Songs

[Simon Brogya]

Hi, Is there anyway of geting hold of your songs file to inport into my
Zionworx2.5. I'm really desperate for any help.

God Bless
Simon.............

[webmaster]

You shoud purchase SOF or type in the songs to the database.

Sharing database files in this way could be seen as infringing copyright.

We don't want to encourage this sort of thing

We are looking at providing a database but this will probably be at a small cost in the future.

Regards
Edd

[tonycollinet]

Hello

We have been using the free version of sing and read (SAR), but I would like to try zionworx. We have a huge collection of song files for SAR, and need (if possible) an easy way to get these into zw

Song files for SAR are RTF files in the format:

1
text for
verse one

chorus
text for
chorus

2
text for
verse two


Etc.


Is there an easy way of importing these into zionworx?

Thanks

[Christian]

Hi Tony,

There isn't an automated way to 'batch import' from a format like this at the moment.

We're planning to develop some utilities to improve the ease with which songs can be imported from different formats into ZionWorx, but right now you should copy/paste text into the Add Song dialog box within ZionWorx, or you can also use the import from file option (in the Add Song dialog box as well)...

Cheers,
Christian.

[stevefaber]

Funnily enough, I've just been working on exactly the same problem. I've got a thousand Mission Praise songs set up for Sing and Read which I've just converted to text files and imported into an Access database.

With a scratchy knowledge of VBA and a lot fo trial and error I've written code to convert the files from RTF to TXT in Word, then used another piece of VBA in Access to import them into a table with the same field definitions that ZW uses for the SONGS.DBF file.

My problem is the next stage - getting the songs from the Access table into Zionworx. How do I do this??

Tony, if you'd like to PM me I can go into more detail about the VBA code I've used. I would offer it to the group, but I'm not sure how site-specific my conversion routines are - we had all sorts of foibles in our RTF files! I'm sure it's not the most elegant code, but so far it seems to work...

But waht about getting it from Access into ZW. I've read something somewhere, and can't find it again...

Steve

[tonycollinet]

But waht about getting it from Access into ZW. I've read something somewhere, and can't find it again...

Steve

I actually succeeded last night.

I used a word macro to remove unnecessary paragraph markers from the rtf files, and then save as txt files.

I then used the txt2db utility from the download page to convert these into the songs database - worked a treat, and once set up, processed about 1500 songs in about 15 minutes.

In the next few days I intend to run anther macro to tidy up the verse numbers and chorus markers.

PM sent.

[zbnet]

According to the downloads page, txt2db is for v2 only - are you saying it works for v2.5 as well?

[paulstokes]

Sharing database files in this way could be seen as infringing copyright.

We don't want to encourage this sort of thing

This is a real conundrum, isn't it? Since we have the songbooks and the CCL for reproducing the words, we are duly licensed to have all the songs from Mission Praise on Zionworx within copyright laws.

The only problem is that I have only a hundred songs' words on the PC... the rest need typing (or scanning & OCR). If someone else has already done the work of getting the text into Zionworx (being duly licensed in the same way, of course), then it is also going to be legal for them to help me by providing me with an electronic copy of the words.

Now Edd's comment is cautious because he writes "could be seen..." (ie: although it would not de facto be infringement, there remains the possibility that someone might supply the lyrics to another person who is not duly licensed, and at that point there would be infringement of copyright.)

I'm very annoyed by the fact that some Christians see fit to break our country's law (and they do present 'arguments' in favour of their attitudes, presented on bulletin boards for similar song projection software). If only Christians could be trusted to have Godly integrity in this matter, then someone else would be able to take me at my word when I claimed to have a CCL and would gladly save many hours of work. As it stands, the sub-Christian dishonesty of some means that Edd has to sound this cautionary note, and similarly makes me equally cautious about sharing my data file with someone else.

What a sad comment on the state of morality within Jesus' Church. And what a waste of Kingdom time in me (and many others) having to type out the lyrics again. O "brave new world" that has such people in it... and we are meant to be the light of the world.

[wnp]

Well, actually I am not sure that even if you were licensed that it would be entirely legal to share files/databases, since the copyright for the files as distributed, for example, with SOF is a separate matter from the right to use the words for projection. To use these actual files you are supposed to have bought the SOF book(s).

It is a tricky subject, and not only with songs for projection. I own two or three Bible Reader programs for my iPAQ, and have bought recent translations for them (NIV, NASB, NET). Now I use a free Bible Reader program, e-sword, and would like to use the NIV with it -- but there seems to be no legal way to do so, since IBS/Zondervan have not licensed the e-sword makers to provide NIV for their program, not even for a fee. And I bought the NET Bible for my PC version of e-sword, but it is not available for the iPAQ.

If I use some of the available utilities to convert the text from Bible Gateway or Bible.ORG into a module for e-sword on my iPAQ, according to the folks at BibleGatway I am infringing their conditions of use and violating copyright. But all I want to do, so to speak, is use my bought copies of NIV and NET on a different "desk" or "reading stand", or store them in a different "bookshelf", if you wish.

If things were logical, the folks doing the licensing, like CCLI, would provide an upload area for licensed folks (i.e. ones with a username and password to a protected area) to share the files they have created themselves, or converted from various proprietary projection program formats. But things are not logical, Christians publishers are after maximizing profit like everyone else. In this climate it is extremely tempting to rationalize behavior which strictly speaking is not legal but seems ethical.

[paulstokes]

...and it's even more crazy when one has at least 5 printed NIVs in the house (though some, especially from African churches, might regard me as crazy - or even immoral - for having that number in the first place!).

But getting back to the song lyrics, isn't it odd to think that I could (lincensed and legally) type out the words of a song (as printed in SoF) and store it as a text file, and that I could equally well (and equally legally) copy and paste those words from the SoF disk, and that I would be allowed to share the first file with another church (duly licensed!), but not share the second file. ...and of such pernickety niceties are pharisaical attitudes born. I need to watch my own lines of argument!

Maybe I should just subscribe to SongSelect (?) for a year and download all the lyrics of every song...

[zbnet]

I'm still confused about whether txt2db is for v2 only or works also for v2.5 - does anyone know? I have a projector and a laptop, and hardly any songs on it, and people are starting to ask when we can use the system in earnest!

[chris_h62]

Hi,

I had a bit of a play around with txt2db yesterday and it is possible to use this tool to make up your v2.5 database, although it involves a few extra steps. The reason for this is that between v2 and v2.5 the database struture was changed and txt2db was designed to make database files for v2. As a result, you can use txt2db to create a database of songs (as described in the user manual for that utility) and then simply convert the database to v2.5 format using the "DBConv" facility, packaged with v2.5.

To get to the database converter, just go to the Zionworx folder on your C:/ drive and you'll find it in there!

Hope this helps, and hope you manage to get your database nicely filled up with songs in the near future!

Chris

[zbnet]

Chris

Many thanks for your helpful reply, I'll give it a go!