text boxes?

[ray3470]

hey out there! is there any way i can put a small text box on the screen?

[ChrisClark]

No there isn't a way to put a box over the top of the displayed song - at present you would have to use a powerpoint presentation to acheive this.

Can you elaborate what you would see this functionality being used for.

[ray3470]

several churches i know of , including mine, like to have the number of the next song in the hymnal posted on the screen so that people using the hymnal can get an early start at turning there. I started using the blank spaces created by alt+255 to put the number at the bottom of the screen so i may have it solved. thanks for checking on it though. I do know that some programs, such as songshow plus, has a place for a note to go across the bottom of the screen to let parents know they are needed in the nursery. Some might see this a being a help, but it wouldn't aid in worship.

[Thelrose]

I am tryiing to enter a song that requires it being typed in two columns. One half of the congregation sings one part and the other the other part. I can insert a text box and can't tab over. If I use the space bar it doesn't always work either. Any other suggestions? Thanks

[ChrisClark]

Umm.. I don't know how many presentation programs would handle songs where there are multiple rounds going at the same time. The real estate on a screen doesn't seem very large when you start putting lyrics on Laying them out horizontally is something that can be done in powerpoint at present.

What I have done at our church where we had a song of 3 verses but sung in rounds was to set up the slides with 2 verses per page with a dashed line between (or a single dash)

ie.
Verse 1
---------
Verse 2

Verse 2
---------
Verse 3

Verse 3
---------
Verse 1

This worked ok - though we could only sing two parts at a time... also the verses were only 4 lines each so fitted in quite nicely. What was quite nice about it was that one half of the congregation always sung the top half and the other the bottom. Hopefully that suggestion may help you.

[ray3470]

come to think of it, there are several instances where it would be beneficial to have the song in two columns side by side. Most of the time we have the parts done horizontally but with certain songs, like 'You Are Holy' (The Worship Song) where guys and girls sing different things at the same time, it makes it easy. Off the top of my head, i can't think of any worship presentation software that does that other than powerpoint and the products from corel and openoffice.org. I may investigate further about that, but I know that if this could be pulled off, it would be a draw for a lot of people. I know that you can have Zionworx switch over to powerpoint to do this, but it isn't the most seamless of operations yet. I guess once this is smoothed out in version 3 (i assume this is one of the things that is being worked on) it will be a non-issue. all that would be neccesary is to make sure that author/copyright info is put on the powerpoint presentation.
btw, any word on version 3 progress?

[ChrisClark]

You make a good point regarding columns - we can think about whether it is possible.

The difference I would say with powerpoint and other similar programs to song presentation software such as Zionworx is that the user actually sets up the powerpoint display how they want it formatted (ie they do the work) whereas Zionworx uses a plain text song and takes almost all the work out of presenting it. I suppose that's the tradeoff between the two types of software.

I would suggest for you to add the ability to display multi-part songs to the wish list forum and other people may want to add their thoughts. That way we can get an idea of how useful it would be to people. (I do like that song - You are Holy )

[kingobvious]

I made one song that used two columns in zionwox, but it took a long time to do this to make it look right.

I use the smallest font (usually arial narrow and smaller size font than normal) then line by line I put in the first part then add blank spaces by using the blank character (hold alt and type 0160 (using the ten key pad)) and experimnent till the spacing is right and put the echo after the first part.



This will only work in the Font that you design it in so be careful.

Also it is very time consuming.

I may try chrisclarks idea next time.

[Thelrose]

I couldn't believe when you mentioned the song "You are Holy" That is the one that I was trying to do. When I couldn't insert a text box I then tried to see if I could do the text in one column one color, and the other column another color, That didn't work either. Then accidentally I found that if I did a left justify it worked better. I finally got it all in 2 columns by doing that along with changing the font to 36 and it fit perfectly. Tomorrow I will look at it on the large screen to make sure it looks OK.