Fountainer

Fountainer is a Javascript CLI tool to convert screenplays written using Fountain syntax into HTML files.

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Contents

• Fountainer
  • Installation
  • CLI Usage
  • Javascript API Usage
    • fountainer.parse(options)
    • fountainer.toHtml(parsed, options)
    • options
  • Customizing template and themes

Installation

To install the CLI globally run the following command.

npm install fountainer --global

To install the CLI for a specific project, run the following command.

npm install fountainer --save

CLI Usage

The CLI tool can be used as follows.

fountainer -i myStory.fountain -o index.html

The tool accepts the following arguments

Alias	Name	Description	Default
	version	Show version number
i	inputFile	complete path to Fountain file
n	keepNotes	render notes from the fountain file	false
g	gitLine	render the draft number by counting the number of commits on the fountain file. This will only work if the file is part of a Git repository	false
l	lineNumbers	render line numbers corresponding to lines in the fountain file, must be one of "none" - don't print any line numbers, "all" - print all line numbers, "non-empty" - print line numbers only on non-empty lines	"none"
t	titlePage	render a title page	true
d	debug	render the inferred class on each line	false
v	verbose	print verbose logging to console	false
o	outputFile	complete path to output HTML file (required)
s	stylesPath	path to a custom CSS or SCSS file	<default SCSS>
p	templatePath	path to a custom template, can be an EJS or HTML file	<default template>
	showTemplate	print <default template> to console
	showScss	print <default SCSS> file to console
w	watch	set this flag to watch inputFile and recompile on change
	port	applicable only when watch is set, controls the port on which the compiled file will be served when watching
	help	Show help

Javascript API Usage

The tool also exports a javascript library, which can be used as follows.

const fs = require('fs')
const fountainer = require('fountainer')

const parsed = fountainer.parse({ inputFile: 'myStory.fountain' })
const html = fountainer.toHtml(parsed)

fs.writeFileSync('index.html', html)

fountainer.parse(options)

This method parses the input and generates an array of each line of the script.

fountainer.toHtml(parsed, options)

This method generates an HTML string by using the result of the parse function.

options

options for both the functions can have following properties.

{
  inputFile: '',   // path to input file,
  inputString: '', // alternately you can provide the fountain string
  keepNotes: 'inline-notes', // name of class for notes
  gitLine: false,  // applicable only when inputFile is provided,
                   // pulls the git hash and number of commits on the
                   // inputFile and prints it as Draft number
  lineNumbers: 'none', // can be 'none', 'all', 'non-empty' see CLI usage above
  titlePage: true,
  debug: false,
  verbose: false,
  stylesPath: '',  // path to custom CSS/SCSS file
  templatePath: '' // path to custom EJS/HTML file
}

Customizing template and themes

You can start customizing your theme by first copying the default template and theme as follows.

fountainer --showTemplate > template.ejs
fountainer --showScss > styles.scss

Perform all the customization on the template.ejs and styles.scss files as needed, then use your custom template as follows.

fountainer -i story.fountain -p template.ejs -s styles.scss

The template must be an EJS file and will recieve the following object

{
  titlePage, // object containing all the title-page field and value pairs
  lines: [ // an array with the parsed result for each line of the inputFile
    {
      lineNumber, // line number corresponding to input file
      text, // actual text of line 
      name // class name of the line
    }
  ],
  css, // CSS string generated from the --stylesPath
  options // options object provided to the fountainer
}