DriveScrubber 3 - Keep Your Hard Drive Clean

A look at the readme.txt file that comes with the program prior to installation does not inspire confidence. For example: “Clicking on the ruler no longer crashes the program,” “The program no longer crashes when dragging and dropping a Script,” and there are a lot more where that came from. It makes one wonder why so many earlier versions were not tested adequately and then sold anyway. Not only that, but other questions can be raised. For example, were these longstanding problems that took too long to fix or were these new problems caused during the development of a more recent version? Moreover, what kind of unhappy surprises are in store for the user installing this program for the first time?

Final Draft utilizes a basic set of features as well as another set of what might be called "special features." The basic and special features available in Final Draft are those that would be expected in any high-end scriptwriting software and include things such as the following:

· To begin a “new” project, one can choose from 15 Script templates, which include everything from “BBC Screenplay for TV” to US Screenplay (Spanish); six Text Documents, which includes everything from Manuscript to Treatment; and 80 TV Templates, which includes everything from 24 to Without a Trace. While not exhaustive, this provides ample coverage.

· The ability to import files from any word processor and then export to a variety of formats including PDF. This is important because of document protection issues.

· A Format Assistant. This is an option that checks a script for common formatting errors, such as missing dialog, extra spaces, carriage returns, and blank elements. Once it's run, a window opens showing a list of errors that can be easily fixed by simply selecting Fix. This is a nice feature.

· Index Card/Outline/Navigator Panels are available so that instead of editing a script on a standard page, the user can display a script in Index Card format or in an outline. This makes navigation easier and aids in script development.

· A Creative Handbook is included that contains a number of sample contracts from the Writers Guild of America, West. This would fall more in the category of special features, but could nevertheless be quite useful.

· Another special feature would include the “Ask the Expert” option. This allows the user to obtain useful hints about their project.

· Avid XML Export Script: Files can be exported to Avid editing tools for use with Script-based editing and subtitling.

· The CollaboWriter feature allows user to write, edit, and discuss a script with other Final Draft users in real time over the Internet.

· Final Draft has a feature called Voices that can read back a script using a variety of electronic voices that can be modified by the user.

· The Production feature uses pop-up menus to allow an in-production script to be locked, and will create pages to help keep the script intact when content is added or removed.

This is a strong set of features and, given a sWhat's Not: 

Having features is one thing; however, using these features is probably not going to be intuitive for the novice. Additionally, while Final Draft provides a feature-rich environment, there are still at least a couple of things missing. For example:

· There’s no template for a comic-book script.

· The program exports to Avid editing tools but not to Final Cut Pro.

· There’s no introductory demo. The unfamiliar/novice user has to go to the User’s Guide and flip pages while simultaneously trying to construct a script. Thus, it would be better if some kind of demo came with the program.

Files cannot be imported directly from Word. Final Draft will only open other documents if they are in either Notepad (.txt) or WordPad (.rtf) format. This forces the Word user to copy and paste into either Notepad or WordPad, save the file, and then in Final Draft, follow the File -> Open -> select procedure so that a new document (.txt or .rtf) can be converted to either Script or Text format. This is simple enough and works just fine in the .txt case, but in the .rtf case, the Script conversion merges one of the templates from the File -> New procedure into the imported/converted document. As a result, Final Draft will only import/convert Notepad documents and will--let’s just say--unhappily alter WordPad converted documents.

The title page is separate from the rest of the script, rather than the first page of a script. This represents an unnecessary level of complication for those who want the title page in the same file as the main document.

For some of the TV show templates, Final Draft calls the show title an Action instead of a show title and it calls an episode name, you guessed it, an Action.

The program has an unusual way of locking two lines together and not responding to carriage returns.

If the user selects a template during a previous session, then from that time on, the program opens with that template instead of, for example, a blank project or nothing.

While the spell checker correctly flags suspected words, the user has to struggle through several right and left clicks in order to open up the usual window needed to select the Ignore command. But even if one is successful with the Ignore command, the red squiggly underline either doesn’t disappear at all or disappears only after a mysterious and uncorrelated delay. Once sufficiently annoyed by this, the only recourse is to use the Tools -> Spelling option. This feature, however, doesn’t update even after Skip is selected, which forces the user to go through the process twice in order to get the program to perform the skip function.