Words of Worship - the 'perfect' display selector

[CustardFD]

Hi there,

I've used a number of song display packages in my time, each having their advantages and disadvantages. Most packages come under the category of 'being a jack of all trades and master of none'.

One thing I really, really, really admire though, is the Words of Worship package. It does what it does very well - the verse selection interface is the most powerful I have come accross, yet so simple. IMHO, it beats anything else to the dust in that respect - inlcuding Zionworx.

The only problem? A professional licence costs £299.

The Zionworx display selector appears to use the same approach, but the point-and-click/keyboard combination in Words of Worship is far more powerful. How much effort would it be to implement something like this in Zionworx?

I would strongly recommend downloading a demo from http://www.wordsofworship.org/ and taking a look.

Dan.

[Christian]

OK Custard (!),

Please take the time to tell us exactly what you'd like to see and we'll do our best to implement it for v3.0...

If anybody else has ideas then please chip in!

[CustardFD]

Sorry for not replying sooner - I'm not connected to the Internet in Uni halls, and keep forgetting to reply when I am at an Internet connected computer.[1]

Anyway:

The first thing I like about Words of Worship is the ability to use the mouse to select pretty much exactly what you want to appear on screen[2]. For example, if the worship group decide to just the repeat the last two lines of the chorus, simply clicking on the second to last line will display only the lines they are repeating on screen. ThatÂ?s it: one click for just about everything.

Another nice usability feature is the extra-large font (that shrinks when required to keep the entire song on screen) which makes scan-reading much faster because and makes the selecting the correct line to display next much easier (because it is harder to miss). Highlighting the area behind the Â?activeÂ? words is also much easier to process in realtime because your eye doesnÂ?t have to cope with text changing colour (in Words of Worship itÂ?s almost as if each line is in a cell that gets highlighted).

Also, the number of operations that can be done from the keyboard (1,2,3,C,B like SongPro + extras) means whether you prefer the mouse or keyboard it is a pleasure to use.

Now I come down to write about it, it's very hard to describe exactly what about it is appealing. NobleTech have just, well, got it right to be blunt (IMHO, of course ). Of course, Words of Worship has its downsides, but I'm not focusing on those here.

I'll try and post some annotated screenshots when I next have a chance.

Regards,
Dan.


[1] Before anyone suggests it, writing messages offline just doesn't work because I always find I wan to cross-reference.

[2] The one thing I would like that can't be done in Words of Worship is to drag the mouse over a number of lines so that exactly I wanted from the middle of a verse could be displayed. I can't recall ever needing this feature, but it would be one of those lifesaver features that if you ever did.

[ChrisClark]

Having downloaded the demo version of Words of Worship I can understand what Dan likes about the verse selection. I have to say that I think that was the only nice thing I found in the application - the rest of the program was not very intuitive at all. That the labels and messages in the demo version were mostly in French didn't help

To summarise the feature WoW implements (this is similar to other presentation programs) each block of text is selected as a whole - imagine a table with a verse in each cell - clicking on the cell (or perhaps 2xclicking) will show that verse/item on the presentation window. This contrasts with ZionWorx that uses a large text area and splits up the items based on whitespace that is navigated through using the arrow keys and the tick box. As a starting point Zionworx could split up the song when displayed in the current song box into seperate cells based on the whitespace as it currently knows about.

This feature is one that I would find quite helpful - I can definitely work with Zionworx (very intuitive overall ) but for jumping around all over a song - as can happen with worship songs - the WoW way is easier. I have to add I don't quite understand how the move selection up/down one line would be useful - maybe that is just in our setting though - do other people use this?

Does that describe the feature enough?