Feature Roadmap & Changelog

Where we are headed

Next Up

  • Automatic Chapter Numbering
  • Markdown Title Pages

Coming Soon

  • Custom Themes
  • Custom Templates
  • Printed Notes

Bigger Things

  • Starred Revisions
  • Drag and Drop Navigator
  • Production Features

How we got here

2.8.1

Fixes

  • Fixed a bug causing crashes with the new backup system. Sorry!

2.8.0

New

  • Preferences > Backups now stores full .highland document with optional plain text copy
  • Two new Templates: Wiki and Speech

Improvement

  • Additional font options to existing templates, which replace Guidebook and Journal

Fixes

  • Adjusted margins of dual dialogue in PDFs
  • Selecting multiple lines and hitting ~ converts those lines to lyrics (prepends the tilde to each line)
  • Adjusted Bin text color for better readability
  • About box Acknowledgment button properly labeled
  • Syntax Highlighting of Character Cues with accents and other unicode letters
  • Suppress bold/italic/etc styling inside of code blocks
  • Updated the cheat sheets to make dual dialogue syntax more clear

2.7.2

Fixes

  • Scene numbers export to. fdx files
  • Scene numbers import from .fdx files
  • Dialogue blocks with multiple parentheticals parse correctly in Multi-Cam documents
  • Dual Dialogue in Stage Plays doesn’t get cut off
  • Scene header auto-complete works correctly if you’re using a custom location (as set in Preferences > International)

Improvements

  • Scene numbers match bold setting of scene headers (as set in Preferences > Document)
  • Preview display settings (Single, Two-Page, etc) and zoom state are better remembered
  • Dual dialogue positioning is nudged slightly to the left
  • Character cues & scene headers with slashes in them auto-complete more consistently

2.7.1

Improvements

  • Added the page count to the status bar

2.7.0

Improvements

  • Launch screen now includes new Templates and Sample Documents to get you started
  • Toggle the sidebar open/closed using the current panel’s keyboard shortcut (e.g. Cmd-1 for the Navigator). Very useful for a quick peek.
  • The Multi-Cam template now respects the global scene header styling, and includes an option to turn off uppercased Action
  • System accent color now used for the preview’s Save PDF button for readability in custom themes

2.6.11

Fixes

  • Fixees writing in Chinese, Korean, and other non-Roman character sets

2.6.10

Fixes

  • Corrects preview issue on macOS 10.15 Catalina*
  • Character highlighting boxes in PDFs draw correctly
  • Prevents crashes due to unexpected/incomplete {{directive}} formatting
  • Reduces memory usage and closes memory leaks
  • Simplifies adding a blank line between list items
  • Drag-and-dropping scenes in the Navigator carries their content with them

Improvements

  • Highland 2 starts up faster
  • Allows drag and dropping from the Bin in one document to another document’s Bin
  • Improves PDF generation performance
  • Horizontal lines (---) in Markdown documents show up better in the Editor, and are printed as separator lines in PDFs. In Manuscripts, they’re printed as standard scene separators (a centered # on the line by itself)
  • Screenplay dialogue at the bottom of the page will try to squeeze an extra line onto the page, rather than split the dialogue across pages

2.6.9

Fixes

  • Fixes autocompletion of scene headers and character names
  • Adds new template fonts
  • Prevents printed notes from overlapping other text
  • Supports centered, forced right, and forced left when exporting to FDX
  • Improved compatibility with other Textbundle supporting apps

2.6.8

Fixes

  • Fixes a bug that disables the Revisions popover UI after you change templates
  • Fixes a bug where Assets panel wouldn't warn you to convert to .highland (when working on a plain text document)

2.6.7

Fixes

  • Character Highlighting aligns correctly in preview
  • Images display at proper size
  • Stats goal updates correctly when switching between page and word goals
  • Page breaks exported to RTF
  • Notes exported to .fdx as ScriptNotes
  • Linked scrolling fixed in macOS 10.15 Catalina
  • PDF preview background color adjusted in macOS 10.15 Catalina so you can better identify individual pages

Improvements

  • Undo/redo with Revisions Mode enabled should be greatly improved
  • Size of the application has been cut in half

2.6.6

Bug Fixes

  • Fixes crashes affecting some users.

2.6.5

Bug Fixes

  • Screenplay PDF line breaking should consistently match the Editor when using the Narrow column setting and fixed-width font.
  • Improve paragraph breaking in RTF exports
  • Remove extraneous file extensions when using the Duplicate menu command
  • Performance improvements

2.6.4

Bug Fixes

  • Fix Help menu Slack URL for Pro Users

2.6.3

Bug Fixes

  • Small UI Fixes

2.6.2

Bug Fixes

  • Fixes a bug causing single brackets to format strangely in the Editor

Improvements

  • Improved "Show Invisibles" when using non-Courier fonts
  • Greatly reduces the the frequency of Revision consistency warnings

2.6.1

Bug Fixes

  • Fixes a bug causing long notes to be formatted weirdly in Editor

2.6.0

In addition to a bunch of bug fixes, Highland 2.6 adds four new features.

