"Boneyard" (ie comments) that precede title page?

[mckea]

Strictly speaking, this might not be a screenplain-specific question.

On my project, I'm encouraging other writers to use text-based formats like markdown and fountain. I've set up a set of skeleton templates for the various files we use for a story - outline, script, etc. I would like to include at the top of these files some helpful hints as well as links to syntax pages. For example, in fountain scripts I'd like to include a comment that contains a link to https://fountain.io/syntax .

However, it seems screenplain will not consider a title page to be a title page if it is preceded by a comment. The syntax specification does say "The optional Title Page is always the first thing in a Fountain document" (https://fountain.io/syntax#section-titlepage), but I wonder if the possibility of comments that precede the title hadn't been considered when this rule was established.

[vilcans]

That is a good question. The Fountain spec is not clear in this case, but I think this was mentioned in some discussion via e-mail at some point. Maybe this can be a solution?

Title: My Fine Script
Comments:
    This file is in Fountain format.
    For more information, see https://fountain.io/syntax

[onerandomusername]

IME I've seen quite a few parsers that run boneyard removal first, and so they inadvertently support comments before the title page.

The Better Fountain extension for VSCode supports boneyard before title page, and I've ended up stripping comments before passing my scripts to screenplain anyhow.

I think it would be worth supporting, even as an implementation detail.

[vilcans]

To me it makes sense that you could add comments to the title page. if other parsers do it, then I guess Screenplain should do it too. The spec is not very clear, but it does say:

If you want Fountain to ignore some text, wrap it with /* some text */.

And "some text" could just as well mean any text in the file, including the title page.

[vilcans]

I've looked into this, and it turns out that Screenplain actually supports comments in the title page.
It's just that a blank line ends the title page section.
Consider the following:

/*
This is a comment in the title page
*/
Title: My Short Film

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

All short films start with the main character waking up in the morning.
This is no exception.

After boneyard removal this turns into (note that the first line is blank):

Title: My Short Film

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

All short films start with the main character waking up in the morning.
This is no exception.

As the first line is blank, the "Title: ..." is treated as the start of the screenplay proper, and parsed as action.
I don't know how other software handles this. Maybe blank lines before the start of the first key/value part of the title page should be skipped? But that wouldn't help with cases like this:

Title: My Short Film
/*comment*/
Author: Actually not part of title page - this will be parsed as action!

FADE IN:

An ugly workaround is writing the comments so they don't add blank lines, e.g.:

/* This is a comment that will not add a line break
*/Title: My Movie
Author: Martin

FADE IN: