Use the Command Line¶

fountain-py installs a fountain command alongside the library. Use it to validate or render a script without writing any Python.

It has two subcommands: validate and render. Both accept a path or - to read from stdin. If the file cannot be read (missing, unreadable, or not UTF-8), the command prints the reason to stderr and exits with status 1.

Validate a File¶

fountain validate runs the same checks as validate() and prints one diagnostic line per issue:

$ fountain validate screenplay.fountain
3:warning:orphan-character-cue:Character cue 'JOHN' has no dialogue following it

Each line has the shape line:severity:code:message. The exit code is 1 if any issue has severity error, and 0 otherwise. Wire it into a CI check or a commit-time Git hook:

$ fountain validate screenplay.fountain && echo "clean"

Pipe a script through stdin with - instead of writing a temp file:

$ cat screenplay.fountain | fountain validate -

Render to Another Format¶

fountain render parses a file and writes it out in a different format, chosen with --format:

$ fountain render screenplay.fountain --format html > screenplay.html

Each format maps to one of the library’s renderers:

Format	Renderer
`html`	`HTMLRenderer`
`text`	`PlainTextRenderer`
`fountain`	`FountainRenderer`
`json`	`to_json()`
`fdx`	`FDXRenderer`
`pdf`	`PDFRenderer`

Output goes to stdout by default. Write it to a file with -o instead:

$ fountain render screenplay.fountain --format json -o screenplay.json

render also reads from stdin:

$ cat screenplay.fountain | fountain render - --format text

Render to PDF¶

PDF output needs the optional pdf extra, since it pulls in fpdf2:

$ pip install "fountain-py[pdf]"

With the extra installed, --format pdf works the same as any other format:

$ fountain render screenplay.fountain --format pdf -o screenplay.pdf

Without -o, PDF bytes go to stdout, so redirect them to a file rather than printing them to your terminal:

$ fountain render screenplay.fountain --format pdf > screenplay.pdf

If the extra is not installed, the command exits with status 1 and prints an install hint to stderr instead of a traceback. The command-line tool only exposes LETTER and the SCREENPLAY layout profile. For A4, HALF_LETTER, or a custom layout, call PDFRenderer from Python; see Export a Screenplay to PDF.