What's New

  • Endnotes! Need to add an aside, or cite your research? Highland 2.6 makes it a snap. Not only do your notes automatically number themselves, they even link in the PDF.

  • Checklists. Making a list? Checking it twice? Highland 2.6 makes that easier.

  • Title Page Images We’ve tweaked how images work on title pages so that it’s easier to add a graphic or logo.

  • Watermarks [PRO] Need to add a simple watermark to your document? Choose Format > Insert Watermark.

Bug Fixes

  • PDF Includes now work correctly
  • Improved dragging and dropping section headers in Navigator
  • Themes popover resizes to fit long custom theme names
  • The document's tile no longer overlaps with text when toolbar is hidden
  • Notes in Fountain dialogue no longer causes extra line breaks
  • Scene Header autocomplete should be much less aggressive

2.5.2

What's New

  • Student Edition Students in participating classrooms can now upgrade the app with a free student license.

Improvements

  • Drag and drop in the navigator now works with filtering enabled, and should generally work better
  • Unlock the Stageplay and Graphic Novel templates
  • Allow bold/italic styling inside of words. This should make it work better with Chinese and some other languages
  • Word Analysis now includes a legend for the different colors, and it’s more clear that you can click on each word for additional actions

Bug Fixes

  • Synopses in all caps won’t be mistaken as Character Cues

2.5.1

Improvements

  • Dark Mode cursor in Mojave

Bug Fixes

  • Import and Export of FDX (Final Draft)
  • Launch Screen issues
  • Miscellaneous crashes
  • Theme Builder loading

2.5

What's New

  • Revision Mode! [PRO] Track your changes in different colors, complete with stars in the margin. The industry standard for screenplays now available for all documents.

  • Custom Themes! Build your own themes using our new Theme Builder. You can rename, delete, or share themes from the new Themes Preferences panel.

  • Drag and Drop Navigator! Reorder your scenes, sections and other elements right in the Navigator.

  • Title Pages in all Templates We’ve added Title Pages to all templates. This is especially useful for Manuscripts, which can now be made submission-ready entirely in Highland 2.

  • Printable Gender Analysis Reports [PRO] Want to share your script’s Gender breakdown with others? Now you can turn the Gender Analysis Report into a great-looking PDF.

  • Word Analysis [PRO] See which words you’re using most frequently, which words aren’t in the dictionary, which words are different between the US and the UK, and even which adverbs you’re using.

  • Sample Documents Confused about how Highland 2 works? Looking for a starting point to build a document? Pick one from our built-in samples.

  • Convert to Narrated Script Convert a Screenplay into a Narrated Script, which translates your document into a speakable format perfect for Apple’s built-in voiceover tools.

  • “What’s New” Window Never miss a feature update! We’ll let you know when we fix or add cool things to the app.

Improvements

  • UI Refinements We’ve tweaked quite a bit, including new chromeless windows and a redesigned Launch screen..

  • Video Tutorials Learn how to use all of Highland 2’s features with new videos accessible from the Launch screen.

  • Interruptible Sprints Sometimes you need to bail on a Sprint early. Highland 2.5 records your progress up to that point, so you don’t have to worry about losing progress.

  • Custom alignments in HEADER and FOOTER Love a template, but need more control over Headers and Footers? You can now add forced alignment markup to Headers and Footers.

  • New Manuscript options Highland 2.5 can automatically pad section headings and remove the indentation from the first paragraph of a section. Manuscript is also now available in Basic.

  • Simplified Cheat Sheet We’ve merged the Fountain and Markdown Cheat Sheets to create a single reference for writers. It now works offline as well.

  • Superscripts Need to throw in some algebra? We’ve got you covered. Just use the caret notation to create superscripts, e.g. a^2 + b^2 = c^2. [Shoutout to Pythagoras]

  • Better Dual Dialogue Formatting We’ve tweaked how dual dialogue is printed in Screenplay PDFs. We’ve also improved character highlighting of dual dialogue, both in the Editor and the Preview.

  • Forced Page Break behavior more consistent Forced Page Break markup now always means “start on the next page,” resulting in fewer blank pages. (If you want to insert a blank page, you can still do so with two forced page breaks.)

  • Table of Contents links in PDFs For PDFs, Table of Contents creates links within the document. Handy!

  • Links in Script templates Script templates now support links in the form of title.

