After dozens of beta releases, the first major release in a year is rolling out! Let's get right to the highlights!
✓ New: Dark theme (see Settings)
✓ New: Dialog browser (see Help & Info | Character Report)
✓ Refined UI, new settings screen, better "section" element view
✓ Improved pagination, speech, comments, FDX export, file size warning
✓ Android 10 ready
✓ +39 writing fonts (total: 847)
✓ Improved on Chromebook & foldables
✓ 64-bit compliant
✓ Smaller app size
✓ Misc. bug fixes & improvements
A few more details below.
There are so many internal changes here, it's hard to know where to begin. First, DubScript has been built with the latest Android components from google, using the latest build tools. That means AndroidX Jetpack libraries, new material design support, better backwards-compatibility, speedups, and other benefits.
The UI has been tuned up. Not only is there a new "dark theme" which works really well with Android 10 (formerly Android "Q"), but it should work with older versions of Android such as LineageOS that use dark/light themes too. The UI also has had numerous other tweaks and tunings for improved usability. For example, the "Read" screen now holds the current page number in the top right, making it even easier to see at a glance what page you're on. Also for those of you who turn off ads, your order # appears in the "Help & Info" section.
The Fountain screenplay format also has a feature called "Sections", where you can create, well, sections such as "ACT I" or "PUT CLIMAX HERE" within the script like this:
# ACT I
Section headings, similar to page numbers, now "stick" to the top of the "Read" screen as you scroll, making it much easier to navigate quickly through your scripts. Put section headings for your acts or to denote action scenes, etc. That way you can easily use the slide bar at the bottom to peruse your screenplay and find what you're looking for. Don't worry-- these sections won't appear in the actual printed script-- it's just to make navigation easier for you.
The settings screen has been overhauled-- everything is there on one screen, so no need to click a category to find what you want.
Modifications were also made to integrate better with Chromebooks (which display DubScript in a resizable window) as well as the new "foldable" devices that are becoming available.
Export to Final Draft (FDX) has had a few things like title pages and lyrics improved, and so has export to PDF-- the pagination is way better now as you'll probably notice if you create a lot of PDFs, especially if you used a lot of dual dialogue.
There are now more than 35 new fonts for you to write in to suit your mood and inspire your writing.
There's a new dialog browser on most versions of Android that allow you to click "into" a character to see all their dialogue, in script order. This is useful for an actor who wants to practice only their lines, or for a writer who wants to review a single character's dialogue for consistency.
Users writing in foreign languages may have previously heard their script read with the default voice, usually American English. Now the voice defaults to the system's default voice, so if you're writing in Italian, and your system settings are set to Italian, you should hear Italian in an Italian accent.
A few miscellaneous bugs like the "two spaces" bug identified by power users was caught and fixed. An annoying warning when loading a big file was made less sensitive, several "edge case" crashers were fixed that affected a few less popular phones and tablets, and several speedups were found.
There are many, many more "under the hood" changes or improvements only hardcore users may notice. Some of it involved refactoring older code to make the entire app smaller. Even with all these improvements, the app download size went from 3.33 MB to 3.22 MB! DubScript incorporates cutting-edge features from the latest Android 10 like automatic theme changes, but it's still mostly compatible (okay-- a few features had to be disabled on very very old versions) going aaaaaall the way back to Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich -- released in 2011!
This release has been in beta for quite a while, but as there are thousands of Android devices, it's impossible to test everything on every device. Should any issues arise, look for a "clean up" release to address anything that comes up.
Anyhoo-- a lot of work went into this version, and I hope you guys enjoy it. As always, happy writing!
R