A couple of days earlier I mentioned the new release of Celtx, a free open-source screenwriting software. And I promised a review, so here it is and because this was a pretty big upgrade -- I am going to break up the review in parts.

The biggest change to the software happened in how and where it saved the actual document. Before 0.9.3, a Celtx document was stored in a place chosen by the developers and in a format that was not very open. So people complained, whined and complained some more and the developers listened. And boy did they listen! You can now save your screenplay anywhere, with your screenplay document saved in a folder which contains the text (HTML), images, music and RDF document which I guess tells the application where everything should go. Saving your screenplay in HTML is wonderful because HTML is universal, and it is highly unlikely that the format will die in our lifetime. You can also use any HTML editor application to work with your script, these applications are usually faster and more powerful than other text editors. The Celtx document is very much like a website with a folder containing media and text (RDF) that translates where everything should go. Now, of course, you can always export the screenplay to .txt or .pdf, that has not changed. You can also import screenplays saved in .txt. So if you are switching from Final Draft or MovieMaker then save your screenplay in .txt and then import it into Celtx.

One  more thing about the HTML inside the project folder, when I double-clicked, it automatically opened the default browser and displayed the script without the proper screenplay formatting. However, if you export the screenplay to HTML within Celtx, it maintained the screenplay formatting. I wished the original HTML came formatted so I do not have to add an extra step to do things like sending the HTML file to someone.

I also was able to open the RDF (is this a universal format, anyone?) file with TextWrangler and it seems like that with someone with more expertise (meaning *not* me), you could do more. I cannot imagine what you could do but it is nice to keep that a configurable format.

If you do move the project folder somewhere else, when you try to open the project again the application will prompt you to find it. Nice. This is important because your project does not have a file or an icon that you can double-click to open the file and the application. The way it happens is that Celtx opens and you choose whether to create new or open an old project. If you want to open existing project, you provided with a list to choose from. It works for me but not might work for everyone.

Anyways, I am very happy with the save implementation by the Celtx developers. There is still some other things that annoy me and I will get into that in later review(s). But at first glimpse, this upgrade is so, so sweet. You have everything you will need to write a screenplay, well actually, you have a lot more than is needed and it is all good.