Bug Fixes

  • Navigator jumping to the top when you add text to the bottom of your document
  • Bin selection when deleting a Bin item
  • Final Draft 11 support for tagged Character Cues
  • Splitting term lists across pages
  • Using Dropbox as a Backups folder should work more consistently
  • Automatic list numbering is more reliable
  • Better handling of underscores within words (e.g. this_and_that)
  • Removed font size changes via the pinch gesture
  • Highland 2 will remember the PDF options
  • Save the Page Setup settings (paper size, etc) with a document. This means if you set a document to A4 you won’t have to set it again

2.2

What's New

  • Save Gender Analysis reports as PDF [Pro]
  • Word Analysis [Pro]
  • Support for macOS 10.14 Mojave Dark Mode
  • Include your notes in PDFs
  • Track New Words and New Pages as goals in the Stats panel
  • Added Forced Left markup (lines starting with a <)
  • Open ancient Final Draft .fdr files! Literally one person asked about this, so we did it.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Automatic list numbering is more reliable
  • Centered text in the editor stays centered when you change the font
  • Better handling of underscores within words (e.g. this_and_that)
  • Complex combinations of bold and italics should be more reliable
  • Forced scene headers and forced transitions from the Format menu insert on the correct line
  • Removed font size changes via the pinch gesture
  • Table of contents work with multiple section header levels (e.g. {{TOC: # ###}})
  • Highland 2 will remember the PDF options (paragraph numbers, synopses, etc)
  • Selected word count updates as you’re selecting

2.1.1

What’s New

  • {{CHAPTER}}, {{PANEL}}, and {{FIGURE}} directives. They work like the {{SERIES}} directive, but keep their own counters
  • Markers are shown in the Navigator
  • Centering now has a keyboard shortcut (Cmd->)

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Character highlighting in dual dialogue is improved
  • Improved dual dialogue placement on the page
  • En and em dashes can be used as separators in Fountain Scene Headers
  • Hitting Cmd-/ inside a note (without a text selection) will jump outside the note rather than inserting a new note
  • Show Markup in Navigator preference is respected
  • Link Scrolling preference is respected
  • Navigator reflects current value of {{SERIES}}
  • Quick Find for special characters like ‘$’
  • Custom terms added in Preferences can be edited immediately

2.1.0

This is a major update! You’ll notice quite a few changes.

What’s New

  • Redesigned Preferences window! We’ve reorganized settings across four panels and added many new features.
  • In General preferences, you can choose to exclude notes, synopses and boneyards from word counts in Statistics or the status bar.
  • In Document preferences, you can opt to have scene headers underlined.
  • In International preferences, you can choose custom terms for scene header locations (like INT and EXT), times of day, transitions, and More/Cont’d.
  • In Backup preferences, you can choose to automatically save a plain text version of your file at regular intervals.

But there’s more!

  • “Quick Find” command (Shift-Command-F) is a faster way to do quick searches through your document.
  • Markers can now be named. Example: {{%m: Tommy’s first appearance}}
  • “Jump to...” command under the Tools menu (Shift-Command-J) lets you jump a named marker or section. (Such as #showdown)

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Improved orphan control when splitting paragraphs across page breaks, especially in screenplays.
  • Send Feedback button in the window titlebar works again. Sorry!
  • Fixed crashes when adding/removing Scene Numbers.

2.0.9

What’s New

  • Stage Play and MLA templates are now included in Basic
  • Times New Roman added as a font option to the Stage Play template
  • Synopses become ScriptNotes (uggh) when exporting to Final Draft

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Option-dragging to the Bin copies an item, rather than cutting it
  • {{SERIES}} directives no longer insert extra line breaks
  • “Print Synopses” works correctly in Preview
  • Hiding/unhiding the app keeps you in Editor or Preview
  • Parentheticals in Multi-Cam no longer swallow the next line of dialogue
  • Centered text in Screenplay adjusted to look better on the page
  • Section headers less likely to be stranded at the bottom of a page
  • Title page Title, Author, and Source values now wrap properly
  • Character Highlighting now a sheet rather than a floating window. We think this improves usability, especially in full screen.

2.0.8

What’s New

  • Bin items can now be searched/filtered (like the Navigator)
  • {{SERIES}} inserts auto-incrementing numbers. Ex. ‘# Chapter {{SERIES}}’ will print ‘Chapter 1’ the first time you use it, and ‘Chapter 2’ the next time. You can reset/change numbers by passing the new number to start counting at like this: {{SERIES: 100}}
  • {{TIMESTAMP}} inserts the date a document is previewed or printed (including in Fountain title pages). Custom formatting is available (see http://nsdateformatter.com for reference and examples)
  • You can now align term lists. Ex: ‘Term :: Right >’

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Manuscripts use the body font for HEADERS and FOOTERS
  • Text highlighting works better with Character Highlighting
  • Italicize lyrics in dual dialogue
  • Alignment of lists with multiple spaces after the list marker
  • Remove extra line(s) after dual dialogue blocks
  • Suppress auto-capitalization of text in parentheticals
  • Bin items should always load in the same order

2.0.7

What’s New

  • Hovering over a template will show you a preview of it, even if it’s a Pro template.
  • Added a character (letter) count to the Statistics panel.
  • Added “Show Status Bar” under View menu, so you can see word and character count when not in Stats panel.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • “Duplicate” menu command now defaults to “filename (copy).”
  • Fixed underlining parts of action in Multi-Cam scripts.
  • Bin items are correctly copied to the new document when converting to .highland from a plain text file.

