Hi, all,

I just learned about this software, Celtx. It isn't an outliner or a PIM, and it is designed for screenwriters and dramatists. But it seems packed with great features, and seems to be well thought out. And it appears to be free.

I haven't run it yet, so don't know if it behaves itself.

I just thought I'd see what others thought of Celtx and to let those of you who might be interested in this kind of software know it is there.

http://celtx.com/overview.html

Steve Z.

Hi Stephen

I just learned about this software, Celtx. It isn't an outliner or a PIM, and
it is designed for screenwriters and dramatists. But it seems packed with great
features, and seems to be well thought out. And it appears to be free.

It is not only free it is also Open Source. And it's available for Windows and the Mac.

I do not use it as I do not write screenplays.

Celtx has been mentioned several times in the Scrivener forum. 2 threads might be interesting for you.

One on an older version of Celtx:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2451&p=18321&hilit=celtx#p18321

And another one discussing how to import Scrivener files into Celtx:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3543&p=27646&hilit=celtx#p27646

Hope it helps,

Franz

There's a fair amount of discussion about Celtx over on the software forum at Done Deal (screenwriting forums) if anyone is interested:
http://messageboard.donedealpro.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=21 . They do discuss outliners occasionally, but obviously in a specific context.

The general consensus appears to be that Celtx is maturing nicely. The huge barrier that a program such as Celtx faces is that screenwriters have to be convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that a program is rock solid before they will entrust a script to it -- for obvious reasons. Most screenplay software uses proprietary file formats, so you can't afford to take a risk. (Proprietary formats are perhaps understandable in the case of scriptwriting software -- the file generally contains not only the script, but the outline, comments, preparatory notes etc. -- although in the end most scripts circulate as PDFs).

I have fallen victim to this once already. I used to use Sophocles, a wonderful, elegant, lean program that was by far the best piece of screenwriting software available (and relatively cheap at $120 -- yes that's cheap for screenwriting software). But it was a one-man band, and a couple of months ago the web site (sophocles.net) vanished. No warning. Which wouldn't have been a complete disaster apart from the fact that each install of Sophocles (even on the same machine) required online activation. Cue a lot of worried screenwriters (see above-mentioned forum)...

I considered Celtx. Briefly. I made a quick decision that I would, reluctantly, go with one of the "industry standards" (which for the record are Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter -- they both like to call themselves the industry standard). Both hopelessly over-priced for what they do, and neither is as good as Sophocles. But I have learned my lesson. For mission-critical software, no more one-man bands, no risks. Follow the herd.

I have also checked out Celtx (free Windows desktop v. 2.9.7). They are rather sneaky. On the website they tell you you can get all this software for free, just sign up. It's only once you signed up that they tell you about all the fee-based services and the paid versions of their downloadable software, as well as the limitations of the free software.

I only checked out the novel writing features of Celtx but I was underwhelmed. Storybook Pro is a lot more sophisticated and I would rather use it instead, despite the shortcomings I've just mentioned in my other post.

The weird thing about the "industry standards" Final Draft and Movie Magic is that they are both riddled with bugs. At least, the windows versions are (I get the impression from reading the mixed reviews that both apps were originally designed for the Mac and then ported--badly--over to Windows). I've tested both of them on Windows and both would crash suddenly for no apparent reason. They also had a lot of other bugs with their screen displays and their outlining and online collaboration features, etc. And these are the standards that everyone in the industry is supposed to use. It's incredible. I tested them a couple years ago, however, so maybe they've improved, but I doubt it.

I tried Celtx a while ago. Can't remember too much about it, but it appeared to be stable. I also got burned when Sophocles went bust. The developer and his website just vanished into thin air, leaving a lot of users twisting in the wind, unable to reinstall their software because it required online activation. Movie Outline is another option which is apparently still being developed. It's stable and fairly easy to use. I guess your choice will depend on your situation. If you're writing spec scripts, you might be able to submit PDFs of your screenplays, so I guess it doesn't matter what software you use. There are also some Word macros floating around out there, but from what I've read, most of the studios have specific standards regarding submissions. Some of them absolutely require Final Draft, for instance. I'm not sure what the situation is with agents.

The screenwriting program business appears to be a niche market similar to that for outliners and PIMs. If you're serious about trying to break into screenwriting (a closed market if I ever saw one), you should probably invest in one of the major apps, probably Final Draft.

I just realized that the original post is four years old. Guess the OP already made his decision about what to get a long time ago...

Gary Carson wrote:

I just realized that the original post is four years old. Guess the OP already made his
decision about what to get a long time ago...

