Textplay is a simple ruby-script (one file, no dependancies) that converts screenplays written in Fountain formatted plain-text to a variety of useful formats: HTML, FDX (Final Draft), or PDF (with PrinceXML).

Textplay has been tested against fountain documents rigorously but it is not perfect, if you encounter a problem please let me know: @olivertaylor.

Command-line interface

Textplay was built using Mac OS 10.6/7 and Ruby 1.8.7. 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.

Calling Textplay from the command-line is simple:

textplay [options] input-path [output-path]

• If no output-path is specified then Textplay passes the results to STDOUT.
• Textplay also accepts STDIN instead of an input-path; when using STDIN you must not specify an output-path - the first argument is always the input-path.
• When converting to PDF, without a specified output-path, Textplay creates the PDF in /tmp and then opens it with your default PDF viewer.

Options

Textplay has three options you can call in the command line. --help, --fdx, and --pdf (-h, -f, and -p respectively).

• --help does what you think it does.
• --fdx converts the file to FDX instead of HTML.
• --pdf converts the file to PDF (PrinceXML must be installed on your system).

Support for the Fountain Format

Q. How does Textplay interperate text differently from the Fountain spec?

1. Textplay is smart about what consitutes a transition. Usually, there's no need to escape transitions, but you can.
2. An action line that contains no lower-case letters is converted to a slugline.
3. Lines that begin with // are interpreted as notes. This was done to provide backward-compatibility with Textplay/Screenbundle documents.

Q. What parts of the Fountain spec are not supported?

• Scene Numbers.
• Dual Dialog blocks.
• Title Pages.
• Empty lines inside [[notes]].

Q. Why aren't they?

A. I'm not a good enough programmer.