fountain.ts

Fountain-ts

Fountain-ts is a TypeScript based parser for the screenplay format Fountain. Based on Matt Daly's fountain-js.

Deprecation Notice

The package known as fountain.ts is being deprecated in favor of fountain-js. Please visit the fountain-js NPM package for latest versions for this codebase.

Syntax Support

Supports up to v 1.1 of the Fountain syntax.

Currently Fountain-ts supports a limited range of key-value pairs for title pages -

• Title, Credit, Author/s, Source, Notes, Draft date, Date, Contact, Copyright

How To

Fountain-ts behaves as Fountain-js does. Import Fountain and create a new instance of it.

import { Fountain } from 'fountain.ts';

The output provided by Fountain-ts is an object literal, a Script interface, of the format: { title: '...', html: { title_page: '...', script: '...' } }.

An example.

import { Fountain, Script } from 'fountain.ts';
import * as assert from 'assert';

const text = `.OPENING TITLES

            > BRICK & STEEL <
            > FULL RETIRED <

            SMASH CUT TO:`;
        
let fountain = new Fountain();

let output: Script = fountain.parse(text);
let actual = output.html.script;

const expected = '<h3>OPENING TITLES</h3><p class="centered">BRICK & STEEL <br /> FULL RETIRED</p><h2>SMASH CUT TO:</h2>';

assert.equal(actual, expected);

Parser Tokens

Like Fountain-js, if you want access to the tokens that Fountain-ts generates, simply attach a true parameter to your parse calls. Requesting tokens adds a tokens property to the output generated by Fountain-ts.

let output: Script = fountain.parse(script, true);
console.log(output.tokens);

The tokens for the Brick & Steel sample found on the Fountain website would look as follows (just a small sample):

[ 
  ..., 
  { type="scene_heading", text="EXT. BRICK'S PATIO - DAY", scene_number="1"}, 
  { type="action", text="A gorgeous day. The su...emplating -- something."}, 
  { type="action", text="The SCREEN DOOR slides ...es with two cold beers."},  
  { type="dialogue_begin"}, 
  { type="character", text="STEEL"}, 
  { type="dialogue", text="Beer's ready!"}, 
  { type="dialogue_end"}, 
  { type="dialogue_begin"}, 
  { type="character", text="BRICK"}, 
  { type="dialogue", text="Are they cold?"}, 
  { type="dialogue_end"}, 
  { type="page_break"}, 
  { type="dialogue_begin"}, 
  { type="character", text="STEEL"}, 
  { type="dialogue", text="Does a bear crap in the woods?"}, 
  { type="dialogue_end"}, 
  { type="action", text="Steel sits. They laugh at the dumb joke."},
  { type="dialogue_begin"}, 
  { type="character", text="STEEL"}, 
  { type="parenthetical", text="(beer raised)"}, 
  { type="dialogue", text="To retirement."}, 
  { type="dialogue_end"}, 
  { type="dialogue_begin"}, 
  { type="character", text="BRICK"}, 
  { type="dialogue", text="To retirement."}, 
  { type="dialogue_end"}
  ...
]

Just like Fountain-js, Fountain-ts attaches some extra tokens, such as 'dialogue_begin' and 'dialogue_end'. These are used to block together sections.

In the case of dual dialogue, it allows Fountain-ts to attach a dual property to blocks of dialogue.