loading a screenplay with formatting
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Hi there,
I’m trying to load a screenplay into a page and keep the formatting. I have added Word and pdf versions to the media library but when they are loaded to the page the indentations that signify dialogue disappear. The whole thing returns to plain text. Sometimes they don’t even load properly. Initially the word count shows 29,000 then suddenly jumps down to 3 and just the first 3 words are shown. Is this a browser problem?
Cheers .
Tony.
p.s. I’d like to thank you all for your fantastic help in the past. Can’t fault it.The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hey Tony!
Formatting from screenwriting software or Microsoft Word doesn’t ‘translate’ to HTML on your website.
Unless you want to manually adjust the formatting by pasting the document into the Text/HTML tab in your page editor, and then return to the Visual tab to make aesthetic adjustments, I can suggest the following solutions:
- Add PDF to your Media Library. Add downloadable link, so when visitors click it, the PDF will be saved on their computer. If you do this, the PDF will only appear as a link, not as an embedded document.
https://en.support.wordpress.com/uploading-documents/ - You can save the document as a Google doc, or as a Scribd file, and embed that file into your WordPress.com page. If you do this, the document will be readable on your page, rather than appear only as a downloadable link:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/google-docs/
https://en.support.wordpress.com/scribd/
I hope one of those solutions works well for you…re-formatting 29,000 words sounds like a massive undertaking.
I hope this helps! If you have any other concerns, drop me a note. Thanks much!
- Add PDF to your Media Library. Add downloadable link, so when visitors click it, the PDF will be saved on their computer. If you do this, the PDF will only appear as a link, not as an embedded document.
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Thanks for your prompt advice. Before I try the Google docs solution I wanted to ask you about html. My script writing program will export both html and Xml versions would I be able to use these to keep the formatting intact. Cheers. Tony.
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Hey Tony,
If you export in HTML, you should be able to paste that content into the Text Editor without losing formatting:
Can you give that a try?
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Hi Jeremey,
Hope I spelled your name ok. I saved out the script in html, loaded it into word pad, copied and pasted it into the page editor under the text tab and tried the “proof read” tab (which came up no errors”. I opened the page on my site and it just shows the html code listed, all 32000 words of it. What am I doing wrong here?
Thanks. Tony. -
Hi Tony,
Are you referring to the page here?
http://thetimemaster.net/screenplay1/
If so, it looks like you have some code at the top of the page that is actually CSS, not HTML. The rest of the page is looking alright to me. Can you confirm?
CSS is different than HTML. It’s used to style pages on your site. You can read more about it here:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/css-basics/
If you would like to use CSS with your site, you’ll need to purchase the Premium plan shown here:
However, if you remove it from your page, you shouldn’t notice any difference in appearance.
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Hi again,
I see what you mean by the stray code at the top but the screenplay itself isn’t formatted as it should be, and as I saved it out of the writing application. Normally camera directions appear at the left. Transitions are at the right. The character names appear in caps in the very centre with the dialogue underneath occupying a couple of columns width in the centre of the page. Opening the html in IE shows it correctly formatted.
I know this is taking a bit of time but it will be very hard to read as it is, and anyone used to looking at scripts would probably not even bother.
I appreciate your help with this, I am probably missing something.
Tony. -
Hey Tony,
Within your post, you’ll see HTML items like this:
<p class="action">TIME * TO * LIVE</p>That line assigns the class “action” to that particular bit of text.
Then, the CSS above your text has the following:
.action { padding-right: 5%; }That gives some styling to the specific lines with the “action” class (5% padding on the right). So, the CSS and the HTML work together to create the styling.
The HTML you entered is correctly inserted into the post. However, it doesn’t have the corresponding CSS styling to create the full effect. Does that help to clarify?
There are two workarounds:
1. The easiest method would be to purchase the Premium bundle shown here:
Currently, you’re paying $26 for the domain + A$20 for the 10GB space upgrade. The bundle includes both of these upgrades as well as the Custom Design upgrade and several others. The Custom Design upgrade allows you to use custom CSS to complete the pairing described above. If you’d like to go this route, we can help get you setup with a 2 week free trial. If you decide not to stick with it, we can always remove it.
