasn't going to purchase software. If you think there is a better free and open source or paid screenwriting program out there, let me know. RawScripts seems to be a good cloud based free option but I haven't tried it.

If you want to try Trelby visit the website to download it and the Getting started page to learn how to use it. You can visit the Google forum to ask questions about it.

If you use Trelby or got value out of this post since you were looking for a Final Draft alternative, please leave a comment below. I'd love to know. Do you use any other free and open source screenwriting software? Feel free to leave a suggestion and I'll try it out.

PHPList Free Email Manager

The other day I was trying out Mailman, a free email manager written in Python. I've also been playing around with another well known email newsletter software known as PHPList.

UPDATE: This post reviews the old version of PHPList. What is pictured here is PHPList version 2 actually. The reason is I installed it is I used a quick installer which doesn't support the newest phpList version 3. It only had the older versions for some reason. The newest version of PHPlist look much cleaner and has a seemingly more well thought out user interface but I think version 2 was actually easier to use. If you are reading this I recommend you use the latest version of phpList so you have the proper security updates and the latest features.

PHPList pegs itself as “The most popular Open Source Newsletter Manager.” This does seem to be the case as they are not that many open source email newsletters programs out there besides Mailman and Dada Mail. At least these are the only 3 that I am aware of that are currently supported by developers and free to install and use on your own server. (Dada Mail requires you to purchase a license fee if you are over 3 lists with 1,000 emails.)

After playing around with PHPList I can see why it has a significant amount of downloads every month and why it's popular. It's not super easy-to-use but at least it has a layout that I think most people can figure out and understand. I had an email list up and running fairly quickly without having to look up too much. I'd say the learning curve is medium but the PHPList forums along with the documentation and a decent amount of video tutorials on the internet should help anybody trying to get started.

As you can see the backend of this email manager isn't going to win any design awards, but it is functional and I can at least understand how to use it. Mailman… not so much and Dada Mail is easy but there are confusing aspects about it as well. It didn't take me too long to send out a test email to see how PHPList works and what you could do. What's nice is that it has an advanced text editor so you can use different fonts, bold words, change colors, etc. and you can attach files. With Mailman you can't attach files which is kind of a big downside.

One big issue with PHPList is that the WordPress plugin that used to be supported for PHPList, WP PHP List, has not been updated for several years. You probably can use another WordPress newsletter plugin to integrate WordPress with PHPlist but I have not tried had time to mess with WP plugins yet to see. It seems like the Newsletter Sign-Up plugin will integrate according to this WP forum post.

What's surprising to me is that PHPList doesn't support an official Worpdress PHPList plugin. Wordpress is the most popular content management system (CMS) and blogging platform on the face of the earth. Matt Mullenweg said at the 2013 State of the Word that 18.9% of websites in the world now run on WordPress. In addition checkout these impressive WordPress stats back when I wrote about the WordPress 10th Anniversary. Bottom line if you want your software to be really successful, you should code a WP plugin for easy integration.

Also there does not seem to be a way to remove the footer image that links to the PHPList site at the bottom of emails. Honestly I don't have a problem with it as it is free and open source software, but I wish I could pay a license fee to remove it. This would be a good money maker for the developers in my opinion. The point of an email newsletter is to promote yourself or your own websites.

Overall I think PHPList is a great way to get an email list started if you are on a tight budget and want greater control over your email lists. You will have to be careful not to send out to many emails and check what your web hosts limits are for sending bulk emails. They will not want to get hit with spam complaints from you sending too many emails and risking getting a blacklisted IP address.

PHPList does have a nice service called PHPList Hosted, which gives you the option to send emails through their email servers. PHPList Hosted currently in beta but the pricing is quite attractive when compared to other email management providers.

For those that want to learn more about this open source email software you can order the book PHPList 2-Email Campaign Manager by David Young. I haven't bought the book but I am it considering it as it is recommend on the PHPList website and includes step-by-step instructions. From what I can tell it will have PHP coding, so you should be aware of that before you buy it.

I will probably post a in-depth review and some tutorials as I get more into using PHPList. Open source is all about sharing your knowledge! 🙂

For more information and to learn more about PHPList visit the official website: http://www.phplist.com/

Keep Google Reader and Open Source the Code

If you are a user of Google Reader, Google's RSS (really simple syndication) feed software, then you probably are upset it will be shutting down on July 1st, 2013. While there are plenty of options for RSS feeds outside of Google Reader, and many of these RSS feed providers have been advertising and gaining new users over the past couple weeks, I imagine you would prefer Google Reader would stick around so you can use it.

That is exactly why Christoph McCann started the website and online petition Keep Google Reader. His idea is that if Google doesn't want to maintain the product themselves, why not open source the code? Sounds like a great plan to me so I left this comment;

Please at least open source Google Reader! Some people don't want to share their feeds, they just want to read blogs and news!

Part of the reason Google is shutting down Google Reader is that it doesn't make sense with their overall market strategy of making the internet more open. Essentially this means they want everyone on Google+ sharing content and not on platform where you probably weren't doing this. Of course this is Google's fault since they wanted everyone sharing content on Google+ and nowhere else. The redesign of the User Interface also affected Google Reader's fate. Here is what Brian Shih, a former Google Reader Product Manager, said about it on Quora;

But after switching the sharing features over to G+ (the so called “share-pocalypse”) along with the redesigned UI, my guess is that usage just started to fall – particularly around sharing. I know that my sharing basically stopped completely once the redesign happened [3]. Though Google did ultimately fix a lot of the UI issues, the sharing (and therefore content going into G+) would never recover.

The Keep Google Reader petition has 43,000 signatures already and keeps growing everyday. If you want Google to open source the code then please sign the petition and share it with friends too.

There is also a Change.org campaign started by Dan Lewis to “Keep Google Reader Running.” That has 152,000+ signatures currently and blew well past the goal of 47,000 signatures. The numbers for this petition will likely keep growing too.

What is surprising to me is that I know a lot of people that use Google Reader and are not really that tech inclined. It's just an easy-to-use RSS feed option since it hooks into you Google and Gmail account. It's odd to me Google wants to shutdown a useful product that millions of people use. Even if it wasn't making Google money, do they really need to worry about that? I mean Google works on some crazy projects and I doubt they will every recoup R&D efforts on some of these endeavors.

Google's strategy going forward seems to be forcing people into their social network, Google+. While I think Google Authorship is a great feature, and really the only reason to use Google+ for most people, they shouldn't trump social sharing with shutting down a product people like and want to use.

Anyway, if you want Google Reader to stick around then please sign the petitions. I know I do!

Catch me on Twitter @AdamYamada … if you can!