I write my scripts with Word.<\/p>\n
Yes, I do.\u00a0 But let me explain.<\/p>\n
I learnt on WordPerfect<\/a> way back when.\u00a0 I knew no better: its WYSIWYG was non-existent and its interface was spartan if not downright ugly.\u00a0 But I managed to publish a newsletter with it, complete with pictures and two- and three-column layouts, all courtesy of the wonderful and powerful ShowCodes<\/em> feature.\u00a0 In pre-mouse days, that kind of stuff needed DTP-capable Macs.<\/p>\n Then I changed jobs and had to learn Micro$oft Word<\/a>.\u00a0 It was a painful transition.\u00a0 It wasn’t just the different way of doing the same things, it was the range of inconsistencies in one package (one package!<\/em>) that made me want to toss the CPU out the window.\u00a0 In those early years when I wrestled with The Transition, it took a long time for Word to catch up to the capabilities of WordPerfect.<\/p>\n I still use Word.\u00a0 Fifteen years of contemptuous familiarity will do that.\u00a0 I’ve survived each of Micro$oft’s updates with cascades of epithets.\u00a0 But I’ll allow this much for it: now it’s a powerful flagship wordprocessor and if you know what you’re doing, you can be pretty shit-hot with it.<\/p>\n A few years back, I migrated from the Blue Screens of Death<\/a> and onto some Apple goodness<\/a>.\u00a0 And lo, having coughed up for Office for Mac<\/em> out of necessity, I discovered that WordPerfect for Mac<\/a> was not only downloadable, it was free, too.<\/p>\n Of course I downloaded it.\u00a0 And upon installation it looked so… Eighties.\u00a0 Call me shallow but its optimised-for-640×480 look clashed too much with the 1280×854 resolution of everything else on the desktop.\u00a0 Any thoughts of full-migration were dashed by a complete lack of forward compatibility.\u00a0 And so it sat patiently on my dock for a couple of years, a gesture to the good ol’ days and nothing more.<\/p>\n Some work-avoidance surfing last year put me onto OpenOffice.org<\/a> and its cousin NeoOffice<\/a>.\u00a0 The idea of a free, open-source productivity suite seemed too good to be true.\u00a0 The time and effort required to retrain both my fingers and whatever options it offered seemed wasteful since I was already using Micro$oft Office.\u00a0 But… I wondered what it might have in store for me.\u00a0 In a lull between shooting anything that moved<\/a>, I gave NeoOffice a go.<\/p>\n I was quietly impressed.\u00a0 It will do almost everything Office for Mac does, most of the time the same way, it’s compatible with at least twice as many programs out there (as opposed to, say, Word and its ability to open… Word documents), and best of all, it’s free<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Yeah, it’s crashed.\u00a0 Once.\u00a0 A damned nuisance but heck – c’est la vie<\/em> for a free program.\u00a0 (And who’s Micro$oft to snigger?\u00a0 Of all the apps I use, it’s the Micro$oft apps that fall over the most often.)\u00a0 After the crash, I upgraded and updated appropriately and NeoOffice has been the suite of first choice since last December.<\/p>\n I may have taken a backward step by migrating from the devil-I-know Word to an open-source app.\u00a0 But it feels good<\/em> – I exercised choice<\/em>, something almost forgotten on this Micro$oft-infested planet.<\/p>\n And as for the scriptwriting – will I plunk down for a professional program like stalwarts Final Draft<\/a> and Movie Magic Screenwriter<\/a>, or upstarts Celtx<\/a> and Sophocles<\/a>?\u00a0 Why should I? \u00a0I can generate industry-standard scripts with both NeoOffice and Word already.<\/p>\n I’ll migrate to a professional program eventually.\u00a0 But until then, it’ll be me and my new bud, NeoOffice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I write my scripts with Word. Yes, I do.\u00a0 But let me explain. I learnt on WordPerfect way back when.\u00a0 I knew no better: its WYSIWYG was non-existent and its interface was spartan if not downright ugly.\u00a0 But I managed to publish a newsletter with it, complete with pictures and two- and three-column layouts, all … <\/p>\n