How would one go about adding fountain support to Hugo compilation?

jonathan_batteas · April 21, 2023, 3:32am

Hello,

If I wanted to implement .fountain (screenplay markdown) support in Hugo, what would the best way be to do this?

should it be implemented in the main source of Hugo using a go module (in the same way goldmark is implemented) maybe something like GitHub - rsdoiel/fountain: experimental golang package for working with Fountain formatted screenplays.
should it be implemented as a short code? If so, how would something that would need to parse a file line-by-line be implemented?
should it be implemented as a separate process which is somehow called after?
can the content format for pandoc be affected in such a way so as to use an external script to process fountain to html? GitHub - pandoc/pandoc-fountain: Custom pandoc reader for Fountain screenplay markup

Anyway, thoughts and opinions are appreciated.
Thank you

jmooring · April 21, 2023, 3:18pm

When writing a screen play using Fountain markdown…

Is it a single, very long document? Are there separate documents for each act and/or scene? I am trying to get a sense of how many files would be involved.
Which authoring tool do you use?

jonathan_batteas · April 21, 2023, 4:16pm

Hello,
Thank you for the reply. It is a single, large document. basically I write using markdown for general notes, and fountain for scripts and screenplays. I’d love to run a single command and have all of my written material ready for the web. Right now I use VSCode and the Better Fountain extension Better Fountain - Visual Studio Marketplace. Which has the ability to export as HTML. I was just wanting to to see if anyone had any thoughts about integrating this into Hugo so that it wouldn’t require an outside tool. It is very nice to be able to compile and deploy all through ssh.

jmooring · April 21, 2023, 4:31pm

I know zero about authoring screenplays, but I installed the Better Fountain extension this morning and it seems feature-rich. The exports to HTML and PDF are impressive. And with 14k installs, this probably won’t turn into abandonware.

With this and so many other available authoring tools (Final Draft, Fade In, etc.), I wouldn’t spend any time trying to reinvent this particular wheel.

If you wanted to include the exported HTML in a Hugo site, stuff it in the static directory and link to it as needed.