This was disappointing. For v2 software I expected more. Orphan characters at the foot of pages, no (CONTD) for repeated characters, no (MORE) for spanned dialog (until you print, then you see it - doesn't really help me when reading on screen), I have no idea what the point of the "fade window" feature is for. Why would you want a transparent window when writing so whatever is behind shows through? Crazy. But: The worst thing by far is that I COULD NOT work out how to turn of the colors when printed. My test script came out all looking like a rainbow! I don't mind it on screen but PRINTED? Why on earth would I want that?

I did however like the *idea* of things like the Contacts section etc. but I don't want it in this program. If I want a telephone followup contact thing I'll get one, I don't need it in here. If they spent more time getting the editing bit right and less time stuffing "features" in that I'll never use it'd be a lot better IMO.

Montage is a simple, no-frills screenplay app that does its job with a minimal learning curve. My introduction to it came when I started a new script a couple of weeks ago, and I found it to be a pleasure to use.

One of its features is an auto-complete menu which, in theory, is supposed to present you with a menu of your characters' names when you type the first letter or two. Say, for example, you've got characters by the name of Carl, David, and Christine. When you select the Character style, and type the letter C, you should get a menu that displays both Carl and Christine. Unfortunately, this feature worked for me about 20 percent of the time -- the rest of the time I had to type out the complete name.

I logged onto Mariner's user forum and asked if anyone else was experiencing this problem and, if so, is there a solution. Two days later I received an email from Mariner's tech support telling me that this was the first time they'd heard of the problem -- and would I please send them the file so that they could see if they could duplicate the issue with their systems.

As you can imagine, sending a screenplay to strangers is a scary proposition. It's a proprietary document, and the thought of someone mishandling the file or even stealing an idea is enough to give anyone pause. But I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and replied to their email with my file attached -- along with a note that requested that the file is "for your eyes only."

A few hours later, I checked back in the forum to see if anyone else had replied to my thread, and lo and behold, there was my file -- attached to a new post that contained the text of my reply email.

As you can imagine, this freaked me out, and I sent Mariner tech support another email asking them what on earth they were thinking by posting my proprietary file for all the world to see. And then I discovered THAT email was posted in the thread.

You can see how unsettling this would be. I told Mariner that they behaved cavalierly with my screenplay, that I had trusted them, and that they had betrayed that trust. Naturally, THAT email appeared in the thread, too. Finally, they explained to me that any email correspondence that begins as a forum thread will append to the original thread. Why, I asked, did you folks request my file and fail to tell me that? I would never have sent my file had I known it would be posted in a public forum.

I ended this situation by asking them to (minimally) notify people that their emails and attachments will appear in the original thread or (better yet) change their system so that emails remain private, as we would expect them to be. Mariner responded by deleting my entire thread, which I assume is how they intend to "deal" with this problem.

I've written two books and a weekly newspaper column with Mariner Write, and I'd begun my most recent screenplay with Montage. I was a very loyal Mariner software user and a long-time fan. But they behaved shamefully at every milestone in this sordid affair. They posted in public a proprietary file, despite my request for careful handling. They have apparently decided that their system of posting email correspondence in a public forum works perfectly well. They see no reason to notify people that their files will be mishandled and their trust abused. And they did what all incompetent companies do: they deleted a public thread that takes issue with how their customers are treated.

Add all this up and you can understand why I'd abandon their products. This company is not to be trusted.

I was very eager to try Montage and adopt it for my main screenwriting software. While the GUI design is nice and very Mac-like, there is one big problem with the software: page breaks. By that I mean when you are writing dialog in just runs onto the next page. Proper formatting would include the characters name as it re-organizes the page. Montage doesn't do this forcing you to do it manually. But then, if you make revisions, then there are extra page breaks and have to go through and clean it up all over again. It's very time consuming and not professional enough yet to justify making it your main screenwriting program.

Unforunatelly people do not seem to learn from their mistakes and I am one of them. I must say I am sold to the idea of an all around program that does everything... and I really love the full screen mode. but Alas! if I have to sacrifice the stability and integrity of my work. NO! NO! No!

I was not planning to write any more reviews as I really think that non-beginners can easily sea the shortcomings of montage.

One think I will just mention and I really wonder who puts all these stars in the ratings. It is full of bugs, bugs, bugs. I just lost hours of work because there is no auto save option... There is a backup option but this does not help when the software crashes.. and believe me it WILL crash. It crashed on me while I was performing the undo command, which surprise-surprise, is buggy as well. Try to use it and you have your "action" change to "character" and all the elements swinging around.

I am very angry with them but mostly with my self that trusted my working hours to montage and traded security with an inferior product.

By the way, synopses, outlines, treatments can so much easier and hassle free be created with apple's "pages" which are as smooth as silk.
when it comes to the script itself, perhaps the template pictures are fun to play with in the preferences, but in the end it is what you write that counts...

Also,I wonder why the praising review - below, has been posted on versiontracker with another alias?

Sorry, forgot to rate...

The speed of importing .txt files is much improved over previous versions, but does not retain formatting as nearly as well as Movie Magic Screenwriter 6. When importing a .txt file using the Screenwriter 6 template, extra lines are interspersed, ACTION text in ALL CAPS and SCENE HEADERS without INT./EXT. are converted to CHARACTER CUES, Centered text is moved to the left, ACTION lines between dialogue are formatted as dialogue. Using the Screenplay template for this same importing reduced the page count of a 116 page script to 97 pages. Action between dialogue was included in the above character cue's dialogue.

Importing .rtf yielded similar results. At this point it would be faster for me to retype a script from scratch than to import it from a text file into Montage.

Another thing:

Why does Montage treat FADE IN: as a scene header?