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Textplay

Textplay is a simple command-line script that converts screenplays written in Fountain formatted plain-text to HTML, XML, and FDX (Final Draft).

Textplay has been rigorously tested against fountain documents, but it is not perfect, if you encounter a problem please open a github issue.

Installation

  • This script requires Ruby, ensure your system has it.
  • Clone this repo somewhere convenient,
  • cd into that directory,
  • run make install.

This will place a symbolic link to textplay in /usr/local/bin/. This symbolic link can be removed with make uninstall.

Textplay was built using Mac OS 10.10 and Ruby 2.0. I have only tested it in this environment, if you want to run Textplay in another environment (such as Windows) you may have to modify the code.

Using textplay

textplay [options]

-h, --help        Display the help text
-s, --snippet     Do not include document headers/footers
-f, --fdx         Convert to Final Draft .fdx
-x, --xml         Output as the internal raw XML
-d, --diff        Assume input is a diff, generate revision marks
-w, --wrap        Wrap action and dialogue paragraphs

Texplay is designed to be a Unix tool, thus it always reads from STDIN and writes to STDOUT. To make a file use standard Unix redirection. For example:

textplay < screenplay.fountain > screenplay.html

As another example, textplay has been tested extensively with PrinceXML. To make a PDF from a fountain document, use this:

textplay < screenplay.fountain | prince - -o screenplay.pdf

Configuring textplay

Want to customize how textplay interprets your screenplay? Want to change the layout of your screenplay?

Using Fountain's key:value title-page syntax, you can control how textplay interprets your screenplay. See --help for info.

Key Default Value
title "A Screenplay"
goldman_sluglines on
screenbundle_comments off
font "Courier Prime"
slugline_spacing (number of 12pt lines) 1
bold_sluglines on
underlined_sluglines off
wrap_paragraphs off
header (empty by default)
footer (empty by default)

Revision Marks

It is possible to create a screenplay with revision marks via Textplay. You'll have to know how to use diff and pass the output to Textplay. See --help for instructions.

Support for the Fountain Format

  • How does Textplay interpret text differently from the Fountain spec?
    • An action line that contains no lower-case letters is converted to a slugline, a "Goldman Slugline". This can be switched off.
    • Textplay is smart about what constitutes a transition. Usually, there's no need to escape transitions, but you can.
    • In some cases Textplay does not assume that every whitespace character you type (newlines, spaces, and tabs) is intentional. For example, if you type one space on the line immediately below an all-caps line, Fountain assumes you'd like a Character saying “ ”. Textplay assumes you accidentally typed a space.
    • Textplay collapses multiple blank lines between elements to a single blank line.
  • What parts of the Fountain spec are not supported?
    • Title Pages.
    • Scene Numbers.
    • Empty lines in dialogue-blocks.