2.0.6

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Improves support for non-Latin character sets, including Chinese, Korean and Russian.
  • Fixes macOS built-in dictation. (Try it! “Start Dictation” under the Edit menu.)
  • Fixes issues upgrading to Pro on some MacBook Pros.
  • Fixes issues with Gender Analysis counts.
  • Shows the price of Pro upgrade in your local currency on the Upgrade button.
  • Corrects several typos we can’t believe we missed.

2.0.5

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixes several bugs, including crashes related to page breaks and Show Invisibles.

2.0 Release

  • Public launch

2.0b37 (Zorak)

What’s New

  • Improved PDF parser
  • Fixes crashes in macOS 10.12 Sierra
  • Fixes problems with selected text word counts
  • Allow wrapping of selected text with underscores (_) for underlining
  • Improved autocompletion of Character names
  • Highlight markup (+) is automatically removed if you hit + on an already highlighted text
  • Fixes file names sent to a printer
  • Fixes color of PDF text

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Added font options to the Graphic Novel template
  • Updated the editor’s cursor (I-beam) to be more visible in dark themes
  • Fixed printing of term/cast lists (term::definition)
  • Added term list support to title pages
  • Fixed a bug preventing Highland from remember the last window size you used
  • Fixed character highlighting in PDFs for character cues a parenthetical (like ‘VO’)
  • New Title Page insertion sheet (under the Format menu)
  • Fixes opening of theme popover
  • Fixes random crashes

2.0b36 (Buttercup)

What’s New

  • Fountain’s boneyard markup is now supported in Markdown documents.
  • You can send support emails directly from Highland, rather than being pushed to your web browser.
  • Updated theme colors.
  • “Copy as HTML” now wraps paragraphs in <p> tags.
  • The first few letters of dialogue will no longer trigger Character name auto-completion.
  • Fixed pagination errors causing some text to be cut off at the bottom of pages.
  • Scene numbers at the top of pages now print correctly.
  • Improved indentation of new lines in the Editor.
  • New Upgrade and Thank You screens.

2.0b35 (Boo Boo)

What’s New

Fountain & Markdown file handling. Sometimes you’re working with Fountain or Markdown files, and you don’t really want to convert into .highland.

Starting with this release, we’re making Fountain and Markdown files directly editable once again. That is, if you open a .fountain or .markdown file, Highland 2 won’t automatically convert it into .highland. When you save, it will still be the same format as when you opened it.

You can also explicitly create a plain text document with the aptly-titled New Plain Text Document command under the File menu.

.highland Quick Look. This update includes a Quick Look plugin for .highland files, so you’ll be able to preview them from the Finder as you could with .fountain.

User interface tweaks. We’ve added delete buttons the Bin and Asset panel items to make deleting items more discoverable.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Bold and underline weren’t working on title pages. We fixed that.

2.0b34 (Yogi)

What’s New

One last file format change. We recently introduced the .highland bundle file format, but many users were finding it difficult to transfer .highland files over the internet.

To make these files easier to use, we’ve modified the format to be based on the zip compression format, rather than a folder.

Forced page numbers Sometimes you really need to renumber the pages. For example, if you have a dedication page after your title page, you probably still want the first page of your script to be 1. Now you can do that.

{{PAGENUMBER: 1}}

Will make the current page 1, and start counting from there. (Any integer will do, so you could start at 16 if that’s what you need.)

If you set the page number to something that’s not an integer, it will stay that way until you change it.

Assets panel improvements. First, you can now QuickLook items in the Assets panel. Just select the item and hit space (same as in the Finder) and you’ll get a system generated QuickLook of the item.

Second, you can now rename assets directly in the sidebar. Select an item, then click on its name and you can edit it in place. Any usage of that asset in your text document will be updated to match the new name.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • New documents remember the last template you chose.
  • Sprints will give you the correct word count (instead of a negative number -- yeesh!)
  • The Assemble menu command works with .highland files.
  • Adding or removing assets correctly rebuilds the PDF preview (you don’t get stale previews).
  • Character highlighting works correctly.
  • Spit-and-polish on UI elements.

2.0b33 (Barney Rubble)

What’s New

Sidebar Changes! You’ll notice a new folder icon in the sidebar, which replaces Links (for Markdown documents) and Characters (for Fountain documents). Now, no matter what kind of document you’re working on, the icons will be consistent.

The new panel is called Assets, and shows a list of all images and files you’ve imported into your document.

Updated Character Highlighting list. We’ve moved the Character Highlighting list into its own window, now accessible from the “Tools” menu command. We also show you how many lines each character has, and their first page with dialogue.

UI tweaks. We’re working on cleaning up the interface, standardizing labels, and adding remaining polish to the app.


2.0b32 (Gaia)

What’s New

New file format! We’ve added a new package format for Highland 2. Instead of ending with a .fountain or .markdown extension, files will now end with a .highland extension by default.

