Jump to verse/chorus/bridge

[intuitas]

Hi Peter,

Plenty of php expertise within the group I suspect (myself excluded): especially I imagine Ed (webmaster).

I am interested in your suggestion. Are you suggesting that because the songs are separated into verses etc. using blank lines that the blank lines are indexed. That is (if we took a strictly numerical viewof key assignment) - for a song set out as

Verse
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Bridge

that pressing (say) 1 on the number pad would take you to the first verse, while number 3 would take you to the chorus and 5 would take you to the bridge.
Whereas, for a song set out as

Verse
Chorus
Verse
Bridge
Verse
Verse

you would press 2 on the number pad for the chorus in that song, 4 for the bridge and 1,3,5 and 6 for the verses.

The operator would have to know that 'verse 3' was the chorus in the first song and 'verse 2' the chorus in the second etc.

There would certainly be no need to alter the structure of the song, in the database, under these circumstances.

On the other hand, if you introduced a system of user insertable tags v1, v2, ch, br etc. with which to mark the song at the time of creation (or subsequent editing) then you can use a consistent key assignment ie. 1 takes you to verse 1, 2 to verse 2, 3 to verse 3 and (say) c and b respectively to the chorus and bridge - regardless of the order in which they may appear in the song. That way, if your worship leader says (spontaneously) "verse 2" the operator doesn't have to think is verse 2 number key 2 or 3 for this song?

There are advantages to both systems and some of the other alternatives discussed in this particular thread. I suspect that concensus will be a guide to the preferred direction but for this to happen the options need to be distinct and well decribed.

As usual, posting to this thread resulted in me rambling on again.

Paul

[Peter_in_Christ]

Hi Paul,

Yes, that was the idea I was trying to bring across

That way, for people who have spent hours creating the database using previous versions of ZionWorx can continue to use their existing database, the simplicity of creating the database would still be kept even for the novice user. (Yes, the user would have to figure out which index refers to which verse/chorus/bridge)

I think the option for a "system of user insertable tags" could be implemented as an optional/extra feature and is useful for advance users. if implemented the operator would need to be reminded that the database will not be downward compatible with earlier versions of ZionWorxand will need a version of ZionWorx that support this feature

If you would like a copy of the perl files, do let me know, to get an idea of the algorithm used and see how it works.

God bless

Peter

[intuitas]

Hi Peter,

Couple of good points here -

A standard 'jump to' process plus the capacity to optionally tag songs might provide a universal solution.

While I have been considering at length the various ways the database structure might be altered I had overlooked the compatibility issue. Because I had assumed that upgrading to V 3.0 would probably follow for everyone (since such an upgrade would be freely available) I had neglected to consider that our church (as a current user) might not be able to run V 3.0 if the minimum hardware/software requirements should alter.

This inclines me to again consider the possibility of a ZionWorx specific DBMS which could be run independent of either version.

God Bless

Paul

[Pilget]

Would it not be easier if we could just click on the block that we would like displayed? If we were to break it down to verse # or slide # and tag this and tag that, wouldn't we need to keep a print out of each page or have our operators count on the main screen?

We are currently using Easy Worship but our church has been shopping for another program to use and I found this one. Our music director is reluctant to switch over to Zion Worx at the moment b/c of
the ease on how to choose the section of the song we want to jump to in Easy Worship. We use the display to learn new songs so being able to quickly jump to a specific part of the song is important. In Easy Worship all you have to do it click on the section you want and it is displayed.

If I am totally confused in what is being discussed here, please excuse me...I'm a little computer illiterate

[Diceman]

As I understand it - the new database in v3 is restructured for an enhanced feature set. Legacy support for version 2 should ideally be offered through a warning embellished export feature, although the likelyhood of this export or even a pluggin architecture (to allow us to write one) seems slim in the initial release of version 3.

Zionworx has all the support concerns of a medium sized software house development project. The fact that version 3 is due out is in itself a blessing. Perhaps the conversion of databases between versions could be considered a seperate project?

Could this be implimented in php as a standalone executable, considered for bundling with the initial release of version 3 (integrated later so as to speed the release of v3)?

