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FairyScript

Write manuscripts in screenplay style and export them to various formats.

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Description

FairyScript provides a human-readable yet still regular format for writing manuscripts in plaintext. These manuscripts can then be compiled with fairyscript to various other formats, either for consumption by other programs or for ease-of-use by humans.

There are three main values that FairyScript provides:

  • Storing manuscripts as plaintext rather than as binary or XML-based files (such as those used by Microsoft Word) consumes less space.
  • Using the .FEY format allows the manuscript to be compiled to other formats when necessary.
  • The .FEY format provided by FairyScript is easier to read than formats that are directly used by manuscript execution systems, such as Ren’py.

Supported Formats

FairyScript provides the .FEY format for files. It is capable of interpreting manuscripts written in this format, and compiling them to the following formats:

  • .FEY -> .RPY (Ren’py Script)
  • .FEY -> .DOCX (Word Office)

Installation

To install FairyScript to the system, do pip install fairyscript. This will make the fairyc command available on the system.

Requirements:

  • Python (2.7, or 3.3 or later)
  • lxml, which can be installed from pip.
  • ply, which can be installed from pip.

To execute the FairyScript compiler from a local download without installing it, run the local fairyc.py (and substitute executing this file for the fairyc command found in the documentation). Note that the above dependencies must first be resolved.

FairyScript also requires python-docx (for writing to Word documents). However, the original codebase has been modified to support additional features that FairyScript requires, and so it is included in the FairyScript codebase. For license information on this package, please see the appropriate LICENSE file.

Compiler Usage

The FairyScript compiler (fairyc) is used to compile .FEY format manuscript files into other file types. It is invoked by execution from the command line.

The typical usage of fairyc is to either compile .FEY files to prettier, more human-readable formats or to compile .FEY files to executable scripts.

To compile a FEY manuscript to Ren’Py:

$ fairyc renpy input_file.fey -o renpy_script.rpy

To compile a FEY manuscript to Microsoft Office:

$ fairyc renpy input_file.fey -o my_script.docx --word

When invoked with no arguments, fairyc will read manuscript statements from stdin, compile them to Ren’Py script format, and then output them to stdout:

$ generate_fey | fairyc renpy | process_output

Input files are specified by passing each as an argument; to specify multiple input files, pass in multiple arguments. All input files are read in the order that they are given. If no input files are given, fairyc will read from stdin.

In this example, three files are compiled to a single Ren’Py script:

$ fairyc renpy main_path.fey branch1.fey branch2.fey -o my_script.rpy

The output file is specified with the -o option. Only one output file may be specified. If the -o is not given, fairyc will write the output to stdout. Note that due to the inherent limitations of the DOCX format, writing to stdout is not permitted when compiling to Microsoft Word format.

Without any additional specification, fairyc will compile the input to Ren’Py script format. This can be changed by changing the subcommand given. renpy is used to specify Ren’Py, docx specifies DOCX format output, lex specifies lexer symbols only, ast specifies outputting the abstract syntax tree without compiling, and analyze performs static analysis on the code and outputs the results as plain text.

By default, fairyc expects input to be in FEY manuscript format, but it can also parse files that have already been lexed as well as compile abstract syntax trees. Use the -f (long version --format) option to set the type of file being processed. The argument to -f option must be fey for processing FEY manuscript format, lex for processing lexed symbols directly, or ast for processing abstract syntax trees.

The following example parses a file containing pre-lexed symbols and then compiles the result to a Ren’Py format script:

$ fairyc renpy -f lex script_symbols.lex -o my_script.rpy

In addition to the options listed above, there are many options that are specific to the compiler for a particular format. For a full list of options, invoke fairyc with the -h option:

$ fairyc -h

FEY: The FairyScript Language

The FairyScript Language is documented in full in the file fairyscript.md in the docs directory of fairyscript.