:-)

Maybe, it's funny though how themes and threads keep coming back. You'd think that after all these years we'd have all settled on the software that best suits our needs. Yet things are in a continuous flux.

FWIW, here's a couple of extra pieces of info:

My own (short) interest in screenplay writing software was more focused on project management. The software I found most versatile in this respect was StoryView. It hasn't been developed for quite some time, apart from some marginal improvements, but it's still supported and available now at a much lower price, marketed as Outline 4D http://www.screenplay.com/p-77-outline-4d.aspx As far as screenplay software goes, I think it's the closest thing to a generic outliner, with the very useful ability to switch from a vertical to a horizontal layout. It's quite interesting how the mind conceives these two views quite differently.

Sophocles.net is now dedicated to the original Sophocles (the ancient Greek writer) and the Sophocles software has its own Wikipedia entry, but the mystery has not been resolved. I'm sure there's a lot of disgruntled users out there. This is THE worst way to make a piece of software redundant. I would really wonder if the developer is still alive.

A couple of comments on Storybook will go to the relevant thread.

P.S. Celtx has continued developing and now offers web access and sync, as well as a Linux version. If I was into screenwriting, these features alone would make me go for it.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

The software I found most versatile in this respect was StoryView. It
hasn't been developed for quite some time, apart from some marginal improvements,
but it's still supported and available now at a much lower price, marketed as Outline
4D http://www.screenplay.com/p-77-outline-4d.aspx As far as screenplay
software goes, I think it's the closest thing to a generic outliner, with the very
useful ability to switch from a vertical to a horizontal layout. It's quite
interesting how the mind conceives these two views quite
differently.

Thanks for reminding my of Outline 4D. It's been sitting in my to-do list for over a year, and now I remembered why. They only give you 5 days to try! I guess I was waiting for the right time to arrive, and it has just arrived...

P.S. Celtx has continued developing and now offers web access and sync, as well as a Linux version. If I was into screenwriting, these features alone would make me go for it.

Sure. I was only commenting on the novel-writing capability. The Windows software has 7 project templates: film, audio-visual, theatre, audio play, storyboard, comic book, and novel.

However my impression from looking at script-writing software (however briefly) is that they are primarily preoccupied with producing texts (or multi-media pre-production drafts) that confirm to industry standards, with the implied promise of hitting it big on Broadway or in Hollywood. So I feel there is a bit of a gimmicky edge to some of this software, something almost exploitative about it, where the plotting and writing-related features may not be actually the top priority, it's more about selling a dream, a connection to the industry.

I would venture to say (big generalisation, I know) that many of the creative writer types may not be that good with software and computers (judging from all the blog comments about how difficult they find to learn Scrivener for instance), so their expectations and needs might be completely different from people with medium- to sophisticated computer skills. Okay, before you all pile in to contradict me, I know that there are also the Douglas Adams's out there who use BrainStorm etc. :)

Dr Andus wrote:

Thanks
for reminding my of Outline 4D. It's been sitting in my to-do list for over a year, and
now I remembered why. They only give you 5 days to try! I guess I was waiting for the right
time to arrive, and it has just arrived...

Amazon has got 41 customer reviews on it...
http://www.amazon.com/Write-Brothers-1OL0023-Outline-4D/dp/B00316OYGQ

Strangely, in the UK StoryView v. 2 is also on sale. I wonder if the two versions are the same. But it doesn't list Win7. Although some of the Amazon reviewers above also had compatibility issues:
http://www.moviesoft.com/story-view-p-13.html

One blog commenter offers an answer:
"Write Brothers has decided to rebrand it as "Outline 4D"... I guess that seven years of version 2.0 made it look stale and putting it in a shiny new package was easier than coding a version 3.0." http://prolost.com/screenwriting

I'm quite amazed actually at the variety of screenwriting software out there, though some of them are very expensive, while others look rather amateurish.

Outliner 4D is basically a combination of a traditional outliner with an index card view. It's a good idea, but it doesn't work that well in practice. The outliner's OK, but the index card view is unreadable because the program tries to cram everything together to fit onto the screen. What you end up with are a lot of very thin vertical lines of text that only contain the first few words of a scene description. It's almost impossible to read vertical text. You can expand the index card view, zooming in on particular cards, but there's no way to get a universal overview of the entire outline. That's a deal-killer as far as I'm concerned and it boggles my mind that the designers would make such a goofy design decision.

