TRELBY: Trelby - free, open source screenlay software

T

TrueIndigo

Well-known member
Just come across this - haven't had time to try it out myself - a free, open source, cross platform screenplay writer (the Mac version is still in progress, though). I currently use Final Draft and quite happy with it but maybe this is a useful option to go on my other computers. Here's the link:

www.trelby.org
 
Thanks, over the years I've periodically tried Celtx, which seems to be getting better, though I've never stayed with it (just personal preference, but what's with having to go online just to make a PDF export?). Plus I have Final Draft to compare these others to, and so far see no reason to jump ship yet. But Trelby seems simple to use yet quite fully featured. I just downloaded the Linux version to go on a computer that runs Dream Studio (basically, Ubuntu) and it seems very useable. I started messing around briefly and without reading the manual found it quite straight forward. Still too early to say, but could be a good alternative (and it's free).
 
Nice. I downloaded and installed the Windows version, tested it. Simple, clean, yet powerful. Easily imported a Final Draft 8 script. Can export to a variety including FD xml. I like what it does NOT have--- the almost unchangeable dark gray/black header of FADE IN software that I asked that developer to change but he refused to; so glad i did not buy FADE IN now that trelby exists. Curious why the name "Trelby"; if anything that is the downside of it, a very weird name that is not all that aesthetically appealing.
 
I started with Drama Dog years ago, then moved to Final Draft before jumping ship to Celtx because I needed the crossplatform of Mac/PC/Linux and it's scheduling features. After years with Celtx, I'm switching to Trelby I think for writing. When the script is done, I can copy and paste to Celtx and it preserves the formatting =) I'll continue to schedule in Celtx, unless someone knows of a free alternative that runs on at least PC and Linux?
Trelby is able to import a Celtx script directly, so even though I'm in the middle of writing Leap: Revelation, the switch was completely hassle free. The only option I'd really like to see is the ability to rearrange scenes in a list like you can do with the sidebar in Celtx. I find it handy when I'm trying to rework a story.
 
I've done a lot of using and reading about Trelby lately. The name comes from trilby, a type of hat, hence the logo. That part's lame if you ask me. In the month that I've been using Trelby, I haven't gone back to Celtx once. I'm so over them. From a stability standpoint, Celtx would freeze up on me frequently. I have yet to experience a single lockup in Trelby. This interface is so clean and I love how easy it is to customize. I'm tech savy, but I know nothing about coding, yet I was able to make the cursor thinner and change the icon to a custom one I made. I've also replaced it's courier fonts with Courier Final Draft. My goal was to take it and make it as much like Final Draft as possible. Running it on Ubuntu, all I did was change the fonts, some of the colors, and the code for the cursor. Without really getting into coding (I have zero desire to do that), this is my result:
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El Director said:
... Running it on Ubuntu, ...
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Nice. :) I fricken love linux (Ubuntu et al) except that I do lots of music composition these days using expensive sample libraries and expensive music composition software, that sadly just is not there in linux. Same for video editing. Yes linux has some music composition (Rosegarden) and video editing software, but frankly the software sucks royally, and you can't use the high end professional ($$$) sample libraries (LA Scoring Strings, Cinematic Strings, etc) in linux. How I wish i could have linux as my main OS, i really miss it prior to the music composition days. I guess I am kind of using linux, with my Android (=linux OS) tablet (ASUS Transformer Prime, outstanding tablet).
 
I just put Trelby on my subnotebook PC that I just funked (replaced slow spinning hard drive with new 128 GB SSD solid state drive, holy begeezes it is faster-- 10-20 sec cold boot, 3 sec to sleep, 5 sec to resume, faster R/W) and put linux on; so I put Trelby on that because it is the best screenwriting app out there imho for linux (I do not care for Celtx at all, and as for FADEIN I have expressed to its creator how I really do not care for the dark black theme forced on users when ALL other screenwriting apps [Celtx, Final Draft, Movie Magic, Trelby] have a cleaner lighter interface). I own FD and MM but I will give Trelby a try for a rewrite of a screenplay, easy enough when I am ready to import it into FD or MM for a final tweal, use Trebly until then.

My #1 feature request though for Trelby would be ZOOM. Please Trelby, add a zoom feature, not everybody has perfect 20/20 vision to see (without eye strain) small fonts on small laptop screens.

In any case, installed and functions beautifully in linux (Xubuntu, debian based, .deb install package).
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
My #1 feature request though for Trelby would be ZOOM. Please Trelby, add a zoom feature, not everybody has perfect 20/20 vision to see (without eye strain) small fonts on small laptop screens.
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Go to file, settings, change. From here you can change the display font size. Just make sure that Regular, Bold and Italic are the same size and you won't jack up your page count. The "paper" background will scale with the font.

I tried running Final Draft under WINE, but I can't get the activation to stick. Same with Movie Magic. I had them from years ago. I'm not upset about Final Draft, I'm quite in love with Trelby, but it's be great to get MM Scheduling and Budget to run on Linux. Anyone have any ideas?
 