As always, Highland 2 will happily open .fountain and .markdown files. But in order to allow for support of all of the app’s features, these files will be treated as converted documents, just like PDF or .fdx files.

We have four main motivations behind this changing to a package format.

  • Sandboxing
  • Keeping plain text cruft-free
  • Planning for future features
  • Simplicity for users

When you double-click a .highland file, it opens in Highland 2. That seems good and obvious. But with .fountain and .markdown, users couldn’t always predict what would happen.

The .highland format is based on the standard .textbundle Markdown format, and we’re going to publish the full spec when the app is ready.

Milestones. Highland 2 has long had a “Goals” feature, allowing users to set short term writing goals. We’ve now expanded this feature to keep running track of your goals and progress. We now call this feature Milestones.

Progress reports. Now you can see your progress for both Milestones and Writesprints across all your documents. Just hit the “View Report” button in the Stats sidebar panel or from the Writesprints popover.

PDF includes

Highland 2 now allows you to INCLUDE PDFs. Simply drag them in from the Finder. You’ll get a line that looks like this:

{{INCLUDE: french-title-page.pdf}}

When you print or preview, Highland 2 will insert the entire PDF.


2.0b31 (Jonny Quest)

What’s New

Flexible Title Pages. Fountain’s default title pages work well for most screenplays, but there are times when you want a little more control over where text is placed. So we’re letting you do that.

You can think of the title page having six regions, each with its own name:

TL - Top Left TC - Top Center TR - Top Right CC - Center Center BL - Bottom Left BR - Bottom Right


2.0b30 (Space Ghost)

What’s New

Getting Started. We want to make it as easy as we can for new users to started with Highland 2, so we’ve added a Getting Started system to walk people through the key features of the app.

TouchBar support. If you have one of the new fancy pants MacBook Pros, Highland 2 now fully supports the TouchBar.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed an autocomplete bug with apostrophes in scene headers and character names
  • Fixed an Editor bug that prevented page breaks from being automatically added when a document was opened
  • Improved WriteSprint UI and start/stop animation
  • Scrollbar colors now adjust to better match the theme

2.0b29 (Great Fondue)

What’s New

  • Bug fixes

2.0b28 (Taffy Dare)

What’s New

Saving the cursor position is now a setting. We’ve added a checkbox to the Preferences that lets you control this behavior. It defaults to off. So now you must opt-in to saving the cursor position.

Flexible scene numbering. Sometimes you find yourself needing to number elements that aren’t strictly Scene Headers. For example, in a montage, each line might merit its own number. So we’re trying a new feature.

You can now number any element (except transitions and right-aligned elements). Just add #number# to the end of the line.

Characters sidebar panel fixes. We’ve fixed the Characters sidebar panel so it updates correctly, and added back in the ability to highlight dialogue in PDFs.

Tweaks to scene header auto-capitalizing. We’ve updated Editor Preferences to read “Auto-uppercase INT. and EXT. scene headers.”

The new wording is because we’ve removed auto-uppercasing of forced scene headers (such as “.kitchen”). Here’s why: There are times when you want to be able to add ellipses to the start of a line, which would lead to unwanted (and unexpected) uppercase. If you’d like your forced scene headers uppercase in the Editor you’ll have to type in caps, or hit Shift-Return at the end of the line.

Scene headers -- both regular and forced -- will still be uppercase in the PDF regardless.

Brighter invisible characters. If you use “Show Invisibles” to see the formatting marks in the Editor, we have brightened those characters across all themes.


2.0b27 (Zandor)

What’s New

Rearranged Launch Screen. We tweaked the UI on the launch screen, and added a button to let you open a selected file from the recent documents menu. (You can still open files by double-clicking on them in the list.)

Improved Cheat Sheets. The cheat sheets are now web-based, which allows us to make changes without having to release a new version of the app.

Table of Contents customization. A while back we added table of contents support by adding the {{TOC}} directive. It compiles all your section headers into an outline and adds it to your document, complete with page numbers. Handy!

The TOC directive now allows you to specify exactly which heading levels to including. For example, if you only want # and ### headings (but no others), you would use the following directive:

{{TOC: # ###}}

Fixed RTF export. For people that need it, we’ve fixed some of the RTF export issues. Please let us know if you still come across any problems.


2.0b26 (The Great Gazoo)

What’s New

MAX PERFORMANCE!!! We’ve cleaned up a lot of things behind the scenes to make the Editor faster and more efficient. It uses less energy in the background and handles longer documents much better.


2.0b25 (Elroy)

What’s New

  • Minor bug fixes

2.0b24 (Velma)

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed an issue where the Character list wasn’t being populated when the document in first opened
  • Fountain markup (centered, forced scene headers, etc) is no longer being printed in PDFs
  • Fixed an issue preventing images from loading correctly in PDFs
  • Fixed RTF export

2.0b23 (Atom Ant)

What’s New

Saved cursor position. When you reopen a file, Highland start up exactly with your cursor where you left off.