2. Another option would be to go with inline styling rather than CSS styling. This would be a bit tedious. Basically, you would change lines from this:
<p class="action">TIME * TO * LIVE</p>To this:
<p style="padding-right: 5%;">TIME * TO * LIVE</p>The major downside is that you would have to apply this for every line.
Let me know what option you would like to go with!
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Hi there once more,
The upgrade sounds like a good way to go and is probably a bit overdue. Just a few of questions about the upgrade:
Can I embed video in the pages?
Am I going to have to learn much about the coding to implement the formatting? Which is ok but might take me some time.
Also an unrelated question: Is there any way to have the worlds of wordpress and unity talking to each other. ie some way of being able to move around a unity scene from within my site.
Thanks. Tony. -
Can I embed video in the pages?
Yep! With the Premium plan, you can actually upload videos directly to your site and embed them with VideoPress:
If you would prefer not to upload them to your site, you could also use one of the options shown here:
Am I going to have to learn much about the coding to implement the formatting? Which is ok but might take me some time.
Not necessarily! I’ll make sure you get up and running on the right path. Then, we have a ton of resources to get you up to speed. If you get stuck, we’re here to help.
Is there any way to have the worlds of wordpress and unity talking to each other. ie some way of being able to move around a unity scene from within my site.
I’m not sure what you mean by “Unity.” Could you clarify?
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Hi again,
Unity is the 3D game design software. There have been heaps of big games made with it. Very easy to use especially with their asset store online.
I have upgraded and tried the html again. No change but a glance at the css code looks like I will be able to tinker with it and get it sorted. Particularly the padding amounts. Do you have any tutes on the website to help with the css language and a syntax list would be good.
Thanks for your assistance so far and I will get back to you if I need further help.
Cheers – Tony. -
Hey tony!
For this to work correctly, we’ll actually need to put the CSS and HTML in different areas. Can you try the following?
1. Start on this page:
https://thetimemaster.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=495&action=edit
2. Delete the following text from the top:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title>TIME TO LIVE 661</title> <style type="text/css"> /* Scrippets-compatible CSS - http://www.fountain.io */3. Copy everything starting with
div.scrippet {to
.shot { padding-right: 5%; }4. Paste the code that we just copied (effectively the CSS) under Appearance -> Customize -> CSS.
5. Go back to this page:
https://thetimemaster.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=495&action=edit
6. Copy and paste the remaining text into the Text Editor instead of the Visual Editor:
Can you give those steps a try and let me know when you’re finished?
Unity is the 3D game design software. There have been heaps of big games made with it. Very easy to use especially with their asset store online.
Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any way to pair Unity with WordPress.com.
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Hi once more,
Your instructions did the trick and the page is properly formatted.
Yay! I wonder if there is any way to change the background colour of just that page. The black looks very smart on the other pages but might make reading a long script a bit eye straining.
Also is there any way I can back up the whole site?Thanks again for assistance, very much appreciated.
Tony. -
I wonder if there is any way to change the background colour of just that page. The black looks very smart on the other pages but might make reading a long script a bit eye straining.
Definitely possible! What color were you thinking? White? If so, we’ll probably want to change the text color as well.
This should get us started in the right direction:
#content .post-495, #content .post-495 h1 { background-color: white; color: black; }Can you try adding that under Appearance > Customize > CSS to the code we already have?
Also is there any way I can back up the whole site?
We take care of that for you! We backup all sites across WordPress.com in case of emergency. If you would like to keep a local file of your site data, you can export it periodically as explained here:
However, this isn’t necessary!
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Hi there,
Implemented the suggestions and they worked out fine. Had to fiddle with the widths, margins and fonts a bit but everything looks good there now. I’ll going to leave developments alone for awhile.
Thanks for your assistance.Cheers – Tony.
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