I've watched the Outline 4D tutorial videos and installed the software (only could run it in XP mode), and my initial impression is quite good. It does feel a bit like a combination of Inspiration (the outliner), Storybook (the tracking of properties, plot lines), and TreeSheets (the Timeline View).

I may not want to write my entire dissertation in it, but it might be better than Storybook for organising the "plot lines" and developing a detailed sentence outline. It's part of a very small club of outliners that can do inline notes (UV Outliner, Inspiration and ??), so it might be good for adding some flesh onto an initial outline developed in a more basic outliner (perhaps even imported as RTF).

I've been putting Outline 4D through its paces (they only give you 5 days to trial it). In many ways I'm really impressed with it. The ability to add inline text in the outliner alone makes it stand out (alongside UV Outliner and Inspiration), and it has multiple sophisticated views yo go with it (headings only, headings and inline text, only inline text, or custom views).

The ability to colour the outline in by hierarchical levels is also a unique feature (I only know of Natara Bonsai, and perhaps BrainStorm, sort of, that can do it). The timeline or index card view is nothing short of revolutionary in my view, especially the Scale Tool. Yes, the vertical rendering that kicks in when you zoom out may not be ideal, but the overall concept is still very cool.

I haven't yet tested the Tracking feature but the ability to tag the index cards and then display the linkages to the tags along a horizontal view under the "timeline" view is also ingenious.

BUT I have to agree with Gary that while in theory all this sounds great, there is something about the execution that gets in the way of focusing on the writing. Despite the various zooming and scaling tools, I just found I spent too much time trying to get the view right, rather than working on the actual outline. With this much effort I could just as well construct a perfectly viewable cork board in TreeSheets and I could view it simultaneously with the outline, rather than having to switch back and forth.

Also, Outline 4D has problems running in Win7. I need to run it in XP mode, and even then I had a few crashes when I changed some settings and then wanted to switch from outline to timeline view, with scary messages like this one:

"Exception thrown in destructor
(f:\dd\vctools\vc71 ibs\ship\atlmfc\src\mfc\winfrm.cpp:14 2)
Encountered an improper argument."

Plus, it's rather expensive for what it is. The cheapest price I found was USD79 (and it's USD94.99 on their own website).

So I'm really torn. While I'd be interested in giving it a go, I'm not sure I am willing to entrust all my dissertation outlining to a software that gives you these sorts of error messages a few hours into the trial.

This whole experience made me download Inspiration 9 for the n-th time, to see whether I could put up with its font rendering after all, as I really need an outliner with inline notes that is stable enough. Then I could just replicate Outline 4D's timeline view in TreeSheets.

Dr Andus wrote:

The ability to colour the outline in by
hierarchical levels is also a unique feature (I only know of Natara Bonsai, and
perhaps BrainStorm, sort of, that can do it).

I'm not sure how I missed this before but Inspiration can also do different hierarchy levels in different coloured font, just like Bonsai (in Outline 4D it's the background of the hierarchy level that can be coloured).

Dr Andus wrote:

[Outline 4D is] part of a very small club of
outliners that can do inline notes (UV Outliner, Inspiration and ??), so it might be
good for adding some flesh onto an initial outline developed in a more basic outliner
(perhaps even imported as RTF).

Probably the most notorious such software is Notemap http://www.casesoft.com/notemap/index.asp It's no longer developed, but it's stable as far as I know, though I have not tried it under Windows 7. I believe Cassius has had a nasty experience with Notemap using note text, so regular backing up is strongly recommended.

Another software that can handle big chunks of text and complex hierarchies is Maxthink http://www.maxthink.org Like Brainstorm, its roots are in DOS and this shows a bit. It defaults to a two level view like Brainstorm's but can show more if you want it to. It does not support clones (namesakes) but it does have many ways to reorganise entries, making it too a powerful tool for bringing order to chaotic notes. One of its strong points is the very good export to Word.

Disclaimer: I'm posting the info above mostly for reference.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Dr Andus wrote:
>[Outline 4D is] part of a very small club of
>outliners that can do
inline notes (UV Outliner, Inspiration and ??), so it might be
>good for adding some
flesh onto an initial outline developed in a more basic outliner
>(perhaps even
imported as RTF).

Probably the most notorious such software is Notemap
http://www.casesoft.com/notemap/index.asp It's no longer developed, but it's
stable as far as I know, though I have not tried it under Windows 7. I believe Cassius has
had a nasty experience with Notemap using note text, so regular backing up is strongly
recommended.

