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 [ option ...] [ filename... ]
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 download page http://sourceforge.net/project/chordii.
21
24 -A Will print the "About CHORDII..." message.
25 -a Automatically single spaces lines that have no chords.
27 -c chord_font_size
29 Sets the size, in points, of the font used to display chords to
30 the specified integer value.
31 -C Chord_font
33 Sets the font used to print chords to the specified name. That
34 name must be known to your PostScript Interpreter.
35 -d Generates a text chord chart of all internally known chords as
37 well as chords defined in the $HOME/.chordrc file. Chords
38 defined in the .chordrc file are identified with the "(local)"
39 caption. The printout is suitable for input to the .chordrc
40 file.
41 -D Generates a PostScript chord chart of all internally known
43 chords as well as chords defined in the $HOME/.chordrc file.
44 Chords defined in the .chordrc file are identified with a small
45 asterisk after the chord grid.
46 -G Disable printing of the chord grids for the whole input
48 file(s). The effect can be disable for any particular song by
49 the usage of the grid or g directive.
50 -g Disable printing of grids for "easy" chords. Whether a builtin
52 chord is easy or not has been arbitrarily decided by the
53 authors. The general rule was that any chord in its major,
54 minor, 7th or minor 7th was "easy" while everything else (maj7,
55 aug, dim, sus, etc...) was "difficult". All chords defined in
56 the $HOME/.chordrc file or in the input file are defined as
57 "difficult".
58 -h Prints a short options summary.
60 -i Generates a table of contents with the song titles and page
62 numbers. It implies page numbering through the document. Index
63 pages are not numbered.
64 -l Prints only the lyrics of the song.
66 -L Places the odd and even page numbers in the lower right and
68 left corners respectively (for two-sided output). The default
69 is all page numbers on the right.
70 -o filename
72 Sends PostScript output to filename
73 -p first_page
75 Numbers the pages consecutively starting with first_page (e.g.
76 1). Without this option, each song restarts the page numbering
77 at 1, and page numbers are only put on subsequent pages of mul‐
78 tiple page songs.
79 -P paper_size
81 Specifies the paper size, either "us" or "a4".
82 -s grid_size
84 Sets the size of the chord grids.
85 -t text_font size
87 Sets the size, in points, of the font used to display the
88 lyrics to the specified integer value. The title line is dis‐
89 played using that point size + 5. The sub-tiltle is displayed
90 using that point size -2. The tablature is displayed using this
91 point-size -2.
92 -T Text_font
94 Sets the font used to print text to the specified name. That
95 name must be known to your PostScript Interpreter.
96 -V Prints version and patch level.
98 -x half-tones
100 Sets up transposition to that number of half-tones. Can not be
101 zero. All chord names must be build in the following way in
102 order to be recognized:
103 {note-name}[#|b][^/]* [ '/' {note-name}[#|b][^/]* ]
105 That is, a valid note name, possibly followed by '#' or 'b',
107 followed by other modifier ('7', 'm', etc...). Many such con‐
108 struct can make up a chord name, as long as they are separated
109 by '/'.
110 {note-name} must appear in the list
112 'A','B','C','D','E','F','G'.
113 -2 Prints two logical pages per physical page.
115 -4 Prints four logical pages per physical page.
117
120 A line starting with a '#' is interpreted as a comment, and generates
121 no output. (although all your comments are automatically mailed to the
122 authors, and we read them at parties...)
123 Directives that appear between french brackets ('{' and '}') have a
125 special meaning. They must be alone on a line. Blanks before the open‐
126 ing bracket and after the closing bracket are not significant.
127 Blanks inside a directive are not significant (except inside one of the
129 comments directives).
130 Supported directives are:
132 titles: type
134 Selects the placement of the titles. Currently supported are
135 left and center (default).
136 start_of_chorus or soc
138 which indicates the start of a chorus (yep). The complete cho‐
139 rus will be highlighted by a change bar, to be easily located
140 by the player.
141 end_of_chorus or eoc
143 marks the end of the chorus
144 comment: or c:
146 will call the printing of the rest of the line, highlighted by
147 a grey box (Useful to call a chorus, for example)
148 comment_italic: or ci:
150 will print the comment in an italic font ... well not really.
151 It will print the comment in the font used for printing the
152 CHORD names (which is normally italic unless you specified a
153 different chord_font).
154 comment_box: or cb:
156 will print the comment inside a bounding box.
157 new_song or ns
159 marks the beginning of a new song. It enables you to put multi‐
160 ple songs in one file. It is not required at the beginning of
161 the file.
