Garst,
Final Draft and Script Thing simply are the standards used in Hollywood. Don't worry
about this. I'll figure it out and you are welcome to the results.
Sorry to have troubled you
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Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 00:01:13 -0300
From: "Garst R. Reese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Richard Harris wrote:
>
> Garst,
>
> How would the following seem as goals:
>
> 1. Incorporate the \blockbreak so that the pages break with the continued-cont'd
and are uniform length. (This seems to be the thing most needed.)
Well, the truth is -I don't like it-
Now let me explain why. 99% of the time, if you can't just break the
page, the dialogue is too long. It is a pain in ass for actors reading a
script to have to turn the page while reading a line. Remember, they
might never have seen the script before being asked to read it in front
of someone.
OK, you can add to that the fact that I don't have a clue as to how to
implement it in latex :)
Let me review the complications:
1. It is absolutely forbidden to break a page in mid sentence.
2. Lyx is not WYSIWYG, so you do not know in advance where page breaks
or even line breaks are going to be, so latex has figure out where to
put the Continued or whatever. So it has to find the last end of
sentence before the page would break.
Then, it has to decide whether it would be better to just move the whole
dialogue.
Obviously, you do not want SPEAKER One line sentence, Continued SPEAKER
(CONTD).
I submit that if the cases where you need this are not rare, you should
rethink your script.
> 2. Use the text and hdr/ftr margins as per fd5
I can look at that, but will have to pass it by other users who have
scripts already written and who have sent me specifications. If there
are no conflicts and counter arguments then OK.
> 3. For character, parenthetical, and dialogue, set margins as fd5 default and
hook these elements into the Paragraph Layout dialogue so that they can be manipulated
to that extent. Then document how to do further adjustment as a lyxpert to allow the
meaningful fine tuning. I know that lyx doesn't let you create dialog-boxes but it
does have this one. And in the Document Layout dialogue's Document tab you could
leverage Spacing and Skip for packing and loosening the length of the script overall.
The Document Layout overrides the .cls settings. The left margin setting
of fd5=1.25" is counter to everything I have been told before. I would
call it a minimum. When you put tight brads in it leaves barely enough
room. I will need a pretty substantial argument to make this the
default. Also, fd5 allows 3" wide parentheticals. I know that I cut
those down based on complaints from screen writers.
Sorry, but if you are suggesting that fd5 is a standard, I am going to
have to ask you for documentation to back that up.
>
> 4. The other elements could just be set to the defaults.
>
> These four would give you an industry standard script
I need proof that fd5 is an industry standard. Whereas it seems possible
to write and acceptable script with it, it also allows stuff that would
not get past my dog.
that you could pack or loosen the length of and tweak the major
elements' margins. The defaults would be easily accesible to the average
user and could be minimally adjusted through the existing layout
dialogues. You could put a short walk-through of adjusting the C, P, and
D element margins into scriptone.lyx for the power-tweakers. I know
that linux graphics have been accepted (Titanic, Shrek, ...) in
Hollywood. There is no reason that LyX, with a few adjustments to your
present class, could not be just as useful as people drift away from Mr.
Gate's solutions. I know that these four changes (even without the
adjustment beyond the layout dialogs) would let me migrate.
>
> Let me know how it goes. If you really can't get to this, I can always figure it
out from your existing work and reading more about latex than I would like to.
Let me say that there is still a lot of cruft in hollywood.cls left over
from report.cls that I started with. Lots more stuff could probably be
deleted.
I'm not a latex guru.
Just booting into windows this morning ticked me off enough to wish
you were already done with this so I could delete that partition.
Nice to be motivated.
>
> Take care,
> Richard
>
> PS - Which reminds me, if you have any clout with the document people on LyX you
might try to get them to put the bit about hooking the lyx/tex dir into the latex
search path into that document that comes up in lyx when you first start it up. If it
hadn't been for you, I never would have known about that. It really isn't documented
anywhere meaningfully for those who don't know latex at all.
I know. I've been there. The bit buried in the docs about "put it where
latex can find it." struck me as very amusing :) My early efforts to get
better documentation with respect to latex failed. Maybe I will try
again now that they know me better.
Regards,
Garst
