Format switch: Taiwan and Hollywood

In one line: how to switch screenplay format, tune what gets printed, and why what you see in Preview is what the export gives you.

There are exactly two formats

Slima has two screenplay formats: Taiwan and Hollywood. There is no third national format. The switch sits at the trailing end of the toolbar above the page — two buttons and a gear.

A newly created .script starts in the Taiwan format. Press the other button to change it; not a word of content moves.

What switching changes

The content stays; the printed words and positions change:

Element	Taiwan	Hollywood
Scene heading	1. 內景　You'an Scriptorium　昏（the shopfront）	INT. YOU'AN SCRIPTORIUM - DUSK (the shopfront)
Action	△ prefix	No prefix
Character + dialogue	Joined on one line: SHEN YAN：Twelve pages.	Name centred and capitalised, dialogue in an indented column
Parenthetical	▲（very quietly）	(very quietly)
Shot	▲ 特寫：…	CLOSE ON — …
Character extension	（畫外音）	(V.O.)
Transition presets	Three	Nine
Typeface	Proportional	Monospace (Courier is the industry standard)
Default paper	A4	Letter
Default size	14pt	12pt
Tab flow	Parenthetical is not in the flow	Tab from dialogue or character lands on a parenthetical

Neither set of printed marks follows your interface language. The Taiwan format prints the Taiwanese conventions (內景/外景, 日·夜·晨·昏, 插景, 畫外音); Hollywood prints the industry ones (INT./EXT., DAY, INSERT, V.O.). Your language shows up in the editor's own buttons.

What's behind the gear

The gear opens Format Customization, in three sections:

Section	Option	Notes
Taiwan Options	Action prefix △	Turn it off and no triangle is printed
Taiwan Options	Insert prefix ▲	Governs the triangle on shots and parentheticals
Display	Scene numbers	Off and the heading loses its 1.
Display	Scene grid layout	Taiwan only: lays scene headings out as the Taiwanese table (scene / time / Time / cast, with location and weather beneath)
PDF Export	Page size	A4 or Letter
PDF Export	Font size	10pt / 12pt / 14pt

The first two sections take effect on screen immediately. The Taiwan Options section only appears while you're in the Taiwan format.

The preview is the export

Preview in the toolbar replaces the editing pane with the typeset page: no type tags, no editable fields, no scene-card borders — one clean page of screenplay.

Why you can trust that page

Editing Preview Word / share page / phone

All four go through the same renderer and honour the same format settings. To check whether the format is right, the preview is faster than opening a file.

Two exceptions worth knowing:

• PDF is a separate implementation — it has to work out coordinates, wrap widths and page breaks at the same time — and the two are kept in step by automated tests. Proof-read from the preview day to day, but still open the PDF once before you deliver.
• Fountain differs on purpose. It's an interchange format for other screenwriting software, with its own markup, and it carries none of the printing marks like △. A Fountain file that doesn't look like the preview isn't broken.

The runtime figure beside it

To the leading side of the switch sits the episode's length: estimate / target / percentage.

• The estimate is the sum of the scenes, recomputed live: dialogue and action word counts converted at a reading speed, plus the transition time between scenes. It's recalculated per scene, so a scene the AI has just written counts too rather than sitting at zero.
• The target is editable in place, whole minutes; clear it to unset. With no target, only the estimate shows.
• The percentage only appears with a target, coloured green (room to spare), yellow (close) and red (at or over).

Each scene's heading row also carries a ~Xm and its own target minutes — that's how you hold a micro-drama's "thirty seconds a scene" rhythm. Word counts are always shown in full; nothing is rounded to 13K.

Which to pick

Where it's going	Pick
A Taiwanese production company or broadcaster	Taiwan
International competitions, overseas representation, writing in English	Hollywood
A co-production elsewhere	Ask which one they read
Practice or coursework	Whichever your teacher asks for

Picking wrong costs you no rewriting. Content and format are separate; one press changes it. After switching, check two things: whether the special-scene words in your annotations (FLASHBACK versus 回憶) should change language too, and whether Taiwan's three transition presets are enough for you.

Its relationship to Fountain

Fountain is a plain-text screenplay interchange format. On import, Slima works out whether the content leans Taiwan or Hollywood; exporting to Fountain is for getting the script into other tools. See Export formats and scope.

Related

• Docs: Export formats and scope
• Docs: The script element types
• Docs: Scene heading
• Docs: Action, transition and shot
• Docs: Starting a screenplay