This post covers how to convert an HTML script into a clean PDF using Highland, while future-proofing it along the way so it can be viewed on any device.
Not long ago I found myself wanting to read Alien, yet unable to find a clean PDF copy anywhere online. I prefer to read scripts in one of two ways: a clean PDF on iPad (usually in the Dropbox app), or a Highland file on desktop/laptop. Weekend Read is a great native script reader for iOS devices, and comes in clutch when iPhone is the only form factor I can read on.
Typically, you’ll find a screenplay online in one of three forms:
- Clean PDF (start reading)
- Scanned PDF (hardest to convert)
- HTML web page (easiest to convert)
Scanned PDFs tend to have random visual artifacts across pages that confuse OCR, often resulting in a chronologically incomplete bulk paste into Highland, which can increase the level of effort (LOE) for conversion pretty quickly. But if you find a screenplay in HTML format, you’re approximately 10 minutes away from the perfect read because converting a script from HTML formatted screenplay text to Fountain screenplay text is a lot easier than you might think. It’s all about getting surgical with Find & Replace in Highland.
Password: w@tch
Some quick tips about using Find & Replace in Highland for HTML format conversion:
- Turn on Live Margins in the View menu (makes scanning easier and quicker).
- Make sure to use the Ignore case checkbox correctly (RIPLEY vs. Ripley).
- As you scan the script, look for invalid patterns and replace them with valid patterns.
- Copy the invalid pattern and paste it into the Find field.
- Go back to the Editor, get the formatting correct there.
- Copy the corrected (valid) pattern in the Editor and paste it into the Replace field.
- Repeat until you stop seeing obvious invalid pattens.
It’s good to wait on reading the screenplay until all the obvious invalid pattens are removed from the script. This creates an adequately coherent corpus for the best first read, and issues not addressed by Find & Replace become more visible during a first read, resulting in a clean PDF copy for posterity. I’ve done this a few times now with different titles, and I typically do the first read in Highland, switching between Preview and the Editor to tidy up the small stuff I usually pass over during conversion.
The above example took just over 10 minutes to complete. It’s been sped up 8x for a 2 minute TRT. If you watch closely, I eliminate most of the invalid patterns from the HTML formatting around page 10 (screenplay is 111 pages). For a low LOE the result is very much worth the time spent: a properly formatted, future-proof screeplay that can be viewed on any device.
So, if you were looking for a clean PDF of Alien…you scored. I’ve also included the Highland files that were used to run the conversions, which can easily be brought into Weekend Read for a native iOS experience.
