Ubuntu Manpage: chordii - Produce a professional looking PostScript sheet-music from an ascii file

NAME

       chordii  -  Produce  a  professional  looking  PostScript  sheet-music  from an ascii file
       containing lyrics and chords information.

SYNOPSIS

       chordii [ option ...] [ filename... ]

DESCRIPTION

       chordii produces a postscript document from a lyrics file containing chord indications and
       chorus  delimiters.  The  document produced contains the lyrics of a song, with the guitar
       chords appearing above the right words. A representation of all chords used in the song is
       printed at the bottom of the last page.

       Extensive  documentation  can  be  found  in  the  Chordii  User Guide, available from the
       download page http://sourceforge.net/project/chordii.

OPTIONS

-A Will print the "About CHORDII..." message.

-a Automatically single spaces lines that have no chords.

-c chord_font_size
Sets the size, in points, of the font used to display chords to the specified
integer value.

-C Chord_font
Sets the font used to print chords to the specified name. That name must be known
to your PostScript Interpreter.

-d Generates a text chord chart of all internally known chords as well as chords
defined in the $HOME/.chordrc file. Chords defined in the .chordrc file are
identified with the "(local)" caption. The printout is suitable for input to the
.chordrc file.

-D Generates a PostScript chord chart of all internally known chords as well as
chords defined in the $HOME/.chordrc file. Chords defined in the .chordrc file are
identified with a small asterisk after the chord grid.

-G Disable printing of the chord grids for the whole input file(s). The effect can be
disable for any particular song by the usage of the grid or g directive.

-g Disable printing of grids for "easy" chords. Whether a builtin chord is easy or
not has been arbitrarily decided by the authors. The general rule was that any
chord in its major, minor, 7th or minor 7th was "easy" while everything else
(maj7, aug, dim, sus, etc...) was "difficult". All chords defined in the
$HOME/.chordrc file or in the input file are defined as "difficult".

-h Prints a short options summary.

-i Generates a table of contents with the song titles and page numbers. It implies
page numbering through the document. Index pages are not numbered.

-l Prints only the lyrics of the song.

-L Places the odd and even page numbers in the lower right and left corners
respectively (for two-sided output). The default is all page numbers on the
right.

-o filename
Sends PostScript output to filename

-p first_page
Numbers the pages consecutively starting with first_page (e.g. 1). Without this
option, each song restarts the page numbering at 1, and page numbers are only put
on subsequent pages of multiple page songs.

-P paper_size
Specifies the paper size, either "us" or "a4".

-s grid_size
Sets the size of the chord grids.

-t text_font size
Sets the size, in points, of the font used to display the lyrics to the specified
integer value. The title line is displayed using that point size + 5. The sub-
tiltle is displayed using that point size -2. The tablature is displayed using
this point-size -2.

-T Text_font
Sets the font used to print text to the specified name. That name must be known to
your PostScript Interpreter.

-V Prints version and patch level.

-x half-tones
Sets up transposition to that number of half-tones. Can not be zero. All chord
names must be build in the following way in order to be recognized:

{note-name}[#|b][^/]* [ '/' {note-name}[#|b][^/]* ]

That is, a valid note name, possibly followed by '#' or 'b', followed by other
modifier ('7', 'm', etc...). Many such construct can make up a chord name, as long
as they are separated by '/'.

{note-name} must appear in the list 'A','B','C','D','E','F','G'.

-2 Prints two logical pages per physical page.

-4 Prints four logical pages per physical page.

KEYWORDS

A line starting with a '#' is interpreted as a comment, and generates no output.
(although all your comments are automatically mailed to the authors, and we read them at
parties...)

Directives that appear between french brackets ('{' and '}') have a special meaning. They
must be alone on a line. Blanks before the opening bracket and after the closing bracket
are not significant.

Blanks inside a directive are not significant (except inside one of the comments
directives).