162 title: or t:
164 specifies the title of the song. It will appear centered at the
165 top of the first page, and at the bottom of every other page,
166 accompanied there by the page number, within the current song.
167 subtitle: or st:
169 specifies a string to be printed right below the title. Many
170 subtitles can be specified
171 define: name base-fret offset frets str1...str6
173 defines a new chord called "name". The keyword "base-fret"
174 indicates that the number that follows ("offset") is the first
175 fret that is to be displayed when representing the way this
176 chord is played.
177 The keyword "frets" then appears and is followed by 6 values.
179 These values are the fret number [ 1 to n ] for each string
180 [str1 to str6] and are RELATIVE to the offset. A value of "-",
181 "X" or "x" indicates a string that is not played.
182 Keywords base-fret and frets are mandatory.
184 A value of 0 for a given string means it is to be played open,
186 and will be marked by a small open circle above the string in
187 the grid. The strings are numbered in ascending order of
188 tonality, starting on the low E (the top string). On output, a
189 chord defined in the user's .chordrc file will have a small
190 asterisk near its grid, a chord defined in a song will have two
191 small asterixes.
192 At the beginning of every song, the default chords are re-
194 loaded and the user's .chordrc file is re-read. Chord defini‐
195 tion of new chords inside the text of a song are only valid for
196 that song.
197 The syntax of a {define} directive has been modified in version
199 3.5. CHORDII will attempt to recognize an old-formar {define}
200 and will accept it. It will, though, print a warning inviting
201 you to modify your input file to use the new syntax (the exact
202 {define} entry to use is provided as an example).
203 pagetype: type
205 Selects the page type. Currently supported page types are a4
206 and letter.
207 This directive may only occur in the .chordrc.
208 textfont: postscript_font
210 same as -T command option
211 textsize: n
213 same as -t command option
214 chordfont: postscript_font
216 same as -C command option
217 chordsize: n
219 same as -c command option
220 no_grid or ng
222 will disable printing of the chord grids for the current song.
223 grid or g
225 will enable the printing of the chord grids for the current
226 song (subject to the limitation caused by the usage of the -g
227 option). This directive will overide the runtime -G option for
228 the current song.
229 new_page or np
231 will force a logical page break (which will obviously turn out
232 to be a physical page break if you are not in either 2-up or
233 4-up mode.
234 new_physical_page or npp
236 will force a physical page break (in any mode).
237 start_of_tab or sot
239 will cause chord to use a monospace (ie: non-proportional) font
240 for the printing of text. This can be used to enter 'tab'
241 information where character positioning is crucial. The Courier
242 font is used with a smaller point-size than the rest of the
243 text.
244 end_of_tab or eot
246 will stop using monospace font. The effect is implicit at the
247 end of a song.
248 columns: n or col: n
250 specifies the number of columns on the pages of the current
251 song.
252 column_break or colb
254 forces a column break. The next line of the song will appear in
255 the next available column, at the same height as the last "col‐
256 umns" statement if still on the same page, or at the top of the
257 page otherwise.
258
260 $HOME/.chordrc
261 Initial directives re-read after each song.
262
264 Run time options override settings from your .chordrc file. So the
265 assignement sequence to, let's say, the text size will be: system
266 default, .chordrc, run-time option, and finally from within the song
267 itself.
268 All keywords are case independent.
270
272 CHORDII will not wrap long lines around the right margin.
273 White space is not inserted inside the text line, even if white space
274 is inserted in the "chord" line above the text. The net effect is that
275 chord names can appear further down the line than what was intended.
276 This is a side effect from fixing an old "bug" that caused the chord
277 names to overlap. This bug will only manifest itself if you have lots
278 of chord but little text. Inserting white space in the text is a good
279 workaround.
280 In 2-up mode, if page-numbering is invoked on a document that has an
281 odd number of page, the page number for the last page will be printed
282 at the bottom right of the virtual page instead of the bottom right of
283 the physical page.
284
286 Copyright 2008 The Chordii Project
287 Copyright 1990-91-92-93 by Martin Leclerc and Mario Dorion
288
290 Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl)
291 Martin Leclerc (Martin.Leclerc@Sun.COM *** DEFUNCT ***)
292 and Mario Dorion (Mario.Dorion@Sun.COM *** DEFUNCT ***)
293
296 Steve Putz (putz@parc.xerox.com)
297 Jim Gerland (GERLAND@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu)
298 Leo Bicknell (ab147@freenet.acsu.buffalo.edu)
299Utilities July 2009 chordii(1)