ChordEdit is designed to create simple "lead sheets" or fake sheets for musicians. Using CE, you edit the lyrics and the chords together, along with spacing, column breaks, page breaks and comments to create a simple "memory" sheet for use during performance or rehersal.
Files created with CE are stored with the extension ".chl". When "rendered" for viewing or printing, the CHL file is converted to HTML and stored into the "Preview" folder (see below).
The main window of CE has four tabs: " Lyrics/Chords", "Properties", "Macros" and "Preview". You edit the lyrics and chords into the "Lyrics/Chords" tab and then enter the song's properties (title, composer, key, year, etc.). When you select the "Preview" tab, the HTML output is rendered and displayed in the tabbed window. This tab also allows you to print the result.
The Macro tab is special. It allows you to create "shorthand" codes to speed up the song entry process.
The lyrics editor allows for rapid data entry by remembering any chords or notations you've previously made.
Since CE generations pure HTML, you can change the resulting output if you know how to edit HTML pages and Cascading Style Sheet files.
For instructions on uninstalling ChordEdit, see "Uninstalling". For additional features, see "Additional Features".
Lyrics can be entered just by typing. Unlike most HTML-based applications, CE will honor your line breaks and spacing.
To associate a chord name with a word or phrase, enter them in parentheses. For example "(EbM7|That certain)" will cause the chord name "EbM7" to appear immediately above the words "That certain". If you only want a chord, just enter its name in parentheses. For example, "(Cm7) (Fm7) (Bb7)" will print the three chord names one after the other with no words (lyrics) below them.
So the general form for something entered in the lyrics tab is: "(chord-or-command|text)". If the first part of the pair is not recognized as a command, it will be treated as a chord name.
The available commands are:
The commands para, page and break should appear in parentheses alone in a line. All commands and chords should contain no embedded blanks or any of the following characters: '(', ')', '|', '{', '}', '[', ']'.
Chord names are treated specially. Any embedded blanks are removed. The name should always begin with a note name (Bb, C#, F). This allows the transposition logic to work correctly.
CE detects whether or not a line of lyrics contains any chords. If not, a different line spacing is used to preserve space in the generated output.
As an example, copy the following into the lyrics window:
Now click the Preview tab.
The upper part of the dialog is entitled "Song Properties". These are fields associated with the particular song you are editing. Any fields left blank will not appear in the generated output.
If you set the "Original Key" drop-down to the root (major) key of the song's chords, you will be able to transpose the resulting output HTML page using the "Rendered Key" drop-down.
All this information is saved into the output CHL file.
Most of the properties listed are simple text strings. Any that are left blank do not appear in the output.
These fields are typically filled by default. If you have a background in HTML and CSS, you can use them to specify alternative files to control output generation.
The "Template" file is the HTML file that controls output generation. It contains markers that determine if a particular field is written out, and determines the general organization of the output HTML file.
Most of the manner in which the HTML is generated is controlled by the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) file. This is where the association between chord names and lyrics is handled. You will not usually need to alter this setting.
The preview folder is a location on your hard drive where CE will place all its output. A default folder will be created for you, but you may set this to any other location you wish.
To view your song, click the "Preview" tab button at the bottom of the window. This causes ChordEdit to generate your output file and request that Internet Explorer display it in the window.
Because the preview window is "really" Internet Explorer, you can right-click anywhere on it and print your results. It allows you to set margins, orientation and other printing-related settings.
Alternatively, use the "Browse" menu item under the "Action" menu. This will start a copy of IE (or Firefox, if present) showing your generated output. You can then use all the normal menus of IE to perform your printing operation.
A "macro" is simply a short name for a longer string of text. In the image above, you'll find "v" in the "Name" column. Its "Definition" is listed as "(note|Verse)". With this macro installed, if you type "%v" in the Lyrics, it will expand into "(note|Verse)" when previewed or printed.
In other words, macros allow you encode your most commonly used phrases for quick access.
You may store unexpanded macro references into the output CHL file or expand them before you save the file. Storing them in the file allows you to change the definitions of the macros without changing the file, but it has the drawback that unexpected changes to the macros (or their deletion) can result in garbled output.
To expand the macros into the lyrics text, choose the "Edit/Expand" menu item.
If you right-click in the editing window, the lyrics editor's pop-up menu allows you to choose any "markup" (chords and performance notes) that you've already entered. In addition, if you have set the original key signature (on the Properties tab), ChordEdit will prompt you with a menu containing the most commonly used chords in the chosen key.
When you select an item from the pop-up menu, the displayed text is inserted into the lyrics at the current editing location. If the text chosen is not a chord, then a stanard "paste" operation occurs; that is, any selected text is replaced by the chosen text, and if there are no selected characters the text is inserted at the current cursor location. If the menu item chosen is a chord and there is text selected, that text is surrounded with parentheses and the chord name. If the menu item chosen is a chord but no text is selected, an empty chord group is inserted and the cursor (caret) is moved into position for word entry.
The menu also contains the standard text editing items such as cut, copy and paste.
The HTML template and CSS style sheet control most aspects of the rendered HTML result. If you know how to change these kinds of files you should be able to control colors, font sizes, spacing, margins and almost everything else.
To understand how CE generates HTML, create a simple example that uses each of the commands and a few chords. Render it as HTML and examine the output file. I don't want to document everything because there are still features I'd like to add.
You may use the "Actions" menu items "Edit HTML Template" and "Edit CSS Style Sheet" if you feel comfortable altering these types of files.
ChordEdit registers the document extension ".chl" when it runs for the first time. To remove this registration, run ChordEdit and choose "Uninstall Application and Document Types" from the "Help" menu. Then exit ChordEdit.
Afterwards, delete all the files in the directory where you installed ChordEdit.
If you choose "Find" from the "Edit" menu, a banner appears along to bottom of the Lyrics entry window that allows you to perform find and replace functions within the lyrics you've entered.
There are two functions that allow you to go back to a prior version of the lyrics, "Undo" and "Restore", and both are available from the main menu, the lyrics pop-up menu and the keyboard.
"Undo" is the standard editing function: the last change you made directly to the edit text is reversed.
"Restore" is more global and generally applies to actions other than direct editing, such as expanding macros or find-and-replace operations. "Restore" will revert the lyrics text back to its former content.
ChordEdit generates HTML; the appearance of the output is governed in large measure by the formatting information contained in the CSS style sheet. ChordEdit lets you extend this concept to styles of your own.
If you code a "group" using a name beginning with a dollar sign ('$'), that name is used as the class name for a new DIV. The text you associate with the group is inserted into the DIV. For example, enter "($demo|Test String)" into the lyrics window and then click Preview. You'll see that the output contains the data "Test String" in large, blue type. This is because there's a special style in the default style sheet (ChordDefault.css) called "demo".
This capability allows you to add new styles to the CSS file and invoke them as DIVs into the output HTML.
If you are familiar with HTML and CSS, you may find a situation in which you'd like to output a particular string of raw HTML directly into the previewed/rendered document. To do this, use a group like:
(html|<stong>Direct HTML Output!</strong>)
As you can see, the text in the second part of the group is just standard HTML.
If you need to use one of the special characters reserved by ChordEdit, you can prefix it with a backslash ('\').
For example:
(html|<stong>Direct \(HTML\) Output!</strong>)
Normally, the closing parenthesis of "(HTML)" would cause ChordEdit to assume that the group was closing; the backslashed force ChordEdit to treat the succeeding character as a normal (alphabetic) character.