Round-Trip Back to Clean Fountain

FountainRenderer writes a parsed document back out as Fountain text. Use it to normalize a messy file or to save a cleaned copy.

from fountain import FountainParser
from fountain.renderer import FountainRenderer

document = FountainParser().parse_file("messy.fountain")

clean = FountainRenderer().render(document)

with open("clean.fountain", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    f.write(clean)

The output keeps the element types and their order, the blank lines between blocks, and inline emphasis (**bold**, *italic*, _underline_). It does not reproduce the original whitespace byte for byte, and it drops inline notes and boneyard comments.

If notes matter to you, keep them on their own lines so they survive the round trip. Round-Tripping and the Inline-Note Contract covers the full contract and why the round trip drops inline notes.