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 --chord-colour=CHORD_COLOUR -C
44 Sets the colour used to print chords. Recognized colours are
45 'black', 'white', 'red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'magenta'
46 and 'cyan'. Arbitrary colours can be specified using the con‐
47 ventional hexadecimal notation '#RRGGBB'.
48 --dump-chords-text -d
50 Generates a text chord chart of all internally known chords as
51 well as chords defined in the .chordrc file. Chords defined in
52 the .chordrc file are identified with the "(local)" caption.
53 The printout is suitable for input to the .chordrc file.
54 --dump-chords -D
56 Generates a PostScript chord chart of all internally known
57 chords as well as chords defined in the .chordrc file. Chords
58 defined in the .chordrc file are identified with a small aster‐
59 isk after the chord grid.
60 --no-chord-grids -G
62 Disable printing of the chord grids for the whole input
63 file(s). The effect can be disable for any particular song by
64 the usage of the grid or g directive.
65 --no-easy-chord-grids -g
67 Disable printing of grids for "easy" chords. Whether a builtin
68 chord is easy or not has been arbitrarily decided by the
69 authors. The general rule was that any chord in its major,
70 minor, 7th or minor 7th was "easy" while everything else (maj7,
71 aug, dim, sus, etc...) was "difficult". All chords defined in
72 the .chordrc file or in the input file are defined as "diffi‐
73 cult".
74 --chord-grids-sorted -S
76 Prints the chord grids in alphabetical order. Default is to
77 print in the order they appear in the song.
78 --help -h
80 Prints a short options summary.
81 --toc -i
83 Generates a table of contents with the song titles and page
84 numbers. It implies page numbering through the document. Index
85 pages are not numbered.
86 --lyrics-only -l
88 Prints only the lyrics of the song.
89 --even-pages-number-left -L
91 Places the odd and even page numbers in the lower right and
92 left corners respectively (for two-sided output). The default
93 is all page numbers on the right.
94 --nashville -N
96 Basic support for Nashville tuning. Currently this just dis‐
97 ables chord validation, transposition, and diagram printing.
98 --output=FILE -o
100 Sends PostScript output to FILE.
101 --start-page-number=FIRST_PAGE -p
103 Numbers the pages consecutively starting with first_page (e.g.
104 1). Without this option, each song restarts the page numbering
105 at 1, and page numbers are only put on subsequent pages of mul‐
106 tiple page songs.
107 --page-size=PAPER_SIZE -P
109 Specifies the paper size, "us", "letter", "a4" or "a5". Default
110 is "a4".
111 --chord-grid-size=GRID_SIZE -s
113 Sets the size of the chord grids.
114 --text-size=TEXT_SIZE -t
116 Sets the size, in points, of the font used to display the
117 lyrics to the specified integer value. The title line is dis‐
118 played using that point size + 5. The subtitle is displayed
119 using that point size - 2. The tablature is displayed using
120 this point size - 2.
121 --text-font=TEXT_FONT -T
123 Sets the font used to print text to the specified name. That
124 name must be known to your PostScript Interpreter.
125 --version -V
127 Prints version and patch level.
128 --vertical-space=EXTRA_SPACE -w
130 Adds extra vertical space between the lines to improve read‐
131 ability.
132 --transpose=SEMITONES -x
134 Sets up transposition to that number of semitones. Can not be
135 zero. All chord names must be build in the following way in
136 order to be recognized:
137 {note-name}[#|b][^/]* [ '/' {note-name}[#|b][^/]* ]
139 That is, a valid note name, possibly followed by '#' or 'b',
141 followed by other modifier ('7', 'm', etc...). Many such con‐
142 struct can make up a chord name, as long as they are separated
143 by '/'.
144 {note-name} must appear in the list
146 'A','B','C','D','E','F','G'.
147 --2-up -2
149 Prints two logical pages per physical page.
150 --4-up -4
152 Prints four logical pages per physical page.
153
156 A line starting with a '#' is interpreted as a comment and generates no
157 output. (although all your comments are automatically mailed to the
158 authors, and we read them at parties...)
159 Directives that appear between curly brackets ('{' and '}') have a spe‐
161 cial meaning. They must be alone on a line. Blanks before the opening
162 bracket and after the closing bracket are not significant. Directives
163 suffixed by a colon require arguments.
164 Blanks inside a directive are not significant (except inside one of the
166 comments directives).
167 Supported directives are:
169 titles: TYPE
171 Selects the placement of the titles. Currently supported are
172 left and center (default).
173 start_of_chorus or soc
175 which indicates the start of a chorus (yep). The complete cho‐
176 rus will be highlighted by a change bar, to be easily located
177 by the player.
178 end_of_chorus or eoc
180 marks the end of the chorus
181 comment: or c:
183 will call the printing of the rest of the line, highlighted by
184 a grey box (Useful to call a chorus, for example)
185 comment_italic: or ci:
187 will print the comment in an italic font ... well not really.
188 It will print the comment in the font used for printing chord
189 names (which is normally italic unless you specified a differ‐
190 ent chord_font).