To be fair - the requested feature set is growing very quickly for such for a small project.

Ed - can we have a to-do list and an expected supported feature list for version 3 so that we don't A - duplicate discussions and B - are able to envisage how easy it is to implimment discussed ideas in the amorphous enigmatic mass of features which version 3 has now become?

kind regards

Diceman

---
The Passion of Christ Movie is worth watching (if your not too squeemish - to be honest it isn't as graphic as my imagination of the injuries inflicted after an illustrative preacher has described it to me - but very effective all the same).

[Williamting]

Hi Diceman,

At this moment in time, the facility to export db from V2 into V3 is planned for. Initial perfomance test shows that the export is very fast. It also support unicode, ie, multiple languages, eg, Chinese.

God bless,
William

[Diceman]

I appreciate that the database will be forwards compatible as an import into version 3 (and I'm glad to hear its fast and funky).

the facility to export db from V2 into V3 is planned for

Are you saying that version 3 will also have an export back to the version 2 database - or that the above functionality will be covered by an export from a re-written version 2?

Sorry - it's just coming across a little ambiguous.

I think you may have misunderstood me.

The purpose of the proposed (possibly standalone using Peter's php code) conversion is to allow users to migrate back to version 2 in the event they have to move their database to a machine which only supports version 2, when having previously been working on version 3 (the compatibility issue which intuitas suggested - Sat Jan 17, 2004 12:39 pm). I appreciate this is may be a niche market but most modern applications allow users to save their work in older formats for compatibility purposes.

kind regards

Diceman

[Christian]

can we have a to-do list and an expected supported feature list for version 3 so that we don't A - duplicate discussions and B - are able to envisage how easy it is to implimment discussed ideas in the amorphous enigmatic mass of features which version 3 has now become?

I agree Diceman - this kind of 'checklist' would be a very useful thing to put in place and focus on...

At the risk of going off topic, is anyone prepared to help put this together?

[CustardFD]

Sorry - I just found this thread. In the following thread, I've posted some info about Words of Worship: a package that I think has got this spot-on. Downloading the demo might consolidate the discussion a bit?

http://www.zionworx.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=158

Dan.

[optm]

Why not get zionworx to automatically number the screens, and represent them by putting the text in the right hand pane into numbered boxes? That way I can see easily that the chorus of the song is in the third screen, which I could jump to by pressing, say, '3'

I have to say that i completely agree with this workaround, although maybe adding mouse control for quick changes between verses and choruses when caught out (as occasionally happens with some worship leaders) would be a feature that we would find very useful.

The only problem about adding tags to songs, that I can see, with a database of over 1600 songs, it would take a long time to format each song with tags that were in the right places, and without errors.

Just started using the program, and loving it so far, but those are two features that I would find useful to be included in the next version.

[Andrew]

OpenSong has support for Verse/Chorus/Bridge by using tags and it is a nice feature BUT it makes it difficult to enter your songs by just cut and pasting. So if it is implemented it does need to be optional (as previously mentioned) so as not to make it difficult to enter your songs.

Having verse/chorus/bridge markers would allow for a feature extension in that you could then have an option to display only certain verses in a worship service. E.G. if the Songleader comes to you and says we are going to sing verse 1,3 and 5 with the chorus after each verse you could then add the song and then 'add/select' which verses/chorus/bridge to play and where and how many times to play it without having to have to modify the original song source, keeping the original song with all verses intact.

[spirelli]

Without having read most of the thread I think that this would be a really great feature!

[Peter_in_Christ]

Why not try the array method?

When you load the raw data each paragraph/verse/chorus, is allocate a cell in an array. The Seperator in the raw data is a carriage return, assign each cell a numerical value on the keyboard. To jump to a verse, type and number and press enter.

Peter

[MaFt]

can i point to part 1 of this thread: http://www.zionworx.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=325

i think this would be what most of us are looking for (before we side-tracked to copyrights!!)

MaFt

[Peter_in_Christ]

Here's a sample of the idea I'm thinking of, download from here: http://www.aucp45.dsl.pipex.com/christi ... lector.zip

Note:
- no keyboard shortcuts are implemented but could be
- transfer hymn/song first before selecting a verse