Zionworx

As a long time user of Zionworx I love the software, and get mildly irritated when i hear of churches unnecessarily paying out large sums of money when they can get a better piece of software for a much better price.

Here's an idea that i have been having for text formatting:


1// Vertical centering. I know it's been mentioned before, but have been to different churches in the last month, one where the lyrics needed to be top aligned, one where they really needed to be vertically aligned, and on where they needed to be bottom aligned. Can we have this as an option setting please?


2// Intelligent line breaks. If a lyric is too long for one line, it gets wraped onto the next line. This is good. However, imagine if the software was clever enough to evenly break the line somewhere near the middle to make the break more even?

So that, instead of:

They will dance with joy like we're dancing
now

You might get

They will dance with joy
Like we're dancing now

Doing this would look a lot more professional on screen. I often get embarrased when a badly breaking line appears onscreen. It looks unprofessional!

As an even clever added bonus, the software could be clever enough that if a line that needs to break already contains a comma, then that could be used as a guide for an alternative break point.

Sure, not every line would break where it should, but at least it would look a little better than the long line, short orphan thing that I currently get.

Perhaps (and we're getting really clever now) automatic capitalisation of the first letter of every line could be an option too?


3// Intelligent line spacing. I know - I need a computer that also makes me a cup of tea and calls me "dave", but how about intelligent line spacing too? Sometimes just one or two lines of a verse slip onto the following slide because it is too long. How about if Zionworks was clever enough to say "hey, with a tiny little tightening of line spacing, we could fit that all in". Nothing too terrific, but it's amazing what 10% can do sometimes.


Am I dreaming? Probably.
Is it possible? Yes.

I hope all this makes sense. And thanks so much ZW team!

Hi Chris,

No your not dreaming at all - these are really good ideas that will give a LOT of benefit. I especially like the idea of looking for a logical (already existing) break in a line e.g. a comma, and using that as a break position.

Top, centre, bottom vertical alignment is no problem...

I'm not sure about automatic capitalisation of the first letter of every line - this could appear 'confusing' to the reader, but how about a definable indent e.g. 4 spaces or something?

And yes, I like your intelligent line spacing idea as well! Although this would be a little more tricky to implement - easier would be to move another line to the next screen so that the orphan had a parent

Thanks!
Christian.

interesting ideas most of which could be welcome enhancements to ZW.

Not sure about automatic capitalisation - we have opted for lower case style (as introduced in a number of worship song books published in the '70's) where only the beginnings of new sentences or proper names would be routinely capitalised.

If automatic capitalisation were a user-choice option, then no problem.


Wes

Other software gives you some of the following options.

All capitals
All Lowercase
Every first letter is a capital.
Every first letter of every sentence is a capital.

And then you have a capital override feature which I thought would be nice to implement. Basically you say which words you want to always start with a capital.

E.g. Lord, His, God etc.

The software then makes sure that any of the those words in songs always start with a capital.

Don't know if all those options are needed, but they are just some ideas.

...what, even if "his" refers to a person rather than to YHWH? Perhaps such automation would also require a theologicaly astute programme?

Is this idea still on the wish list? I would LOVE to be able to vertically align the text top, middle, bottom!

Linda

The latest version of the software does manage orphaning of single words correctly. In the settings set the line break to 75 or 80%. Then if a song line goes the width of the screen (thus possibly causing an orphaned word) it will break the song at your percentage above - so breaking the song line before the last word and resulting in multiple words on the broken line.

We use this and it is great.

Christian wrote:I'm not sure about automatic capitalisation of the first letter of every line - this could appear 'confusing' to the reader, but how about a definable indent e.g. 4 spaces or something?

That sounds good to me - I would definitely like an indent on line break facility.