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Export/Import with Montage


Gerry

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I've been trying out both Storyist and Montage. They are both very capable programs and though they offer vast options (of which I have scant use), they seem to provide a very capable writing environment.

 

My difficulty has come in attempting to relay files between the two, in order to attempt test export/import options. I have a sent a note to Mariner's support crew for their oddity: All text I produce in output (txt or rtf are the only viable options) from Storyist is imported there upper case! I've verified that the output from Storyist is not muddled in this way; it does indeed happen during Montage's import.

 

So now I attempt to import txt and rtf files produced by Montage. They import quite easily. Unfortunately none of the formatting is identified in Storyist as scene headers, action, character name, parenthetic instruction or dialogue. It's just a big clot of un-styled text. Is that the way it's supposed to work? I've had to go in and tag the style for every scrap of incoming text. For my 8-12 pages of test material that's workable.

 

But if someone were to give me 30 or 40 pages of script for editing, or additional work, this hand-tagging looks like a big thumb-ache!

 

Any advice?

 

-- Gerry

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I've been trying out both Storyist and Montage. They are both very capable programs and though they offer vast options (of which I have scant use), they seem to provide a very capable writing environment.

 

My difficulty has come in attempting to relay files between the two, in order to attempt test export/import options. I have a sent a note to Mariner's support crew for their oddity: All text I produce in output (txt or rtf are the only viable options) from Storyist is imported there upper case! I've verified that the output from Storyist is not muddled in this way; it does indeed happen during Montage's import.

 

So now I attempt to import txt and rtf files produced by Montage. They import quite easily. Unfortunately none of the formatting is identified in Storyist as scene headers, action, character name, parenthetic instruction or dialogue. It's just a big clot of un-styled text. Is that the way it's supposed to work? I've had to go in and tag the style for every scrap of incoming text. For my 8-12 pages of test material that's workable.

 

But if someone were to give me 30 or 40 pages of script for editing, or additional work, this hand-tagging looks like a big thumb-ache!

 

Any advice?

 

-- Gerry

 

Hi Gerry,

 

I'm guessing that Montage doesn't export stylesheets in their RTF files, which is where the scene header, action, and character name information would be. This is a shortcoming of Apple's RTF converters, which a number of Mac apps use. The Storyist RTF importer (which is not based on the Apple importer) does import stylesheets, but the information needs to be there.

 

Storyist also imports Final Draft FDX. It looks like Montage only exports Final Draft FDR files (an older but still widely used format), so unfortunately that won't work for you. Does Montage export Final Draft FCF files? This format is even older than FDR, but Storyist can import it. If so, try that.

 

Note that if you do import a text file, you can use the style matching tools in Storyist to apply scene headers. Try this:

 

1) Create a new project from the Screenplay template.

 

2) Delete the placeholder text.

 

3) Set the style at the cursor to the Action style.

 

4) Open the text-only file in Text Edit and paste the file into the Storyist Script.

 

5) Choose Format > Style > Apply Styles by Matching Text. The defaults should be set to apply Scene Heading to paragraphs that begin with INT, EXT, or I/E. Click OK.

 

The Scene Heading style should now be applied to all scene headings. Unfortunately, you'll still have to apply character and parenthetical styles by hand.

 

-Steve

 

4)

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Hi Gerry,

 

I'm guessing that Montage doesn't export stylesheets in their RTF files, which is where the scene header, action, and character name information would be. This is a shortcoming of Apple's RTF converters, which a number of Mac apps use. The Storyist RTF importer (which is not based on the Apple importer) does import stylesheets, but the information needs to be there.

 

Storyist also imports Final Draft FDX. It looks like Montage only exports Final Draft FDR files (an older but still widely used format), so unfortunately that won't work for you. Does Montage export Final Draft FCF files? This format is even older than FDR, but Storyist can import it. If so, try that.

 

Note that if you do import a text file, you can use the style matching tools in Storyist to apply scene headers. Try this:

 

1) Create a new project from the Screenplay template.

 

2) Delete the placeholder text.

 

3) Set the style at the cursor to the Action style.

 

4) Open the text-only file in Text Edit and paste the file into the Storyist Script.

 

5) Choose Format > Style > Apply Styles by Matching Text. The defaults should be set to apply Scene Heading to paragraphs that begin with INT, EXT, or I/E. Click OK.

 

The Scene Heading style should now be applied to all scene headings. Unfortunately, you'll still have to apply character and parenthetical styles by hand.

 

-Steve

 

4)

Montage exports both Microsoft RTF as well as Apple RTF, the difference of which I couldn't imagine, but I'm sure Microsoft imagined it quite well. It also outputs MS .DOC, .PDF, and three kinds of .SEX (don't ask!)

