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Open formats

Your work belongs to you. Every file Drafter saves or exports is an open, documented format that other programs can read, today and in twenty years, with or without Drafter.

What Drafter saves

  • Scripts are Fountain (.fountain): plain text with a few marks, defined by the open Fountain syntax. Any text editor opens it, and so do Highland, Beat, Slugline, and other screenwriting apps.
  • Documents are Markdown (.md): CommonMark, the open standard, with footnotes written as on GitHub.
  • What Drafter adds (a scene’s colour, the template, your script’s own dictionary, export options) goes in one small block at the end of the file, in plain JSON inside a Fountain comment (/* drafter … */), which other Fountain apps skip and never print. Drafter hides the block in its own editor and keeps it from being deleted, so you’ll only see it if you open the file in another program; leave it as it is there too. Nothing is hidden anywhere else.

What Drafter exports

  • PDF, the pages as they print.
  • Final Draft (.fdx), read and written from its public, XML form.
  • Markdown and plain text.
  • HTML: one web page, with everything inside it, that any browser opens.
  • EPUB, the open e-book standard (EPUB 3), for reading a draft on an e-reader or a tablet.

Final Draft is a trademark of its owner. Drafter reads and writes its file format so a script can move between the two apps, and isn’t connected with or endorsed by Final Draft.

Opening an HTML or EPUB file again

Drafter can only reopen HTML or EPUB files it saved itself, with Let Drafter reopen this file turned on in Export options. It can’t open HTML or EPUB files made by other apps or sites, or Drafter exports made with the option off.

With the option on, the file carries your whole script, notes and all, as plain text. In an HTML file it is one <script type="text/plain" id="drafter-source"> element, which no browser runs, holding the script in base64. In an EPUB it is the file EPUB/drafter-source.fountain (or .md for a Markdown document). These names are part of the open specification and won’t change, so any program can get your script back out.

When Drafter reopens one of these files, it reads only the script inside, as plain text, and never runs anything in it. An HTML export is still an ordinary web page: double-click it and your browser opens it like any other page, where Drafter’s checks don’t apply, so treat an HTML file someone sent you like any page you download. An EPUB opens in whatever e-book app you use.

The .drafter package: an open specification

Some projects grow beyond one file: numbered drafts, the material you cut, a workbook, voice notes. For moving or keeping a whole project as one file, Drafter will offer an optional .drafter package: a plain ZIP of ordinary files that anyone can unzip and read.

Its format is written down in full, in the open, so any screenwriting app can read and write it too. The specification is in the public domain (CC0): anyone may use it, in any app, free or paid, without asking.

Read the .drafter package specification on GitHub. It is a draft until Drafter ships the package; comments are welcome as GitHub issues.

No format here is a secret, and none needs Drafter to open. If you ever stop using Drafter, your scripts come with you.