.fdx exchange and repair

Most productions send scripts as .fdx files, the format Final Draft uses. Cold Open opens them, lets you edit them, and saves them back so the people who sent them get the format they expect.

What comes back as it went

• Everything you didn’t edit is written back exactly as it was, down to the byte. A file opened and saved with no edits is identical to the original.
• What Cold Open doesn’t use passes through untouched: another app’s settings, page setup, and anything else in the file that Cold Open doesn’t model.
• What you did edit is written in the same style as the rest of the file.
• The pages: Cold Open lays out an .fdx with its own page settings, so its page count matches the file’s own closely. We measure it against reference scripts, and on a 120-page feature it matches page for page.

What .fdx can’t carry from Cold Open

Some things Cold Open holds have no public description of how .fdx stores them. Cold Open won’t guess at a format, so these aren’t written to .fdx. It asks before saving, and a project keeps all of them:

• Notes, boneyard, sections and synopses are left out.
• Tracked changes are written accepted: the file holds the script as it would be with every change accepted.
• Revision sets and marks are left out. A Revisions list the file already had passes through untouched.
• A Fountain title page’s key names become plain lines.

A damaged file

A damaged .fdx still opens. Cold Open repairs what it can: broken XML, a wrong encoding, characters XML doesn’t allow, settings out of range. Then it says what it fixed:

• “Cold Open repaired this file” gives the counts and the first few problems, in plain words and without your script’s text.
• Details (D) shows the whole report.
• Save repaired copy… (S) saves the repaired script under a new name.
• OK carries on with the repaired script. Nothing is written until you save.

The first save over a damaged file keeps a hidden copy of it as it was, which you’ll find in Recovered versions.

Repair an .fdx file (palette) repairs an .fdx into a new file without opening it, and shows the same report. So does the command line:

coldopen repair damaged.fdx repaired.fdx

The input is never written. Add --json for a report a program can read. It holds codes and positions only, never script text, so it’s safe to share when you report a file problem.

You can use this even if you write in another app. coldopen repair doesn’t change your file, and a repaired copy opens anywhere .fdx does.

Converting

• Save as with an .fdx name converts a Fountain script to .fdx, and the other way round. What the target can’t hold is listed first, as above.
• coldopen convert draft.fdx draft.fountain does the same from the command line, and refuses a lossy conversion unless you add --allow-lossy.