Work within a screenplay document just like you would with a regular Obsidian note.
To leverage the power of interlacing Obsidian!Markdown and Fountain within a single document, we need to be able to write Markdown and Fountain syntax interchangeably and without friction.
It so happens that Obsidian-flavored Markdown plays quite well with Fountain syntax, generally. We still need to define some rules for those overlapping areas. You can read more at Conflicts between Obsidian-flavored Markdown vs Fountain.
If a markdown file is written in Fountain syntax, then the entire document (syntax) contents should be immediately 100% compatible for Fountain processors and exporters.
If it is not possible, then any non-Fountain-syntax should be trivially resolvable by simple regex/text pattern matching rules.
This is so that:
- This Obsidian plugin will have less trouble/complexity because it doesn't have to figure out which regions are fountain, and which are not.
- You'll be able to directly integrate with other Fountain-related tools with the same file (reference)!
A written comparison between writing in .md files vs in .fountain files is coming soon.
The syntax styling in the Obsidian editor should be as similar to a Fountain-exported PDF as possible.
A Fountain-first user, who has no previous knowledge of Obsidian or Markdown, should be able to write a full Fountain document with as little friction as possible.
An Obsidian-first user may be allowed to lose/forfeit their usual/familiar Obsidian syntax IF it conflicts with standard Fountain syntax.
Since Fountain takes precedence, we should have Fountain-compliant methods to write sections of regular Markdown!
Fountain-styled notes should live in parallel with regular Obsidian/Markdown notes.
While "Interoperable" deals with the hybrid nature of a single file/note, Parallel addresses the hybrid nature of a vault/folder of files/notes.
According to Interoperable#1 (Fountain-compliance), files will be either regular Obsidian markdown, or completely Fountain-compliant.
We should be able to mark/declare certain files to be Fountain-formatted, or to define some glob pattern for a group of files. Right now, you can enable Fountain formatting by marking a file with the frontmatter metadata Property cssclasses: fountain.
Then, Obsidian note-making is business as usual, until we come across a file that is marked for Fountain-formatting. That is the scope that this plugin will operate in.
(Implementation is subject to change! See this discussion for a possible alternative.)
This plugin should do one thing well, instead of many things half-baked.
"Lacking nothing" is different from "having everything"...
Should overly-extensive requirements arise, a brand new/additional tool should be created/used. The numerous Longform - Obsidian Plugin features should already cover almost all your additional needs, like configurable manuscript compilation and word count!
See Synergistic Tools for more recommendations!
This plugin should be scoped to only making visual changes to the Obsidian editor. This means that this plugin will try to avoid any feature that makes changes to files.