chordii(1)						      General Commands Manual							chordii(1)

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 con-
       tains 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 open-
       ing 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' informa-
	       tion 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)

Utilities							     July 2009								chordii(1)