Selected word count. The Statistics panel will now count the number of words in a selection.

Print paragraph numbers. We’ve changed the “line numbering” feature of previous builds in order to make it more useful to editing documents. Now we number paragraphs in the editor, instead of lines, and give you the ability to print the paragraph numbers in PDFs.

Updated Themes icon. The old icon was a gear, because we used to have more settings in there. Now it’s just themes, so we updated the icon to reflect that.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • There were some very nasty memory leaks in previous builds. We think we’ve found all the leaks, so users should expect dramatically better memory performance.
  • Fixed scroll position linkage between the Editor and Preview. It was totally broken in the previous build.
  • Fixed an issue where blank lines would be inserted in dialogue between multiple lyrics and parentheticals.
  • Fixed an issue where “CONT’D” wasn’t being added to dialogue split across pages.
  • Fixed the color of buttons in the Preview bottom bar when you’re using a dark theme.

2.0b22 (Precious Pupp)

What’s New

Automatic scene numbering. Under the Format menu you’ll now find Add Scene Numbers and Remove Scene Numbers. Scenes are numbered sequentially. You can re-run this command to update the numbering after you insert or remove any scenes.

Styles wrap around paragraphs. If you select multiple paragraphs and apply a style (bold, italic, etc.) Highland will now wrap each paragraph separately.

New Control in Preview. A lot of people have asked for a button to save PDFs, so we’ve added that to Preview, along with an option to include your synopses in your PDFs.

Themes. The theme popover now organizes themes in Light and Dark categories. We think this looks nice and makes it easier to find what you’re looking for.

Improved Lists. We love making lists. To-do lists, grocery lists, lists of cool looking dogs, etc. We’ve improved how Highland handles multi-level (indented) lists in Markdown.

Assemble!. A while back we added the ability to “fold in” documents using {{INCLUDE}}. Whenever you print or preview, these external documents are included inline.

But sometimes, you want to combine all those external pieces into one big editable file. To make this process easier, we’ve added an Assemble menu command (under the File menu). It creates a new document with all the included files.

In addition, we’ve cleaned up some encoding, so files you {{INCLUDE}} with spaces in the title no longer need ‘%20’ like web URLs do. (But ‘%20’ still works.)

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed issue where contact information was being cut off on Screenplay title pages
  • Removed section headers and synopses from FDX exports
  • Fixed a bug preventing character lists from populating when you first open a document
  • Fixed a bug preventing page count from being calculated when you first open a document

2.0b21 (Captain Planet)

What’s New

Welcome Screen. Highland now opens with a proper launch screen with quick access to your most recent documents and the latest news about the app.

Plus, it’s pretty.

Globalization (of WriteSprints). Previous versions of Highland had WriteSprints tied to individual document windows. This was unnecessarily restrictive, so WriteSprints now work app-wide.

  • Once you launch a sprint, any document you work on will be part of the sprint.
  • Changes across all documents you work on will be included in the final word count at the end of the sprint.
  • You can close all the windows and the WriteSprint will keep running in the background.
  • If you try and quit while a WriteSprint is running you’ll get a warning (so you don’t accidentally quit with a sprint running).

2.0b20 (Tinker)

What’s New

  • This version fixes PDF previewing in macOS 10.12 Sierra.
  • NERD ALERT: We’ve migrated the code base to the new Swift 3.

2.0b19 (Birdman)

What’s New

Markdown and Fountain cheat sheets. Finally. You’ll find them under Help.

In Markdown and Plain Text templates, you won’t see scene headers in the Navigator.

Command-click an included file in the Navigator to open it in a new window.

Added all-new \strikethrough formatting. (suggested by Matt Bischoff)

Improved special character escaping. In general, you can use a backslash () to print any character that would otherwise have special meaning in Fountain or Markdown.

New theme: Classic! We’ve also renamed some of the other themes.

All of the Markdown templates have been tweaked to improve typography and grid-ness. In general, we’re trying to get more useful differentiation between #, ##, and ###.

For people using macOS 10.12 Sierra, we’ve fixed the window weirdness that was affecting people. However, we’re still working with Apple to fix PDF previews. Thanks for your patience.


2.0b18 (Muttley)

What’s New

Font options for Manuscripts. Manuscripts are often written in either Courier or Times New Roman, depending on the preferences of the writer, editor, and publishing house.

FDX fixes. We’ve made some improvements to how Final Draft FDX files are imported and exported.


2.0b17 (Quickdraw McGraw)

What’s New

Graphic Novel and Multi-Cam templates

Our Multi-Cam template is based on scripts from CBS three-camera shows like How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory.

Graphic Novel scripts come a wide range of formats -- there are no industry-wide standards. We based our template on the most common one we’ve seen.


2.0b16 (Johnny Bravo)

What’s New

Table of Contents! Highland can now generate a table of contents for Markdown files, on the fly, using a new {{TOC}} directive. This will:

  • Create a table of contents at the location you inserted it.
  • Will compile all section headers from that point forward into an outline form.
  • Links are added to the PDF allowing you to use the table of contents to jump to any section header in the table.

