Final Draft is the Microsoft Word of the screenplay world: users hate it, but it’s the industry standard, and if you don’t submit your draft/edits in .FDX format, you’re about as popular as Ben Stiller after an award acceptance speech.
Still, in the same way that we all want Word on the iPad, we all want Final Draft Writer on the iPad too. And while it has been a coupleof years in the making, FD is now on iOS.
The app will let you edit, read and create scripts, and has most of the desktop tools that you’ll need – “smart type” to automatically complete character names; revisions; character highlighting.
The most important part is that you can move your scripts back and forth between desktop FD and the iPad version.
This app will probably be especially good for script readers, those people who have to burn through a zillion scripts and write reports on them so their bosses can present them to their bosses. Now they can at least do their job from the comfort of a hi-res iPad screen.
Writing is another matter. There now exists a markup format called Fountain, which is like Markdown for scripts, and it compiles .FDX-compatible files from plain text. My text editor of choice (Writing Kit for the iPad) can write in Fountain, and costs a fraction of the asking price for Final Draft Writer, which is $50 (currently on sale for $30).
Source: App Shopper