Supported directives are:

titles: type
Selects the placement of the titles. Currently supported are left and center
(default).

start_of_chorus or soc
which indicates the start of a chorus (yep). The complete chorus will be
highlighted by a change bar, to be easily located by the player.

end_of_chorus or eoc
marks the end of the chorus

comment: or c:
will call the printing of the rest of the line, highlighted by a grey box (Useful
to call a chorus, for example)

comment_italic: or ci:
will print the comment in an italic font ... well not really. It will print the
comment in the font used for printing the CHORD names (which is normally italic
unless you specified a different chord_font).

comment_box: or cb:
will print the comment inside a bounding box.

new_song or ns
marks the beginning of a new song. It enables you to put multiple songs in one
file. It is not required at the beginning of the file.

title: or t:
specifies the title of the song. It will appear centered at the top of the first
page, and at the bottom of every other page, accompanied there by the page number,
within the current song.

subtitle: or st:
specifies a string to be printed right below the title. Many subtitles can be
specified

define: name base-fret offset frets str1...str6
defines a new chord called "name". The keyword "base-fret" indicates that the
number that follows ("offset") is the first fret that is to be displayed when
representing the way this chord is played.

The keyword "frets" then appears and is followed by 6 values. These values are
the fret number [ 1 to n ] for each string [str1 to str6] and are RELATIVE to the
offset. A value of "-", "X" or "x" indicates a string that is not played.

Keywords base-fret and frets are mandatory.

A value of 0 for a given string means it is to be played open, and will be marked
by a small open circle above the string in the grid. The strings are numbered in
ascending order of tonality, starting on the low E (the top string). On output, a
chord defined in the user's .chordrc file will have a small asterisk near its
grid, a chord defined in a song will have two small asterixes.

At the beginning of every song, the default chords are re-loaded and the user's
.chordrc file is re-read. Chord definition of new chords inside the text of a song
are only valid for that song.

The syntax of a {define} directive has been modified in version 3.5. CHORDII will
attempt to recognize an old-formar {define} and will accept it. It will, though,
print a warning inviting you to modify your input file to use the new syntax (the
exact {define} entry to use is provided as an example).

pagetype: type
Selects the page type. Currently supported page types are a4 and letter.
This directive may only occur in the .chordrc.

textfont: postscript_font
same as -T command option

textsize: n
same as -t command option

chordfont: postscript_font
same as -C command option

chordsize: n
same as -c command option

no_grid or ng
will disable printing of the chord grids for the current song.

grid or g
will enable the printing of the chord grids for the current song (subject to the
limitation caused by the usage of the -g option). This directive will overide the
runtime -G option for the current song.

new_page or np
will force a logical page break (which will obviously turn out to be a physical
page break if you are not in either 2-up or 4-up mode.

new_physical_page or npp
will force a physical page break (in any mode).

start_of_tab or sot
will cause chord to use a monospace (ie: non-proportional) font for the printing
of text. This can be used to enter 'tab' information where character positioning
is crucial. The Courier font is used with a smaller point-size than the rest of
the text.

end_of_tab or eot
will stop using monospace font. The effect is implicit at the end of a song.

columns: n or col: n
specifies the number of columns on the pages of the current song.

column_break or colb
forces a column break. The next line of the song will appear in the next available
column, at the same height as the last "columns" statement if still on the same
page, or at the top of the page otherwise.

FILES

       $HOME/.chordrc
               Initial directives re-read after each song.

NOTES

       Run  time  options  override settings from your .chordrc file. So the assignement sequence
       to, let's say, the text size will be:  system  default,  .chordrc,  run-time  option,  and
       finally from within the song itself.

       All keywords are case independent.

BUGS

       CHORDII will not wrap long lines around the right margin.
       White  space  is not inserted inside the text line, even if white space is inserted in the
       "chord" line above the text. The net effect is that chord names can  appear  further  down
       the  line  than  what  was  intended.  This is a side effect from fixing an old "bug" that
       caused the chord names to overlap.  This bug will only manifest itself if you have lots of
       chord but little text.  Inserting white space in the text is a good workaround.
       In  2-up  mode, if page-numbering is invoked on a document that has an odd number of page,
       the page number for the last page will be printed at the bottom right of the virtual  page
       instead of the bottom right of the physical page.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 2008 The Chordii Project
       Copyright 1990-91-92-93 by Martin Leclerc and Mario Dorion

AUTHORS

       Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl)
       Martin Leclerc (Martin.Leclerc@Sun.COM *** DEFUNCT ***)
       and Mario Dorion (Mario.Dorion@Sun.COM *** DEFUNCT ***)

CONTRIBUTORS

       Steve Putz (putz@parc.xerox.com)
       Jim Gerland (GERLAND@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu)
       Leo Bicknell (ab147@freenet.acsu.buffalo.edu)