191 comment_box: or cb:
193 will print the comment inside a bounding box.
194 new_song or ns
196 marks the beginning of a new song. It enables you to put multi‐
197 ple songs in one file. It is not required at the beginning of
198 the file.
199 title: or t:
201 specifies the title of the song. It will appear centered at the
202 top of the first page, and at the bottom of every other page,
203 accompanied there by the page number, within the current song.
204 subtitle: or st:
206 specifies a string to be printed right below the title. Many
207 subtitles can be specified
208 define: NAME base-fret OFFSET frets STR1...STR6
210 defines a new chord called NAME.
211 Example for a 6-string guitar:
213 {define Ab+: base-fret 1 frets x x 2 1 1 0}
215 The keyword "base-fret" indicates that the number that follows
217 (OFFSET) is the first fret that is to be displayed when repre‐
218 senting the way this chord is played.
219 The keyword "frets" then appears and is followed by 6 values.
221 These values are the fret number [ 1 to n ] for each string
222 [STR1 to STR6] and are RELATIVE to the offset. A value of "-",
223 "X" or "x" indicates a string that is not played.
224 Keywords "base-fret" and "frets" are MANDATORY.
226 A value of 0 for a given string means it is to be played open,
228 and will be marked by a small open circle above the string in
229 the grid. The strings are numbered in ascending order of tonal‐
230 ity, starting on the low E (the top string). On output, a chord
231 defined in the user's .chordrc file will have a small asterisk
232 near its grid, a chord defined in a song will have two small
233 asterixes.
234 At the beginning of every song, the default chords are re-
236 loaded and the user's .chordrc file is re-read. Chord defini‐
237 tion of new chords inside the text of a song are only valid for
238 that song.
239 The syntax of a {define} directive has been modified in version
241 3.5. Chordii will attempt to recognize an old-format {define}
242 and will accept it. It will, though, print a warning inviting
243 you to modify your input file to use the new syntax (the exact
244 {define} entry to use is provided as an example).
245 pagetype: TYPE
247 Selects the page type. Currently supported page types are a4
248 and letter.
249 This directive may only occur in the .chordrc file.
250 textfont: POSTSCRIPT_FONT
252 same as -T command option
253 textsize: N
255 same as -t command option
256 chordfont: POSTSCRIPT_FONT
258 same as -C command option
259 chordsize: N
261 same as -c command option
262 no_grid or ng
264 will disable printing of the chord grids for the current song.
265 grid or g
267 will enable the printing of the chord grids for the current
268 song (subject to the limitation caused by the usage of the -g
269 option). This directive will overide the runtime -G option for
270 the current song.
271 new_page or np
273 will force a logical page break (which will obviously turn out
274 to be a physical page break if you are not in either 2-up or
275 4-up mode).
276 new_physical_page or npp
278 will force a physical page break (in any mode).
279 start_of_tab or sot
281 will cause chord to use a monospace (ie: non-proportional) font
282 for the printing of text. This can be used to enter 'tab'
283 information where character positioning is crucial. The Courier
284 font is used with a smaller point-size than the rest of the
285 text.
286 end_of_tab or eot
288 will stop using monospace font. The effect is implicit at the
289 end of a song.
290 columns: N or col: N
292 specifies the number of columns on the pages of the current
293 song.
294 column_break or colb
296 forces a column break. The next line of the song will appear in
297 the next available column, at the same height as the last "col‐
298 umns" statement if still on the same page, or at the top of the
299 page otherwise.
300
302 $HOME/.chordrc
303 Initial directives re-read after each song.
304
306 Run time options override settings from your .chordrc file. So the
307 assignement sequence of, for instance, the text size, will be: system
308 default, .chordrc, run-time option, and finally from within the song
309 itself.
310 All keywords are case independent.
312
314 Chordii will not wrap long lines around the right margin.
315 White space is not inserted inside the text line, even if white space
317 is inserted in the "chord" line above the text. The net effect is that
318 chord names can appear further down the line than what was intended.
319 This is a side effect from fixing an old "bug" that caused the chord
320 names to overlap. This bug will only manifest itself if you have lots
321 of chord but little text. Inserting white space in the text is a good
322 workaround.
323 In 2-up mode, if page-numbering is invoked on a document that has an
325 odd number of page, the page number for the last page will be printed
326 at the bottom right of the virtual page instead of the bottom right of
327 the physical page.
328
330 Copyright (C)2008 The Chordii Project
331 Copyright (C)1990-91-92-93 by Martin Leclerc and Mario Dorion
332
334 Johan Vromans ⟨jvromans@squirrel.nl⟩
335 Martin Leclerc ⟨Martin.Leclerc@Sun.COM⟩ *** DEFUNCT ***
336 and Mario Dorion ⟨Mario.Dorion@Sun.COM⟩ *** DEFUNCT ***
337
339 Steve Putz ⟨putz@parc.xerox.com⟩
340 Jim Gerland ⟨GERLAND@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu⟩
341 Leo Bicknell ⟨ab147@freenet.acsu.buffalo.edu⟩
342Utilities July 2011 chordii(1)