Another software that can handle big chunks of text and complex
hierarchies is Maxthink http://www.maxthink.org Like Brainstorm, its roots are in
DOS and this shows a bit. It defaults to a two level view like Brainstorm's but can show
more if you want it to. It does not support clones (namesakes) but it does have many ways
to reorganise entries, making it too a powerful tool for bringing order to chaotic
notes. One of its strong points is the very good export to Word.

Disclaimer: I'm
posting the info above mostly for reference.

I'm not sure if your disclaimer would stand up in a court of law... Your advice has triggered my CRIMP condition and you have caused me to buy an Outline 4D licence. See you in court!

Just kidding :) Thanks very much for the recommendations. I tried out all three of the above. I did like Notemap a lot. It's crazy there aren't more software like it. I'm very happy with Bonsai for the initial stages of outlining, but Notemap would fill the gap between the initial outline, the sentence outline, and the final draft. Sadly, I've been scared away by this thread:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1136/0/again-with-respect-to-notemap

As for Maxthink, it just baffled me... I know people have spoken of it very highly on this forum, so I'm sure it must have some great features, but my initial experience didn't encourage me to spend more time with it.

In the end I settled on StoryView 2.0/Outline 4D. I kind of fell in love with it. I hope it's not going to crash on me halfway through my draft, but I'm excited to start working with it.

Oh, yeah, I also tried Inspiration 9, again (the n+1th time). I've tried my best but I just can't get myself to like that software. I know it ranked highly in Steve's review but after Bonsai Inspiration feels sluggish and awkward to use for me.

Does anyone actually know how much a Notemap license costs these days (just out of curiosity)?

BTW, one arcane benefit of owning both StoryView 2.0 and Outline 4D (which are almost exactly the same) is that you are able to run two instances of the software (though not of the same file), which is not possible, if you only own one or the other.

One unusual feature of StoryView/Outline 4D is that you can indent or move around outline items irrespective of their place in the hierarchy and independently from their parents or their children. E.g. you can have a level 1 parent with a level 4 child next or you can just move the level 1 parent, and none of its children will move with it. (You can get around this behaviour by selecting several items and then they can be moved or indented as a group).

I don't quite know what all the benefits of this feature are yet but it seems to break the basic definition of what an outline or outliner is (i.e. having dependent parents and children). I suppose it allows you to structure an outline without having to think through all the necessary hierarchical relationships, which is probably better for brainstorming, concept development and creativity.

Dr Andus wrote:

One unusual feature of StoryView/Outline 4D is that you can indent or move around
outline items irrespective of their place in the hierarchy and independently from
their parents or their children.

You can do that in MS Word as well. I don't know if there's a benefit to it, for me it breaks down the whole notion of structure. But it's been like that for ages, so I imagine that many people are used to working like that. They would probably find a 'classic' outliner too restrictive.

Dr Andus wrote:

BTW, one arcane benefit of owning both StoryView 2.0 and Outline 4D (which are almost
exactly the same) is that you are able to run two instances of the software (though not
of the same file), which is not possible, if you only own one or the other.

It turns out you can in fact view the same file in both outline view and timeline (index card corkboard) view simultaneously in Outline 4D alone. With the extended desktop feature in Windows it means you can have your outline open in one monitor, and the corresponding "index cards" view open in a second monitor, with changes updated on both simultaneously.

This gives you two different simultaneous visualisations of your hierarchy: 1) in the traditional outline list form, and 2) as a top-down arrangement of index cards, with each outline item represented by a card, starting with level 1 item on the top. All outline items are represented in the corkboard, so none are hidden in stacks, as they are in SuperNoteCard or Scrivener (though if you have too many, they might only be represented by a sliver of a card, to fit them all in).

Can any other outliner do this, i.e. present a simultaneous view of both the linear outline and a spatial representation of all items (not just top level)? I can only think of ConnectedText's Navigator window, but it can only be set up to emulate a two-pane outliner, while Outline 4D is a single-pane outliner (which I prefer for my current task).

Gary Carson wrote:

Outliner 4D is basically a combination of a traditional outliner with an
index card view. It's a good idea, but it doesn't work that well in
practice. The outliner's OK, but the index card view is unreadable
because the program tries to cram everything together to fit onto the
screen. What you end up with are a lot of very thin vertical lines of
text that only contain the first few words of a scene description. It's
almost impossible to read vertical text. You can expand the index card
view, zooming in on particular cards, but there's no way to get a
universal overview of the entire outline. That's a deal-killer as far as
I'm concerned and it boggles my mind that the designers would make such
a goofy design decision.