2.0b15 (Blue Falcon)

What’s New

Bug fixes. Lots of bug fixes including crash fixes, spacing of dialogue in files exported to Final Draft, and better syntax highlighting.

Template updates. We went through each of the available templates and improved the fonts and sizes.

Updated app icon. We want Highland 2 to look beautiful in your dock.


2.0b14 (Smurfette)

What’s New

Text Highlighting. In addition to bold, italics, and underlining, you can now highlight. You’ll find Highlight under the Format menu, or you can do it manually using the +highlight+ syntax.

Fountain Character Highlighting. In the Characters sidebar panel, you can now choose to highlight a specific character’s dialogue. Just click a character’s name in the list. Highland will automatically add a color to their dialogue both in the editor and the preview.

Sort Characters by Order of Appearance. In the Characters panel you can now sort the list by Order of Appearance, in addition to the previous options of alphabetical and by number of lines. Even better, Highland will remember your choice for any new documents.


2.0b13 (Pebbles)

What’s New

Navigator update. We’ve tweaked the navigator to give you more information about your document. Included files are now shown in the navigator, and we’ve moved the UI for filtering into a popover. Click the eye to see more (or less) of your document.

Bug fixes. We’ve been trying to track down all the remaining random crash-resulting bugs. If you run into crazy crashes, please let us know ASAP.


2.0b12 (Bamm-Bamm)

What’s New

Sprint. Sprints are timed writing sessions. They’re great for helping you focus on getting your work done. Just set the number of minutes you want to write, and Highland will show you how much time you have left.

You’ll find it in the far right of the header tool bar.

Markers. The original Highland had markers to help people jump around in their documents. Many beta testers have written in asking us to add this back into Highland 2, and now we have. Please note, we’ve changed the syntax from Highland 1: markers are now {{%m}}. (Curly braces rather than straight brackets.)

Bin undo/redo fixes. As you can imagine, the Bin is super-complicated under the hood. Undo and Redo for the Bin had issues. We think we’ve got all those problems straightened out.

Crash fix. Some testers experienced weird crashes while typing in the previous build.


2.0b11 (Astro)

What’s New

Templates. From the very first beta, the template chooser has shown only grayed-out, unavailable options. Until now!

For Markdown documents, we’re happy to introduce eight new templates:

  • MLA Report
  • Novel
  • Guidebook
  • Manuscript
  • Treatment
  • Article
  • Journal
  • Bulletin

For Fountain documents, we’ve added Stageplay.

INCLUDE. Many writers prefer to break their projects up into smaller chunks. We’ve added a new way to do that in Highland. It’s called {{INCLUDE: }}, and it’s really powerful.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Fountain scene numbers. They work again! This is the format: #43#

  • No headers or footers on the first page. By default, headers and footers now start on page two. If you want one on the first page, you will need to add a {{HEADER: }} or {{FOOTER: }} to the top of your document.

  • Auto-complete bug fixes for both character names and locations. We think we’re close. If you encounter weird issues, please let us know.

  • Turn off auto-complete. We’ve added a checkbox in Preferences to let you turn off auto-complete altogether.

  • More-accurate page count and readability stats.


2.0b10 (Brak)

What’s New

Images. In keeping with the Markdown spec, you can now add images to documents. For example:

![pug](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Sad-pug.jpg/1280px-Sad-pug.jpg)

Headers and footers. You can now add custom headers and footers to your Fountain and Markdown documents using {{HEADER: }} and {{FOOTER: }}.

Term Lists (new syntax!). Sometimes you want side-by-side items for things like cast lists or definitions. We’ve come up with a handy syntax for you to use: Term::Item

Right-aligned text (new syntax!). Add a > to the end of a line and it will be shifted all the way to the right margin.


2.0b9 (Squiggly Diddly)

What’s New

Bin update. In addition to some UI tweaks, we’ve also added the ability to create empty Bin items by clicking the “+” at the bottom of the Bin. (You can use these as index cards if you like, then Export it as a new document. Handy!)

New Bin commands. From the edit menu, you can finally Cut to Bin (Opt-Cmd-X) and Copy to Bin (Opt-Cmd-C). As always, you can double-click any Bin item to expand it to a fully-editable popover.

Markdown link conversion. Two new commands at the bottom of the Format menu allow you to convert links from inline to reference format document-wide -- including wrapping “naked” URLS in Markdown syntax.

Removed the Locations sidebar panel. The more we thought about it, the less useful the Locations panel seemed. The Navigator enables you to quickly see all the scene locations in your script, and gives you the additional ability to filter Locations and jump to each use of it in your script.

Updated Statistics panel. With Locations gone, we now have the Statistics panel for Fountain documents as well as Markdown. Since word counts aren’t particularly useful in screenplays, we’ve also added the ability to set page count goals!


