[michihuber]

Hey, Michi here, from Arc Studio Pro.

As MartinMond said, this is indeed an attempt to bring a GitHub style workflow to a field outside of software development.

The app is written in Clojure(Script), implementing OT for collaboration.

Happy to answer any questions!

[btown]

First off, amazing job - the UX design is outstanding. I've been wishing for something like this for music composition for the longest time, something that would combine the ease of use and live-collaboration aspects of Google Docs with custom workflows and object types as you have here. (Unfortunately, the presentation layer for the music domain requires implementing an entire DAW or notation interface on top, both of which are herculean efforts that I haven't tried to tackle yet!)

That said, I'll probably end up using this for lyrics! (When I used to write for musical theater in college, our writing workshop would basically use Google Docs, using screenplay formatting and typesetting in all caps for singing. This would have revolutionized the workflow there, even without music-specific features. Individual songs have "beats" and evolving themes just like anything else!)

On the tech side, did you use something like https://github.com/jahfer/othello for OT, or roll your own? And do you think in hindsight that CLJS was the right language/toolset for the job? I've always been interested in its ability to treat immutable data as a first-class citizen, but I haven't had a chance to do it yet.

[michihuber]

Thanks for the kind words! Would be great to learn what kind of format you'd use for writing lyrics. [e-mail]

The OT is custom and clj/s was the perfect tool for the job. Highly recommended.

[joshkaufman]

Hi, Michi - congrats!

Not sure about your future plans, but there's a huge need for good collaborative writing/editing programs for traditional book publishing. Collaboration with developmental editors, copyeditors, agents, publishing staff, etc is both essential and extremely painful.

From the looks of it, the structure and output needs for book projects are less demanding than what you've already implemented, so it might be a worthwhile adjacency to explore.

Hope this helps.

[michihuber]

Thanks Josh!

Yes, we're definitely going to support formats other than Hollywood-style screenplays in the near future. Would be great to learn more about the needs for collaboration in book publishing.

[joshkaufman]

Happy to share anything you need - feel free to reach out whenever you like. My email is firstname at firstandlastname dot net, or @joshkaufman on Twitter.

[msvan]

OT = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation, for those not in the know

[malloryerik]

Hi Michi, you say the app is written in Clojure(Script), does that mean the desktop Windows and Mac versions are in Electron, or are you using something else?

Not an Electron hater here, I use VS Code (along with Emacs).

[michihuber]

Yes, the desktop versions are in Electron.

[tosh]

Were there any surprising features/ux/workflow aha-moments you encountered in the screenwriting space?

[michihuber]

I thought it was great that screenwriters already had a notion of version control – once a screenplay goes into production, later revisions receive a color and are referred to as such, e.g. blue draft, pink draft. Pages that contained changes used to be printed on appropriately colored paper.

The idea of our app is to build on that notion and offer automatic versioning.