Yes, I'm also starting to think that it was the design decision to lay out the outline horizontally, rather than vertically, which is crippling the Timeline view in O4D. If you could rotate the view by 90 degrees counterclockwise (i.e. present the outline horizontally, as is standard), then the whole sorry business of having to read vertical lines would disappear.

What other software are out there that could lay out an outline in table form whereby the hierarchy moves from left to right (the sub-tasks stay within the overall rows of the parent tasks)? Off the bat I can think of TreeSheets. The main principle is the same, i.e. that the parent is a box, and all children are boxes within their parents' boxes. Nevertheless TreeSheets doesn't quite present the sub-tasks in a horizontal view.

Dr Andus wrote:

Gary Carson wrote:
Outliner 4D is basically a combination of a traditional outliner with an
>index card view. It's a good idea, but it doesn't work that well in
>practice. The outliner's OK, but the index card view is unreadable
>because the program tries to cram everything together to fit onto the
>screen. What you end up with are a lot of very thin vertical lines of
>text that only contain the first few words of a scene description. It's
>almost impossible to read vertical text. You can expand the index card
>view, zooming in on particular cards, but there's no way to get a
>universal overview of the entire outline. That's a deal-killer as far
as
>I'm concerned and it boggles my mind that the designers would make such
>a goofy design decision.

Yes, I'm also starting to think that it was the design decision to lay
out the outline horizontally, rather than vertically, which is crippling
the Timeline view in O4D. If you could rotate the view by 90 degrees
counterclockwise (i.e. present the outline horizontally, as is
standard), then the whole sorry business of having to read vertical
lines would disappear.

What other software are out there that could lay out an outline in table
form whereby the hierarchy moves from left to right (the sub-tasks stay
within the overall rows of the parent tasks)? Off the bat I can think of
TreeSheets. The main principle is the same, i.e. that the parent is a
box, and all children are boxes within their parents' boxes.
Nevertheless TreeSheets doesn't quite present the sub-tasks in a
horizontal view.

Tinderbox has its 'treemap' view, which is vertical in the sense you describe above. I've never used this view, because its outline, timeline and map views are much more useful.

Dr Andus wrote:

What other software are out there that could lay out an outline in table
form whereby the hierarchy moves from left to right (the sub-tasks stay
within the overall rows of the parent tasks)?

I think the most obvious example is Tree for Mac http://www.topoftree.jp/en/tree/ (the fact that it's the first that comes to my mind even though I have never myself used a Mac is rather indicative).

I wouldn't say that TreeSheets expands strictly horizontally, but rather more diagonally. Anyway, you can select the Horizontal Layout Style for Rendering which enhances the effect.

Otherwise, the 'affinity' or 'left to right' style in mind mappers is probably what you will usually encounter. A similar approach is provided by B-liner http://www.bliner.com/gallery-2/

Hugh wrote:

Tinderbox has its 'treemap' view, which is vertical in the sense you
describe above. I've never used this view, because its outline, timeline
and map views are much more useful.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

I think the most obvious example is Tree for Mac
http://www.topoftree.jp/en/tree/ (the fact that it's the first that
comes to my mind even though I have never myself used a Mac is rather
indicative).

Unfortunately I don't have a Mac :(

Otherwise, the 'affinity' or 'left to right' style in mind mappers is
probably what you will usually encounter. A similar approach is provided
by B-liner http://www.bliner.com/gallery-2/

Thanks for the B-liner suggestion. I played with it a bit and it's interesting what a difference square connecting lines make vs. the usual rounded lines in mind mappers.

However, I'm still yearning for a horizontal Outline 4D solution. I'm finding that with B-liner and mind mappers it's all too easy to forget what the top level hierarchy was about, as you keep drilling down into the sub-sub levels.

While with an O4D-type solution each sub-level is a box within the level above (a box within a box within a box etc.), so it's easier to see that a higher level hierarchy literally contains its lower level items. I'm surprised that there aren't more software that picked up on this seemingly basic but very useful idea.

I'll need to play a bit more with B-liner, but for now it seems expensive at USD89.95. I've also just received a "special" (?) offer for a Mindjet perpetual license for GBP238.80, which is a lot more but sounds like you also get more for the bang?

Dr Andus wrote:

I'll need to play a bit more with B-liner, but for now it seems
expensive at USD89.95. I've also just received a "special" (?) offer
for a Mindjet perpetual license for GBP238.80, which is a lot more but
sounds like you also get more for the bang?

I mean "more bang for the buck" (before someone takes this the wrong way:)