vilcans/screenplain

Only single period should create a scene heading

vilcans opened this issue · 4 comments

A line has to start with a single period to force a scene heading.

The following example:

...where the second-rate carnival is parked for the moment in an Alabama field.

...should not be parsed as a scene heading.

Hello.

I just imported a .fountain file that has a few .BLAH BLAH's and they are treated as character name dialog instead of scene headings (HTML output).

onitred: I can't reproduce that problem. ".BLAH BLAH" is parsed as a scene heading as it should. Please open a new issue with instructions for how to reproduce it.

Sorry for being unclear. I understand what is happening now. If there is a line of text immediately following a forced slug, then the parser treats it as dialog.

example:

.IN THE FRONT SEAT
the man holds a water bottle

.IN THE FRONT SEAT

the man holds a water bottle

The first part is treat as a name and dialog. The second version is sub-slugged correctly.
Is this just a part of the fountain spec? What is the rational?

Yes, a slug needs a blank line, or it will be treated as a character name, even with a leading period. The spec isn't explicit about this specific case, but it says "A Scene Heading is any line that has a blank line following it" and "You can 'force' a Scene Heading by starting the line with a single period", note the line, not a line.