1chordii(1) General Commands Manual chordii(1)
2
6 chordii - produce a professional looking PostScript sheet-music from an
7 ascii file containing lyrics and chords information.
8
10 chordii [OPTIONS] FILE [FILE...]
11
13 chordii produces a postscript document from a lyrics file containing
14 chord indications and chorus delimiters. The document produced contains
15 the lyrics of a song, with the guitar chords appearing above the right
16 words. A representation of all chords used in the song is printed at
17 the bottom of the last page.
18 Extensive documentation can be found in the chordii User Guide, avail‐
20 able from the Chordii download page
21 ⟨http://sf.net/projects/chordii/files⟩.
22
25 chordii takes both long options, starting with --, and short options
26 starting with a single -, according to the getopt_long(3) conventions.
27 --about -A
30 Will print the "About Chordii..." message.
31 --single-space -a
33 Automatically single spaces lines that have no chords.
34 --chord-size=CHORD_FONT_SIZE -c
36 Sets the size, in points, of the font used to display chords to
37 the specified integer value.
38 --chord-font=CHORD_FONT -C
40 Sets the font used to print chords to the specified name. That
41 name must be known to your PostScript Interpreter.
42 --dump-chords-text -d
44 Generates a text chord chart of all internally known chords as
45 well as chords defined in the .chordrc file. Chords defined in
46 the .chordrc file are identified with the "(local)" caption.
47 The printout is suitable for input to the .chordrc file.
48 --dump-chords -D
50 Generates a PostScript chord chart of all internally known
51 chords as well as chords defined in the .chordrc file. Chords
52 defined in the .chordrc file are identified with a small aster‐
53 isk after the chord grid.
54 --no-chord-grids -G
56 Disable printing of the chord grids for the whole input
57 file(s). The effect can be disable for any particular song by
58 the usage of the grid or g directive.
59 --no-easy-chord-grids -g
61 Disable printing of grids for "easy" chords. Whether a builtin
62 chord is easy or not has been arbitrarily decided by the
63 authors. The general rule was that any chord in its major,
64 minor, 7th or minor 7th was "easy" while everything else (maj7,
65 aug, dim, sus, etc...) was "difficult". All chords defined in
66 the .chordrc file or in the input file are defined as "diffi‐
67 cult".
68 --chord-grids-sorted -S
70 Prints the chord grids in alphabetical order. Default is to
71 print in the order they appear in the song.
72 --help -h
74 Prints a short options summary.
75 --toc -i
77 Generates a table of contents with the song titles and page
78 numbers. It implies page numbering through the document. Index
79 pages are not numbered.
80 --lyrics-only -l
82 Prints only the lyrics of the song.
83 --even-pages-number-left -L
85 Places the odd and even page numbers in the lower right and
86 left corners respectively (for two-sided output). The default
87 is all page numbers on the right.
88 --output=FILE -o
90 Sends PostScript output to FILE.
91 --start-page-number=FIRST_PAGE -p
93 Numbers the pages consecutively starting with first_page (e.g.
94 1). Without this option, each song restarts the page numbering
95 at 1, and page numbers are only put on subsequent pages of mul‐
96 tiple page songs.
97 --page-size=PAPER_SIZE -P
99 Specifies the paper size, "us", "letter", "a4" or "a5". Default
100 is "a4".
101 --chord-grid-size=GRID_SIZE -s
103 Sets the size of the chord grids.
104 --text-size=TEXT_SIZE -t
106 Sets the size, in points, of the font used to display the
107 lyrics to the specified integer value. The title line is dis‐
108 played using that point size + 5. The subtitle is displayed
109 using that point size - 2. The tablature is displayed using
110 this point size - 2.
111 --text-font=TEXT_FONT -T
113 Sets the font used to print text to the specified name. That
114 name must be known to your PostScript Interpreter.
115 --version -V
117 Prints version and patch level.
118 --vertical-space=EXTRA_SPACE -w
120 Adds extra vertical space between the lines to improve read‐
121 ability.
122 --transpose=SEMITONES -x
124 Sets up transposition to that number of semitones. Can not be
125 zero. All chord names must be build in the following way in
126 order to be recognized:
127 {note-name}[#|b][^/]* [ '/' {note-name}[#|b][^/]* ]
129 That is, a valid note name, possibly followed by '#' or 'b',
131 followed by other modifier ('7', 'm', etc...). Many such con‐
132 struct can make up a chord name, as long as they are separated
133 by '/'.
134 {note-name} must appear in the list
136 'A','B','C','D','E','F','G'.
137 --2-up -2
139 Prints two logical pages per physical page.
140 --4-up -4
142 Prints four logical pages per physical page.
143
146 A line starting with a '#' is interpreted as a comment, and generates
147 no output. (although all your comments are automatically mailed to the
148 authors, and we read them at parties...)
149 Directives that appear between curly brackets ('{' and '}') have a spe‐
151 cial meaning. They must be alone on a line. Blanks before the opening
152 bracket and after the closing bracket are not significant. Directives
153 suffixed by a colon require arguments.
154 Blanks inside a directive are not significant (except inside one of the
156 comments directives).
157 Supported directives are:
159 titles: TYPE
161 Selects the placement of the titles. Currently supported are
162 left and center (default).
163 start_of_chorus or soc
165 which indicates the start of a chorus (yep). The complete cho‐
166 rus will be highlighted by a change bar, to be easily located
167 by the player.
