You can tear off any menu by clicking on the first entry (-----). This is may be usefull for the directives or the transpose menu as you don't allways have to invoke the menu to use the provided commands.
The menu commands New, Open, Save, Save as and Quit behave like you know from other GUI-based applications. Therefor no further description is needed. Instead of using the menu you may click on one of the icons
The opened file will be saved and then converted to LaTeX , postscript or PDF format. The name of the resulting file is the original file name with its suffix changed to .tex, .ps or .pdf. Instead of using the menu you may click on one of the icons (see Figure 4-1).
After creating the exported file, a viewer is opened to show the result. You may use your favourite viewer by changing the parameters $text_viewer, $ps_viewer or $pdf_viewer in the configuration file (see the Section called Configuration file in Chapter 2).
If you want to cut, copy and paste parts of your text within your document, use the shortcuts ctrl-x (cut), ctrl-c (copy) and ctrl-v (paste).
After invoking the Insert File command, a file selector will pop up. The choosen file will be inserted at the current cursor position.
You will often find song files in raw ascii format instead of Chord format. The lines look like this:
D A7 D I print verses in a row, A7 D The next line gets put down below, A7 D G G# A Mumble mumble rhymes with grow A7susx Done this verse, now we go! |
Place the cursor into the first line (the one with the chords) and call the crd->chopro command via menu or press the F9 key. The chord line and the following lyric line are converted into one line with Chord format. The cursor is placed in the next line. You only have to call the command (or press the F9 key) once again to continue converting the document.
With this menu you can insert directives. The directives are explained in Chapter 5.
Insert all available songbook directives instead of typing them in. The songbook directives are explained in the the Section called Creating a Songbook in Chapter 5.
From this menu you can insert all available color directives. A color selector is opened (see figure Figure 4-2).
You have three alternatives to select your favourite color:
doubleclick on a predefined color in the list on the left side of the color selector
move the sliders in the middle of the color selector (you may like to choose RGB color space instead of HSB color space before this)
input RGB value into the input field called Name, not really a good idea :-)
The color directives may also be typed in manually. They are explained in the Section called color_xxx in Chapter 5.
The Up/Down command will transpose the whole song by one halftone up or down. You may use the F5 and F6 keys instead of the menu. In slash chords (e.g. G/B) both the chord name and the bass note (behind the slash) are transposed. Slashes may only be used to write slash chords (see the Section called Special Characters in Chapter 5).
After transposing a song, the program doesn't know whether chords should be converted to flat or sharp notes. So all chords are written with sharps if necessary, e.g. C#. You can change them to flat, e.g. Db, and vice versa by using these commands. You may use the F7 and F8 keys instead of the menu.
In german notation the note B is written as H. With these commands you can change B to H and vice versa.