2.0b8 (Grape Ape)

What’s New

Fixed memory leaks. We’ve plugged many holes.

Export sidebar content. At the bottom of every sidebar panel, you’ll find a little box-with-arrow button. Use it to create a new document with the contents of the sidebar.

New sidebar UI for Markdown links. We love Markdown links, but they can make be a hassle to manage. To help keep things tidy, the Links panel now shows all the Markdown-formatted links in your document.

Better auto-completion. We’ve made tremendous progress in improving how auto-complete works.

Improved document opening speed. Your documents should open a bit faster now.


2.0b7 (Shaggy)

Copy and paste fix. There was a bug causing the app to crash if you copy and pasted over a Markdown link in the document. Fixed!

Default theme change. “Linen” is now “Clean.” We’ve switched the sidebar to a lighter color to match the theme overall.

Editor settings moved to the View menu. In the previous build, editor settings like “Show Invisibles” were in the same popover as Themes. Based on your feedback, we’ve decided to move these settings back to the View menu, where they were previously.


2.0b6 (Daphne)

Accents now work! Génial! Great news for all our international users, we’ve got accents working in Highland again.

Auto-completion improvements. The (extremely annoying) bug preventing deleting letters from an auto-completed character name or location has now been fixed. Yay!

Screenplay Live Margins better match PDF line breaks. A lot of people have asked for the Live Margins setting in the Editor to give a better estimation of what the printed PDF will look like, so we did that. Because the printed PDF text column is fairly narrow, you'll need to set the Editor column width to Narrow in the Preferences.

Resizable sidebar text. Several people wrote in to tell us that the sidebar text was too small, so we've added the ability to select different text sizes from the app's Preferences window.

Tweaked themes. The text selection colors for most of the templates have been tweaked to make it easier to see what’s selected.

  1. Stability improvements. The last build crashed a bunch. This build should crash a lot less.

2.0b5 (Captain Caveman)

What’s New

Themes Refreshed. The sidebar now matches the Editor theme. We’ve also added a new Dark Mode theme, for people that love black backgrounds.

Automatic List Numbering. We love making lists. Character lists. Scene lists. Grocery lists. To make listing easier, we auto-insert the next item in a list you’re writing, and now we’ll do re-numbering of the list to make it easier to add items to existing lists.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

So many bug fixes. Notable fixes include:

  • Squashing a nasty memory leak
  • Fixing the locations of page breaks in the Editor
  • Remembering the spell checking/autocomplete settings

2.0b4 (Dinomutt)

New template/format popover. We’ve come up with a streamlined interface to choose what type of document you’re writing. We’ve also renamed some of our templates.

Settings popover. In addition to Themes, we’ve moved many of the settings from the View menu to a new Settings popover (the gear icon) on right edge of the header bar.

The Scratchpad is saved! Many of you wrote to tell us how you were using the Scratchpad and urged us to keep it. So it’s gonna stay.

Dark sidebar. Probably the most requested feature has been a dark sidebar to match the darker themes, so that’s what you’re getting.


2.0b3 (Speed Buggy)

What’s New

Auto-hiding toolbar. Turn on Auto-Hide Toolbar from the View menu to have the toolbar automatically disappear while you begin typing. This is especially nice in full-screen mode, where it can now just be you and your words.

Typewriter Scrolling. “Typewriter mode” keeps the insertion point near the middle of the screen.

Line Numbers. Sometimes it’s helpful to have lines numbered, so we added an option to the View menu to show line numbers.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Dragging things in/out of the Bin is now Undo-able.
  • Fixed scrolling issues near the bottom of the window.
  • Margins scale with the font size (like Highland 1.x).
  • Dragging and dropping a file into the Editor will open that document.
  • Fixed issues with Scene Header auto-complete.
  • Corrected spacing of page numbers in screenplay PDFs.
  • Transitions are now right-aligned in the Editor (with Live Margins turned on).
  • Improved how Markdown section headers break across pages.
  • Fixed problems with consecutive Fountain dual dialogue.
  • Hashes at the end of Markdown section headers are now automatically removed (ex. ‘# SECTION ONE #’ -> ‘SECTION ONE’)
  • Fixed problems with hyphenated times in Fountain scene headers (ex. ‘INT. HOUSE - PRE-DAWN’)
  • PDFs preview on large screens no longer fill the entire screen.

2.0b2 (Huckleberry Hound)

  • Live margins should respond consistently.
  • Fixed a typo in the Fountain Cheat Sheet.
  • Changed the title of the Preferences window.
  • @ symbols (for forced character names) get grayed out in the editor.
  • Fixed autocompletion of forced character names.
  • Manually bolded or italicized scene headers show up in the navigator and are handled correctly in the PDF.
  • Recognize “I/E.” as a valid scene header start
  • Added a Link Scrolling option in the View menu. This turns on/off the scroll position matching when switching between Editor and Preview modes.
  • The word count input handles commas in numbers correctly.
  • Huge performance improvements!