168 end_of_chorus or eoc
170 marks the end of the chorus
171 comment: or c:
173 will call the printing of the rest of the line, highlighted by
174 a grey box (Useful to call a chorus, for example)
175 comment_italic: or ci:
177 will print the comment in an italic font ... well not really.
178 It will print the comment in the font used for printing chord
179 names (which is normally italic unless you specified a differ‐
180 ent chord_font).
181 comment_box: or cb:
183 will print the comment inside a bounding box.
184 new_song or ns
186 marks the beginning of a new song. It enables you to put multi‐
187 ple songs in one file. It is not required at the beginning of
188 the file.
189 title: or t:
191 specifies the title of the song. It will appear centered at the
192 top of the first page, and at the bottom of every other page,
193 accompanied there by the page number, within the current song.
194 subtitle: or st:
196 specifies a string to be printed right below the title. Many
197 subtitles can be specified
198 define: NAME base-fret OFFSET frets STR1...STR6
200 defines a new chord called NAME.
201 Example for a 6-string guitar:
203 {define Ab+: base-fret 1 frets x x 2 1 1 0}
205 The keyword "base-fret" indicates that the number that follows
207 (OFFSET) is the first fret that is to be displayed when repre‐
208 senting the way this chord is played.
209 The keyword "frets" then appears and is followed by 6 values.
211 These values are the fret number [ 1 to n ] for each string
212 [STR1 to STR6] and are RELATIVE to the offset. A value of "-",
213 "X" or "x" indicates a string that is not played.
214 Keywords "base-fret" and "frets" are MANDATORY.
216 A value of 0 for a given string means it is to be played open,
218 and will be marked by a small open circle above the string in
219 the grid. The strings are numbered in ascending order of tonal‐
220 ity, starting on the low E (the top string). On output, a chord
221 defined in the user's .chordrc file will have a small asterisk
222 near its grid, a chord defined in a song will have two small
223 asterixes.
224 At the beginning of every song, the default chords are re-
226 loaded and the user's .chordrc file is re-read. Chord defini‐
227 tion of new chords inside the text of a song are only valid for
228 that song.
229 The syntax of a {define} directive has been modified in version
231 3.5. Chordii will attempt to recognize an old-format {define}
232 and will accept it. It will, though, print a warning inviting
233 you to modify your input file to use the new syntax (the exact
234 {define} entry to use is provided as an example).
235 pagetype: TYPE
237 Selects the page type. Currently supported page types are a4
238 and letter.
239 This directive may only occur in the .chordrc file.
240 textfont: POSTSCRIPT_FONT
242 same as -T command option
243 textsize: N
245 same as -t command option
246 chordfont: POSTSCRIPT_FONT
248 same as -C command option
249 chordsize: N
251 same as -c command option
252 no_grid or ng
254 will disable printing of the chord grids for the current song.
255 grid or g
257 will enable the printing of the chord grids for the current
258 song (subject to the limitation caused by the usage of the -g
259 option). This directive will overide the runtime -G option for
260 the current song.
261 new_page or np
263 will force a logical page break (which will obviously turn out
264 to be a physical page break if you are not in either 2-up or
265 4-up mode).
266 new_physical_page or npp
268 will force a physical page break (in any mode).
269 start_of_tab or sot
271 will cause chord to use a monospace (ie: non-proportional) font
272 for the printing of text. This can be used to enter 'tab'
273 information where character positioning is crucial. The Courier
274 font is used with a smaller point-size than the rest of the
275 text.
276 end_of_tab or eot
278 will stop using monospace font. The effect is implicit at the
279 end of a song.
280 columns: N or col: N
282 specifies the number of columns on the pages of the current
283 song.
284 column_break or colb
286 forces a column break. The next line of the song will appear in
287 the next available column, at the same height as the last "col‐
288 umns" statement if still on the same page, or at the top of the
289 page otherwise.
290
292 $HOME/.chordrc
293 Initial directives re-read after each song.
294
296 Run time options override settings from your .chordrc file. So the
297 assignement sequence of, for instance, the text size, will be: system
298 default, .chordrc, run-time option, and finally from within the song
299 itself.
300 All keywords are case independent.
302
304 Chordii will not wrap long lines around the right margin.
305 White space is not inserted inside the text line, even if white space
307 is inserted in the "chord" line above the text. The net effect is that
308 chord names can appear further down the line than what was intended.
309 This is a side effect from fixing an old "bug" that caused the chord
310 names to overlap. This bug will only manifest itself if you have lots
311 of chord but little text. Inserting white space in the text is a good
312 workaround.
313 In 2-up mode, if page-numbering is invoked on a document that has an
315 odd number of page, the page number for the last page will be printed
316 at the bottom right of the virtual page instead of the bottom right of
317 the physical page.
318
320 Copyright (C)2008 The Chordii Project
321 Copyright (C)1990-91-92-93 by Martin Leclerc and Mario Dorion
322
324 Johan Vromans ⟨jvromans@squirrel.nl⟩
325 Martin Leclerc ⟨Martin.Leclerc@Sun.COM⟩ *** DEFUNCT ***
326 and Mario Dorion ⟨Mario.Dorion@Sun.COM⟩ *** DEFUNCT ***
327
329 Steve Putz ⟨putz@parc.xerox.com⟩
330 Jim Gerland ⟨GERLAND@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu⟩
331 Leo Bicknell ⟨ab147@freenet.acsu.buffalo.edu⟩
332Utilities July 2011 chordii(1)