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I love Final Draft, but sometimes I’m tempted to ram its head in the virtual shredder for getting something so simple so very wrong!

I spent quite a lot of time converting some short scripts I’d written using a simple screenplay template into Final Draft 8 over the weekend, and I noticed a few bugs which after the third ten-pager really started to drive me nuts;

• The Format Assistant returns ‘Characters should have dialogue’ if an empty element exists directly after a character name, and the subsequent element is a parenthetical (it works correctly if the following element is dialogue)
• Using the Reformat Tool and re-formatting an element to a parenthetical, parentheses replace the existing element entirely (which deletes content) or if the content is not highlighted they are inserted at the cursor position, which results in things like (gasp()ing)
• Using the Reformat tool, and dealing with spaces after each element, the text does not scroll effectively (when you get to the bottom of a page the next element that needs to be re-formatted isn’t readable as its off screen)

I dread ever having to do this for a feature. After using Final Draft for a number of years I’ve found this kind of issue to be pretty commonplace with features that aren’t used every day, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that there’s just one dev/test working on the product. I’ve sent the comments in via their feedback form, but I won’t hold my breath!