FR - Chords inline within lyrics

[mattfin...@gmail.com]

I like having the chords displayed above the lyrics but i hate the current method of editing on the phone.
I am also using SetList Helper which IMO is much nicer for editing and creating songs with chords.
The format they use is:
[Am7]Sing a [Dmaj7]li[Eb]ttle song

Which would display like: (hopefully this works)
Am7 Dmaj Eb
Sing a li- ttle song

Inline chords makes rearranging the lyrics to display on new lines, etc. much simpler rather than working with a separate line for chords.

[Mike Porter]

The problem with this request is that opensongapp is intentionally compatible with OpenSong for desktop, rather than an independent program designed for mobile.

Opensong uses special characters to allow you to force breaks wherever you want:

A single vertical bar ( | ) can be placed in a lyric line to force a line break

Used twice ( || ) will break the verse into multiple slides

If you need to space out sylables because the chord is longer than the sylable, you can place a hypen ( - ). 

When displaying a slide with chords (ie, on stage) or printing a chord sheet (at least from OpenSong, havent tried to print from opensongapp because it's sort of redundant....) the hyphens will print, but when displaying a lyric-only view (either slide or print) they are skipped. Vertical bars dont show either way. 

For printing, if you want to print a music sheet in columns (ie, so you can put an entire song on one page) you can specify a column break with 3 hyphens ( --- ) )

There's two big advantages to this approach.  First, the song file itself is much easier to read, especially if you are using a non-native editor (because opensong files are plain text files, you can edit them anywhere with anything that can open a text file, even NotePad). Second, it allows you to group verses, more like a hymnal style, rather than repeating the chord lines for every verse:

[Verse]  ;note the lack of number, it's  "verse" or "v" rather than "verse1" or "v1"

.A                   G              C

 Some lyric   that is      verse 1 

 Some other lyric for    verse 2

 As many      lyric lines as you  have verses

This, of course, is even more readable, and more compact for printing, as well. Note that those extra spaces added for formatting the lines will be collapsed by the display routines so slides will display normaly. If you need to split the verses into multiple lines and/or slides, you can still use | and ||, too.

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[mattfin...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the clear response Mike. I really like the Stage Mode in the app. I also like that it's using an open standard with pain text.
I haven't had any luck with using the single | for a new line in OpenSongApp. It doesn't force a new line. If i put it in a chords line it just displays the character.
The double || works though.

Maybe if that were working it would soothe my gripe. Any suggestions?

New FR!
Drop down list next to insert common things like [v], [c], |, ect. Ie. Shortcuts for characters that are painful to input on a mobile device.

[Gareth Evans]

Hi,

Thanks to Mike for taking the time to reply with a very accurate and clear response!

  

The | character in the chord line has been disabled as many users requested that it be allowed as a bar separator, which is very sensible.  If you only use chords and want to start a new line, just start a new line.  The | character for new lines is only supposed to be entered in lyric lines where it will cause a new line to appear in the lyrics projected via PRESENTATION mode.  It doesn't make a new line in the chord sheet for PERFORMANCE or STAGE mode.  If you want a new line for this, just start the lyrics on a new line.  The reason behind this is back to the desktop version of OpenSong where musicians like to have a more compact view of a song, often with longer lines (so that the song doesn't run to multiple pages), but when projecting the lyrics for people to sing, only small sections are displayed at a time, so spreading it over multiple lines is fine.

I'll see what I can do about adding those shortcuts for you in the edit window....... (it will likely be next week before I get a chance to look at this though).

Best wishes,

Gareth

[mattfin...@gmail.com]

Thanks Gareth.
Love your work on OpenSongApp! It does far more than i need it to do but i would really love an improved editing and creating functionality.
Just wondering; does allowing | to be used break OpenSong standard compatibility?
Could you possibly add the option to parse | in the lyrics line to create new chords/lyrics lines into the AutoFix feature? Or even parse inline chords with AutoFix, converting them into OpenSong format as well? I hate space, space, spacing to align the chords to lyrics. I would love to place the cursor in the lyric, go Menu > Insert Chord..., my cursor is now encapsulated within [] and I type Am. When I'm done, I click the AutoFix button.

It's a bit of work i know. I could probably code the function for you to drop in if that's an option.
Matt

[Gareth Evans]

Hi Matt,

Editing/creating a song on a handheld device is always going to be a pain!  Jane you tried using the desktop version of OpenSong?  I often use this and I have the songs automatically synced with each other using Dropbox (you can also use Google Drive instead).  To do this there is instructions on my website (http://www.opensongapp.com).

The | is fine with OpenSong convention as it only works for lyrics during presentations (the desktop app doesn't display chords in presentation mode).

The song formatting that you obviously prefer is ChordPro.  If you prefer that you can create your song in this format using any text editor and save the song into the OpenSong Song folder (give it the file extension .chordpro).  When you open it in the app, it will get converted for you into OpenSong format (as long as you use the correct system).  A downside of this format is that it doesn't have tags to separate sections into different verses, choruses, bridges, etc.

What I might try to do is give the option of switching the editing mode between OpenSong and Chordpro formats, however, this wouldn't preserve [V], [B], [..custom..], etc. tags as these are not available as ChordPro standards, but I would be able to keep [C] as chordpro uses {soc} .....chorus text here... {eoc} to identify the chorus.  I could maybe work around the other tags by adding them as comment lines though.

Thoughts?

Gareth

[mattfin...@gmail.com]

Hi Gareth.
I think that sounds fantastic.
I must have used the ChordPro format previously. In that format I've always used custom tags like [CHORUS] so maybe translating [c], etc. into a custom tag of the full word would work out?
Please let me know how i can help.
Matt

[mattfin...@gmail.com]

Hi Gareth,
I love how you have implemented ChordPro style editing! Brilliant!
Thank you so much :)
Matt

[Gareth Evans]

No problem!

[Alistair Baty]

Hi Gareth,

One thing I noticed recently is that the auto formatting correction that fixes lyrics, placing a space at the beginning of the line, breaks the column break special characters ---. The space in front of it makes the Desktop app not recognize the column break. I saw it as I was printing out pdfs on the Desktop for sound students and some longer songs were not using two columns to keep it on one page.

There is no urgency for it, but if you can add the exception at some stage it would be helpful.

Regards,

Alistair

On Tuesday, May 22, 2018 at 8:47:14 AM UTC-6, Mike Porter wrote:

The problem with this request is that opensongapp is intentionally compatible with OpenSong for desktop, rather than an independent program designed for mobile.

Opensong uses special characters to allow you to force breaks wherever you want:

...

[Gareth Evans]

Oops.  I'll get this added to the next update.  Thanks for alerting me to it!

Gareth

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