[Macworld]

Post your comments for Final Draft 8 here

[fyrefly]

One of the bugs in FD7 that they still haven't fixed in FD8 for Mac is that if you have a Slug Line (Scene Heading) that is bolded - and you zoom to anything other than 100%, the cursor misplaces itself, causing you to mess up the spacing. Quite annoying, as all the series I've worked on have formatted scripts with Bold Sluglines.

[claudio]

WORST MACWORLD REVIEW EVER!
I looked up the writer's name on imdb and didn't find anything so I'm assuming he's never actually worked on a film in production before.
Please get a someone who uses this software professionally to review it and compare it to the vastly superior Screenwrite 6, this sad joke of a review reads like a press release from FD.

[afteryouwho]

I have been using Final Draft for a couple of years now. (Been through Celtx, Montage and MovieOutline)
I upgraded to Final Draft 8 recently and am happy with it. BUT a word of warning to anyone thinking about purchasing it:
I had a very bad experience with technical support and have an issue that is still not resolved.
I imported a couple of scripts from Final Draft 7 into FD8. When I went to save them as either .txt or .rtf, the result was a total disaster. Neither file was even near to acceptable format. The only work-around I found was to save the scripts as .pdf and go from there.
I contacted Final Draft support about the problem, tried all their advice and the problem (bug?) still exists. I sent them samples of the badly formatted .txt and .rtf files and since then have no response whatsoever.

If you want the whole story, I have it spelled out on my blog: www.lacoctelera.com/richard.
As I said before, I am happy working with Final Draft but cannot recommend it because of an obvious defect in the program.
Will look into Screenwrite 6 but really don't want to spend more money on yet another scriptwriting program.

[writersblock]

Thanks for the heads up.... by the way, I also read the MM review and it's done by the same guy so I think he must do this for all their scriptwriting applications. I did try the demo and so far I'm impressed. Not as many new features as I would hope but it's solid and I like it more than MM because it doesn't feel as cluttered to me.

[KeyCo]

I haven't found that many reviews of the Windows version of Final Draft 8 yet. Probably due to the fact that it's so filled with bugs that it's almost impossible to use for some serious writing. Bugs from Final Draft 7 still remains and a whole lot of new ones are introduced as well. No bugfix release yet, so my advice is to wait for that before even concidering a move to Final Draft 8 as it is pretty much unusable in its current state.

[afteryouwho]

I guess I did not mention that I am using Final Draft 8 on a Mac. But I can't imagine there is much difference in the two versions.

I did get a reply a couple of weeks back from the head of the tech department telling me that he is looking into the issue himself. He has not gotten back to me as yet though.

I am really not too happy to have received a message from a submission telling me that there are a lot of formatting faults in a script I recently submitted that I did on Final Draft 8.

But the export and save as... deficiencies are a really serious issue with me right now.

I am going to try to export my scripts to Screenwriter 6 to see if I have better luck. But I see myself redoing them all in that program and hoping for the best.

I personally feel that Final Draft should use all the energy they put into patting themselves on the back on development. We'd all be better off.