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El Director said:
Go to file, settings, change. From here you can change the display font size. Just make sure that Regular, Bold and Italic are the same size and you won't jack up your page count. The "paper" background will scale with the font.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I did boost the font sizes to 14, but I figured that would also artificially bump up the page count. Still, a zoom feature would be so nice, and it can not be that hard to implement because it is so frequently found in open source software, so the programming community should be able to contribute code to add this in a future version.

I tried running Final Draft under WINE, but I can't get the activation to stick. Same with Movie Magic. I had them from years ago. I'm not upset about Final Draft, I'm quite in love with Trelby, but it's be great to get MM Scheduling and Budget to run on Linux. Anyone have any ideas?
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Ditto. However yesterday I installed a beta version of Wine and then installed Trillian for Windows and it worked flawless, but yeah FD has never worked good with Wine/linux. A workaround is a virtualized Windows on linux, I have done that, but that is kind of a pain in the arse, much better to have a native running app like Trelby. Not too cool on the name Trelby, I think the project should take suggestions from screenwriters on different names, consider a name change (they already changed the name from the original open source code Blyte from which Trelby has its origins)-- how about a name related to, uh, writing screenplays (just look at the competitors' names-- Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter, FADEIN...). Anyhow, I might give MM or FD a bottle of Wine, see what happens just for fun.

What I have done, very successfully, as I love linux but am a prisoner to Windows because of music composition and video editing is to run a virtualized linux on my Windows 7 system, and in a transparent mode I can have linux apps running in Windows and you can not even tell that linux is running, very funky-- and what I like about linux is the compiz/beryl graphics you can get that is beyond what Windows offers, like funky wobbly windows when moving them, live rain drops on the screen while writing, stuff like that.

Oh, I also was able to get Character Writer to work well in linux using Wine, nice software for char development.
 
Interesting. I did boost the font sizes to 14, but I figured that would also artificially bump up the page count. Still, a zoom feature would be so nice, and it can not be that hard to implement because it is so frequently found in open source software, so the programming community should be able to contribute code to add this in a future version.
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I read on the development forums that they're looking at implementing a zoom feature, but my understanding is that it's just a UI way of changing the display size like we can do now. I'm currently beta testing version 2.2 that has the scene navigator and undo/redo. Both features are looking/working very nice. The navigator will allow for outlining by adding a scene, and then a note, rather than action or dialogue. Trelby recognizes the note as a summary. Pretty cool. The only thing missing from the navigator right now is the ability to rearrange scenes. I figured out a work around that I'll suggest could be scripted, I just don't have the skills to do it myself.

Not too cool on the name Trelby, I think the project should take suggestions from screenwriters on different names, consider a name change (they already changed the name from the original open source code Blyte from which Trelby has its origins)-- how about a name related to, uh, writing screenplays (just look at the competitors' names-- Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter, FADEIN...)
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I can send you my icons if you want. It's better than just looking at the purple hat :)

What I have done, very successfully, as I love linux but am a prisoner to Windows because of music composition and video editing is to run a virtualized linux on my Windows 7 system, and in a transparent mode I can have linux apps running in Windows and you can not even tell that linux is running, very funky-- and what I like about linux is the compiz/beryl graphics you can get that is beyond what Windows offers, like funky wobbly windows when moving them, live rain drops on the screen while writing, stuff like that.
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I wish I could implement something like this, but I doubt this laptop could handle it :(

When my new laptop arrives, I'll be doing a fun tutorial of the software to help people feel more at ease with switching. It'll be videocopilot style, but for Trelby instead of After Effects :)
 
Well, one thing i fear, perhaps the opensource nature of Trelby will prevent this from a legal perspective, is that Trelby might be bought out at some point to take it off the market. Movie Magic features a nice navigator / outliner, lousy index card feature, and having that outliner/nav in Trelby would be seen as a threat perhaps to MM. I saw the buyout happen with perhaps the greatest screenwriting software in existence, Sophocles; Sophocles was levels better than anything on the market including FD and MM, so of course it was bought out and then disappeared on the radar, so sad to see that happen. Honestly if I could remember or discover who bought out Sophocles causing its extinction, I think I would boycott that company's software. I had a beta version of Sophocles Pro with a temp license key, when it went off the market/radar it would not work, authentication issues I think.
 