 

It does not export FCF.

 

With fleet fingers an QuickKeys macros I've found relatively rapid ways to convert everything by hand; of course I would prefer not to.

 

For future update consideration of Storyist: add a conversion from .FDR. It seems the only likely way to converse with Montage.

 

-- Gerry

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For future update consideration of Storyist: add a conversion from .FDR. It seems the only likely way to converse with Montage.

 

Hi Blabber,

 

Unfortunately, FDR is an old, binary format that Final Draft is moving away from. Their open, xml-based format is FDX. Many tools support it , and it is their preferred interchange format.

 

-Steve

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Hi Blabber,

 

Unfortunately, FDR is an old, binary format that Final Draft is moving away from. Their open, xml-based format is FDX. Many tools support it , and it is their preferred interchange format.

 

-Steve

Wouldn't Microsoft RTF be styled?

 

Dumb question of the day, maybe, but it could save poor Blabber's bacon. Welcome to the forums, Blabber. Are you on Script Frenzy too, with the same user name?

Best,

Marguerite

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Wouldn't Microsoft RTF be styled?

 

Hard to say, but worth a try.

 

Blabber, if you'd be willing to forward some "Microsoft RTF" from Montage, just a scene or two with some action, character, parenthetical, dialog, and transition elements, I'd be happy to take a look.

 

-Steve

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Blabber, if you'd be willing to forward some "Microsoft RTF" from Montage, just a scene or two with some action, character, parenthetical, dialog, and transition elements, I'd be happy to take a look.

 

Sure. Attached is an test file. Attached is 1 page MS-rtf output from Montage. When imported to Storyist, it tags all text "General".

 

Relative to exporting script from Storyist to Montage I have figured out how to do it. One must export the rtf from Storyist. Then open it with TextEdit (I use JEdit), save it again rtf. Then load it in Montage and it works *perfectly*. This would lead one to assume that Storyist's output rtf is somehow non-standard. I won't argue that, but seems it has to be "cleaned up" by somebody else's "output to rtf" routine before Montage can parse it.

 

Once done, Montage does a vairly good job of recognizing style-tags with one exception: Any Action element other than the first after the Scene heading, is formatted incorrectly as dialogue. So it takes some clean-up, but not a prohibitive amount. I've reported this to them for "enhancements". ;-)

 

-- Gerry

test_ms.rtf

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Hi Gerry,

 

Sure. Attached is an test file. Attached is 1 page MS-rtf output from Montage. When imported to Storyist, it tags all text "General".

 

Thanks for the example. Unfortunately, the stylesheet in the RTF you attached does not contain styles for screenplay elements. It contains only one style: "Normal Text"

 

{\stylesheet{\s0\fs24 Normal Text;}}

 

Montage is probably using the Apple OS X RTF exporter, which does not support styles, headers, or footers.

 

Relative to exporting script from Storyist to Montage I have figured out how to do it. One must export the rtf from Storyist. Then open it with TextEdit (I use JEdit), save it again rtf. Then load it in Montage and it works *perfectly*. This would lead one to assume that Storyist's output rtf is somehow non-standard. I won't argue that, but seems it has to be "cleaned up" by somebody else's "output to rtf" routine before Montage can parse it.

 

I don't think it is a Storyist issue. You mentioned that the Storyist RTF displays correctly in Text Edit. Try opening it in Word, Pages, and Neo Office and you'll the the same result.

 

Here is what is probably going on: When you open the file in Text Edit and then save it again, Text Edit strips the stylesheet (and header/footer) information. This is because Text Edit also uses the Apple OS X RTF exporter too (surprise, surprise). Montage is probably missing support for these features or does not correctly implement them.

 

Fortunately, you can configure Storyist to use the Apple OS X RTF exporter if you want. To do this:

 

1) Open the Preferences window.

2) Select the Plugins tab and then the Exporters subtab.

3) Change the plugin for Rich Text Format from "Storyist RTF Exporter" to "OS X Exporter."

 

The RTF will no longer contain style information, but if this is OK, it should remove the necessity to go through Text Edit to import into Montage.

 

Once done, Montage does a vairly good job of recognizing style-tags with one exception: Any Action element other than the first after the Scene heading, is formatted incorrectly as dialogue. So it takes some clean-up, but not a prohibitive amount. I've reported this to them for "enhancements". ;-)

 

Since the Text Edit output doesn't include styles, I suspect that Montage is analyzing the text to figure out what style to apply. Since there is so much bad RTF out there, there are merits to this approach.

 

Anyway, hope this helps.

 

-Steve

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