The Programmer’s Fulcrum 16 January, 2026

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.

It’s your weekly review of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. We aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening […]

https://newsletter.mobileatom.net/the-fulcrum-16-january-2026/ #ActivityPub #ATProto #Bonfire #cPanel #CSS #DrupalCMS #fediverse #Forkiverse #Ghost #grapheneos #GravCMS #HTML #javascript #Kdenlive #Linux #LinuxMint #Markdown #Mastodon #MicroBlog #Mobilizon #OMN #OpenProject #Pebble #SailfishOS #Scribus #SocialDocs #Trelby #wikipedia #WordPress #YunoHost
@lerothas Ich finde es vor allem bei Firefox und Audacity gut. Bei Trelby habe ich im Moment das Problem, dass ich eine deutschsprachige Version bräuchte, damit es mir die Umlaute nimmt. #trelby

So I'm using Trelby for script writing. I could NOT get this thing to work as a system package as it has some sort of dependency that I couldn't get working.

The flatpak works great on Mint though.

I find script writing really weird feeling because its handled differently than other forms of writing. I don't know if I quite like it but I think I get why it is the way it is.

#Trelby #Writing #Linux

#Trelby is an open source movie script app, currently under active development after a few years of a slow down. https://github.com/trelby/trelby

#movies #moviescript #hollywood #linux #opensource #foss #movie

GitHub - trelby/trelby: The free, multiplatform, feature-rich screenwriting program!

The free, multiplatform, feature-rich screenwriting program! - trelby/trelby

GitHub

So.

#Trelby has been great, but it has some limitations and it's just a little fiddly and it hasn't been updated literally since I found it. It has GitHub bugs from 2023 untouched. For free, it's great. There were just more things I wanted to do.

#FadeIn is immediately robust, supposedly lets you copy the look and feel of multiple other software suites including Trelby (I didn't actually notice much difference between "Trelby" and "default"), and while it doesn't directly import Trelby files, you can use multiple types as an intermediate. It's hassleware, but I liked the demo so much I used the hassle to buy, and registration is a breeze. If I had to compare it to anything, it would be WordPad, which is perfect for me. Minimal distraction; quick access to the basics. It's $80 on sale right now.

Wow. Brevity is hard.

I use #Trelby for script writing and I went to change the page size to A4 to squeeze that little bit extra out of each page before the break and it was already set that way.

For reference, this means each page = ~1 minute.

I'm trying to keep each scene short because they're transitions between levels, but my aim for about a minute has already led to me needing to cut things down significantly and I really don't want to have to start cutting good jokes or actual explanations.

#GameDev

Just figured out how to use fountain mode in #emacs. I don't think you can export to pdf directly, but using afterwriting.js, installed using npm, works for me. (And I'm too lazy to assign a keyboard shortcut for it. It'd probably be easy but it involves me reading more than I can be bothered to.)

Would be nice if #OrgMode has a screenplay mode, but what can ya do? Also, is #trelby somewhat abandoned? Not sure what the current state is.

Re-boosted last boost. I have to say #Trelby is great as free and open source software done by a small team for the essentials of scriptwriting and the best advice I've read in all my reading is that engaging content matters infinitely more than technical minutiae.

If the writer of The Godfather can make a technically perfect script without even learning how, something like Trelby democratizes jumping in and letting you write a presentable script in proper format. Everything else is subjective.

Just a random #writing #scriptwriting #script thing, but if you don't already have dedicated #screenplay software, #Trelby is free and works quite well, IMO.

If you're doing #playwright work, then I will instead recommend sticking to @libreoffice #LibreOffice and using #CourierPrime as your font, which is also free, but a lot easier to work with than standard Courier in most software due to compatibility. You can easily replace it with Courier when you're ready if needed.

#FOSS

#GameDev

Spent some of last night converting rough scripts from RTF game notes to a #Trelby script by way of Notepad++.

Text import is good, but having something to massage it into something more usable than "X: blah blah" really helps.

#NotepadPlusPlus