[fausto]

Is it worthwhile getting into this? Mobilesheets seems to cope perfectly well with plain old .txt files created with Windows Notepad. 

I see someone on this forum is using ChordSmith. Is that the best option? 

I find the ChordPro software a bit basic. There is no permanent preview screen and the error messages are very cryptic. Their site gives a list of directives but no clear examples of the syntax with which to use them!

Any recommendations gratefully received.

[GraemeJ]

I'm no lover of ChordPro, but sometimes it's a necessary evil, as when other players come up with files in this format.

That said, I have found ChordSmith very useful in dealing with these files, as it allows various formatting options, some of which you would find difficult to do using a simple text editor.  I suggest you try it for yourself and see if it is of any help to you.

[fausto]

I'm no lover of ChordPro, but sometimes it's a necessary evil, as when other players come up with files in this format.

That said, I have found ChordSmith very useful in dealing with these files, as it allows various formatting options, some of which you would find difficult to do using a simple text editor.  I suggest you try it for yourself and see if it is of any help to you.

Thanks for that. However, I downloaded ChordSmith from Soundforge to try it but am having problems.  Opening ChordSmith.jar gives the error message "A Java Exception has occured". (This is on a Windows 10 PC)

[sciurius]

However, I downloaded ChordSmith from Soundforge to try it but am having problems.  Opening ChordSmith.jar gives the error message "A Java Exception has occured". (This is on a Windows 10 PC)

SongPress seems to run fine, and it comes with an installer.

[fausto]

I installed the latest version of Java and re-ran ChordSmith.jar , making note of the default directories so that I could set up a shortcut on the Windows desktop to access the program (the jar install does not put anything in the Start menu).
After that it seems to run OK. I was expecting to see two windows, one for the inputted text file and a second showing a preview of what the outputted file (ChordPro) would look like. It's not exactly like that, but it's early days yet and I don't know what I'm doing ATM. I'll have to climb the learning curve first.

[itsme]

I use Notepad++ as a text editor (it's a better alternative to Windows Notepad) https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
It would allow syntax colouring, but I have not found a ChordPro UDL template yet and don't feel an urgent need to create one myself.
But it would be nice, if somebody had the motivation to create such a user defined language file for ChordPro
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/use...dLanguages

MobileSheets itself comes with a (pretty basic) editor which is fine for small corrections during a rehearsal.

SongPress (for Windows) https://github.com/lallulli/songpress/releases/ only supports the most important ChordPro tags. It comes with WYSIWYG preview. It has great features to convert "chords over lyrics" to ChordPro, to transpose to a different key, to switch transcoding, to move chords left or right and for batch editing chords (remove chords from a selected part of the song or copy paste chords from one part of a song to another).

The ChordPro reference implementation is great to create PDFs from ChordPro files. It is always up-to-date with the latest new features (and there are a lot of them). I use it as soon as I want to make use of sophisticated features like ABC integration and so on. It has a lot of excellent command line features to create complete songbooks and allows creating and modifying chord diagrams and many many more

ChordSmith seems to be the choice for editing tablature. I didn't try it yet as I am not a guitarist and have no use for tabs

[fausto]

I use Notepad++ as a text editor (it's a better alternative to Windows Notepad) https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
It would allow syntax colouring, but I have not found a ChordPro UDL template yet and don't feel an urgent need to create one myself.
But it would be nice, if somebody had the motivation to create such a user defined language file for ChordPro
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/use...dLanguages

MobileSheets itself comes with a (pretty basic) editor which is fine for small corrections during a rehearsal.

SongPress (for Windows) https://github.com/lallulli/songpress/releases/ only supports the most important ChordPro tags. It comes with WYSIWYG preview. It has great features to convert "chords over lyrics" to ChordPro, to transpose to a different key, to switch transcoding, to move chords left or right and for batch editing chords (remove chords from a selected part of the song or copy paste chords from one part of a song to another).

The ChordPro reference implementation is great to create PDFs from ChordPro files. It is always up-to-date with the latest new features (and there are a lot of them). I use it as soon as I want to make use of sophisticated features like ABC integration and so on. It has a lot of excellent command line features to create complete songbooks and allows creating and modifying chord diagrams and many many more

ChordSmith seems to be the choice for editing tablature. I didn't try it yet as I am not a guitarist and have no use for tabs

Thanks for all that. Very useful. Having got ChordSmith to work I will probably persevere with that. I have got Notepad++ and colour would be nice but not a high priority atm as I have a big gig this Saturday.

[Geoff Bacon]

@fausto

Any chance you could not copy the whole of the previous post when replying - it doesn't add any new information and it makes it difficult to read the new content (especially so  when the copied reply is long)

Thanks
Geoff

[fausto]

The quote makes it clear who I'm replying to and does not have to be read through in detail. Seems to me to be only polite. Your @name is more economical, but could be interpreted as a bit brusque.

[basd]

I make extensive use of Chordpro format, but I don't use a WYSIWYG editor. I approach inputting one of three ways: (1) start a new MobileSheets .cho text file and use the MobileSheets editor. (2) Grab a screenshot of a song from Ultimate Guitar (or anywhere), run it through ukegeeks song formatter at https://ukegeeks.com/tools/ and paste the result into a new MobileSheets .cho file. (3) Use any wordprocessor -- eg., LibreOffice -- then copy "unformatted" text and paste it into a new MobileSheets .cho text file. I also will embed the chordpro directives for the meta text into the file, because MobileSheets will authomatically use this info to file out the information fields (eg., artist/composer/tempo, etc.). A good chordpro reference is found here: https://chordpro.org/chordpro/chordpro-directives/.

As soon as the .cho file is saved, MobileSheets will display it in the display format, so it's pretty easy to check what it looks like and hit "edit" to go back in and fix any mistakes.

Unlike PDF files, chordpro files can easily be transposed and also the chords stay where they belong above the text when resizing/reformatting, etc. I use the Chordpro editor (https://www.chordpro.org/chordpro/) to print PDFs from the .cho files and for additional editing, since I will often change the {chorus} tag to [Repeat Chorus] so that I can fit longer songs on two facing pages in a notebook. Or, I will change the config to 2 columns instead of one. Or change the typesize.

As far as I can tell from experimentation, not all chordpro directives are implemented in MobileSheets, but many are. For instance, I wanted to change the text color for certain parts of songs (did not work, though it would print out via the Chordpro editor in the color I wanted). Also, chordpro ends a "changed" section by issuing the directive with no parameter, but this doesn't seem to work for me in MobileSheets. So, for instance, {textfont:thin} will switch my text to the "thin" font, but {textfont:} will not switch the font back to what I began with. I had the same problem with changing the font size -- it will change, but I can't end the changed section and have it return to the default size.

We color the chords red and the text black for easy reading and a very nice looking display or printout.

[Touffi]

Any recommendations gratefully received.

A bit late to the party I'd like to mention ChordChartStudio. It's not a ChordPro editor per se but a ChordMark editor, which can then be exported as ChordPro.

https://chord-chart-studio.netlify.app/