The Outline

A screenplay is read front to back but written all over the place: you go back to the kitchen scene, forward to the start of the second act, to the note you left yourself yesterday. The Outline is the map for that. It lists the script’s sections, its scene headings and its notes, in order, and a click on any of them takes you there.

Opening it

• View › Table of contents, or Ctrl+Alt+A⌥⌘A. The same command closes it again.
• The button at the top left of the window, beside the script. It is only drawn when the window leaves a margin beside the text; in a narrow window, or on a phone, there is no room for it and the View menu is the way in.

The panel opens the next time you start Calmly Script the way you left it: open if you left it open, as long as there is room for it beside the script. On a phone, or in a narrow window, it starts closed.

What it lists

• Sections: the lines that start with #, ## or ###. They are how a screenplay marks its acts and sequences, and they never print.
• Scene headings, under the section they belong to.
• Notes: every [[note]] in the script, under the scene heading it was written below. A note tagged with a colour, such as [[Todo: …]], keeps its colour here too. Text in a boneyard (/* … */) is not listed.

Synopses (lines that start with =) are not listed. See Sections and synopses and Notes as you write.

The entries are indented by how deep they sit in the script: scenes one step under their section, notes one step under their scene. A script written entirely with ## sections is not indented for a level nobody wrote.

# ACT ONE

INT. HARBOUR OFFICE - DAY

Gulls on the window ledge. [[Todo: which season?]]

EXT. PIER - NIGHT

The ferry is late.

With that script, the Outline shows ACT ONE, the two scenes under it, and the note under the harbour office.

The entry for the part of the script the caret is in is highlighted, and it moves as you write.

Going somewhere

Click an entry and the caret goes there: to the start of a heading, or to the [[ of a note. The script scrolls to it.

With the keyboard, ↑↑ and ↓↓ move through the list, HomeHome and EndEnd go to its ends, and Enter↩ goes to the entry. EscEsc closes the panel.

Beside the page, or over it

When the window is wide enough to keep a whole page of screenplay beside the panel, the Outline stands to the left of the script and the text moves over to make room. There it is furniture: it stays open after you pick an entry, and you can go on writing with it open.

When there is not that much room (a narrow window, a larger type size, the Preview taking half the window, a phone), the panel floats over the text instead. Then it closes as soon as you have picked an entry, and it steps aside when a menu or another panel opens. Nothing is lost: it comes back the next time there is room or the next time you open it.

The panel’s second tab, Find, searches the script. See Find and replace.