El Director--

I just installed Movie Magic Screenwriter on my linux (xubuntu 64 bit) laptop, it even activated through the web browser so i could see my activations, deleted a couple added my linux laptop, activation was successful. Couple of kinks-- it complains of an error on start up (bummer on their end, their anti piracy software is having issues i am sure-- but this is a legal version i purchased), so i just dismiss that window; that same windows popped up when i wanted to close MM and i had to run an xkill command in a terminal and click on the window titlebar of MM to kill it. Installed and running MM through beta version of Wine. All in all not sure i would trust MM running through Wine, risks of instability would worry me, just I wrote that great scene in a screenplay; probably better to go with an opensource project like Trelby, which over time should save us a boatload of cash not having to constantly paying for new versions of software.
R
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
El Director--

I just installed Movie Magic Screenwriter on my linux (xubuntu 64 bit) laptop, it even activated through the web browser so i could see my activations, deleted a couple added my linux laptop, activation was successful. Couple of kinks-- it complains of an error on start up (bummer on their end, their anti piracy software is having issues i am sure-- but this is a legal version i purchased), so i just dismiss that window; that same windows popped up when i wanted to close MM and i had to run an xkill command in a terminal and click on the window titlebar of MM to kill it. Installed and running MM through beta version of Wine. All in all not sure i would trust MM running through Wine, risks of instability would worry me, just I wrote that great scene in a screenplay; probably better to go with an opensource project like Trelby, which over time should save us a boatload of cash not having to constantly paying for new versions of software.
R
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I got the schedule and budget installed, even activated again, but once I closed the programs and tried to open again, the activation was toast and the only workaround I found is to delete my WINE folder and reinstall :(
Yeah, I'm not leaving Trelby anytime soon. I'm actually having fun writing again.
 
El Director said:
I got the schedule and budget installed, even activated again, but once I closed the programs and tried to open again, the activation was toast and the only workaround I found is to delete my WINE folder and reinstall :(
Yeah, I'm not leaving Trelby anytime soon. I'm actually having fun writing again.
Click to expand...

I forgot to mention, when I installed MM, I chose to do the minimal install, figuring that might work best and have the least issues. So likely my install did not include scheduling, etc.


But I was beating in Trelby this morning on my xubuntu laptop and was liking the fact that I could just type and beat in kind of a simple word processor mode without the software getting in my face like MM and FD do about whether what I am typing is a slugline, action, etc; although I know MM and FD have hotkeys and such to go into simple word processor mode.

Noticed another benefit of converting my laptop to an SSD drive linux machine--- as I write a lot at Caribou Coffee, normally (in MS Windows) when run a browser, it takes about 20 seconds for the browser to somehow register with the wifi at the coffee shop, but with linux that is not happening, kind of a nice perk of using linux at the coffee shop wifi, plus a linux laptop at the coffee shop is more secure against nefarious identity thieves who might hang out at coffee shops doing digital sniffing of others at the shop using wifi, looking for usernames, passwords, etc. I own both MM and FD, kind of switched from using MM to FD about a year ago, will have to consider Trelby now. For several reasons-- Trelby is free, works on both my linux laptop and my Windows 7 desktop (which I need, for music composition and video editing), is opensource which I like to support and use, will always be free (not costly upgrades every couple of years for a new version), and aesthetically (very impt to me) I like the clean interface, simple colors (not the forced dark black scheme of FADEIN software). I have Dropbox on my Windows PC and my linux laptop, so easy to go back and forth on writing screenplays between the two computers.

If the following happen in Trelby over the next year, I will be hooked on Trelby: variable zoom text feature, navigator outliner. And if Trelby can add, on top of the zoom and navigator features yet to happen, an index card feature similar to Final Draft, that will have MM and FD running scared, and would win me over completely, much like I use open source Openoffice instead of expensive proprietary MS Office, and I use GIMP instead of Photoshop, and Seamonkey for HTML editing, and VLC for playing videos (VLC just fricking works, compatible with pretty much every coded out there, it just works, and has skins, elegant).
 
El Director said:
Maybe I should upgrade to the beta version of WINE. I'm using the stable one right now since this laptop is so old
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I got FD installed via the Wine beta yesterday, but the activation would not work-- but today I think I am going to try the manual activation, which I think means i have to call the company, but if that works I might have a working version of FD 8 on my linux laptop, which would cause to me take pause on using Trelby or FD 8. But native is always better, compared to running through Wine, unless the liquored up :) FD8 were to run very stable.
 
What's cool too about Trelby is that if somebody wanted the darker colors, it's easy to change and build a preset for. And it's clean interface, along with page count (so basic) is why I left Celtx behind. I tried going back into Celtx the other day to back up my script to the Cloud. I exported my Trelby script, brought it into Celtx and saved it online- the entire time the program was sluggish and clunky, not a joy to use.

I used manual activation on my Final Draft and it didn't stick. Just a heads up. I've made up my mind, Trelby it is. For the features I use, I'm happy and can run it on PC/Linux as you said.
 
El Director said:
...I used manual activation on my Final Draft and it didn't stick. Just a heads up. I've made up my mind, Trelby it is. For the features I use, I'm happy and can run it on PC/Linux as you said.
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Will save me some time then, and i will not have to give me private cell phone # to Final Draft. If Trelby is open source, don't they have to make the course code available? If so, one could easily change the name of the program if that became an OCD issue, which it might for me, lol. I could name it Whackadoodle if I wanted to, or whatever, just for private use! I wonder how I would get the source code? I used to lots of coding in my younger days (C, C++, Pascal, Java, Fortran, Cobol, BASIC, etc) so I imagine I could compile it; heck if got to know the code, i might even contribute to helping the project along with improvements.
 
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