asaph-developers — General discussion list for Asaph developers

Re: [Asaph-developers] Printing multiple songs

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

David Fraser wrote:

> Hi (after a long silence)
>
> We have been using Asaph at church for quite a while now for editing 
> song words for presentation in pyasaph.
> However all our chords for musicians are still in Word documents (this 
> missing the whole point of using Asaph).
> One of the main requirements that Asaph is missing in order to be 
> useful for managing the chords is being able to print multiple songs 
> (e.g. the whole songbook) at a time.
> I was wanting to look at adding this, but would appreciate a few 
> pointers (being fairly unfamiliar with Java and specifically 
> unfamiliar with Java printing).
> It seems like the main relevant code is in SongViewer, PrintHandler, 
> and PrintRenderHandler.
> What would be the right way to go about adding printing for a whole 
> song database (for a start, then I could add selecting of multiple songs)
>
> Thanks
> David

Oops! Just looked at the site and saw the release of Asaph 0.5.5 and the 
1.1 plan for output options ... great!
Might be able to help although as I said my Java knolwedge is limited...

David

[Asaph-developers] Printing multiple songs

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Hi (after a long silence)

We have been using Asaph at church for quite a while now for editing 
song words for presentation in pyasaph.
However all our chords for musicians are still in Word documents (this 
missing the whole point of using Asaph).
One of the main requirements that Asaph is missing in order to be useful 
for managing the chords is being able to print multiple songs (e.g. the 
whole songbook) at a time.
I was wanting to look at adding this, but would appreciate a few 
pointers (being fairly unfamiliar with Java and specifically unfamiliar 
with Java printing).
It seems like the main relevant code is in SongViewer, PrintHandler, and 
PrintRenderHandler.
What would be the right way to go about adding printing for a whole song 
database (for a start, then I could add selecting of multiple songs)

Thanks
David

Re: [Asaph-developers] xml format

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Daniel Azuma wrote:

>Hi David,
>
>Okay, time for a view into the (largely undocumented) guts of the XML
>format...
>  
>
Hi Daniel,

Wow, thanks for all the details!

>On Tue, 11 May 2004, David Fraser wrote:
>  
>
>>1) Is there a way to mark blocks as chorus / verse etc. The reason this
>>would be useful is for style changes e.g. displaying the chorus in
>>italics (I know it can currently be indented).
>>    
>>
>In the model, SongBlocks are FieldContainers. That means, in the XML, you
>can have a <fields> element inside <block>. (It needs to be the first
>element if it is present.) See the <song> elements for examples of the
>structure of <fields>.
>
>The canonical way to mark the block type is to use a stringfield with name
>"type". Set the value to "verse" for verse, "chorus" for chorus, "bridge"
>for bridge. I don't have any other constants defined at the moment.
>
>(Also note that the constants for these in model/SongBlock.java are
>currently wrong and will be fixed in 0.5.4. The field name should be
>"type", not "name".)
>
>This is undocumented and not currently actually used by Asaph's GUI for
>anything, but block fields are part of Asaph's model, and so Asaph will
>preserve them when it edits the file.
>  
>
That's fantastic, thanks for the info... I will probably only get to 
doing this after some of the other tasks, but its helpful to know.

>>2) Likewise, it would be nice to be able to mark lines as translations
>>(we sing a number of non-English songs that often have translations
>>below each line).
>>    
>>
>Lines can't be marked. That was a design decision I went back and forth
>on, but finally decided it wasn't necessary. However, runs of text CAN be
>marked with a type. In fact, that is how "comments" are implemented.
>
>Here's how it works:
>
>The <line> element is a container that is supposed to contain <text> and
><c> elements. So the "clean" way to represent a line in XML would look
>something like this:
>
><line><text>I </text><c main="D"/><text>love You Lord</text></line>
>
>The <text> element can include an optional "type" attribute. Comments are
>actually text elements with type="comment". For example:
>
><line><text type="comment">(chorus)</text></line>
>
>However, Asaph's XML format includes several "shorthand" modifications of
>this notation. First, if raw text appears in the <line> element, it is
>treated as though it were in a <text> subelement. So the first example
>above could be written as:
>
><line>I <c main="D"/>love You Lord</line>
>
>Second, the <comment> element is equivalent to <text type="comment">. So
>the second example above could be written as:
>
><line><comment>(chorus)</comment></line>
>
>Asaph outputs its files using the above two shorthand rules because they
>result in smaller files, and because I found them easier to read in a text
>editor.
>  
>
I agree, having to put "text" markers on every section would be 
annoying, it is clean and nice to read.

>Anyway, the point of the above discussion is that you can mark any text
>run with a type by explicitly including the <text> element, and supplying
>a type. The only canonical type I have defined right now is "comment". But
>you can define your own for now, and Asaph will preserve it when it writes
>out a file. You can't mark a line, but you can mark all the text runs
>within a line. If you're including translation lines in a song, the
>translation line probably won't have chord markings in it, so there will
>probably only be one text run in each line. It would look something like:
>
><line><text type="translation">translation of the above</text></line>
>  
>
Yes, this would work great for us, I'll have a look at implementing it.
We actually take a openoffice document that has all the songs and 
convert it to the song database, so what I am doing is improving the 
conversion tool to automatically pick up comments, translations etc... 
Once it is all finished we can just dump the document and use the song 
database. Also I haven't yet done chord conversion, I just ignore the 
chords lines, so that needs to be done, like it was for the experimental 
text import. I would like to see if I can use some OpenOffice 
intelligence to work out the chord placement within the line...)

>>I was also wondering about the use of ids to mark lines, blocks, songs,
>>etc. They seem a bit redundant to me in that they are predictable and
>>don't neccessarily add much information to the song database.
>>    
>>
>Okay, IDs. I figured this question would come up eventually. Here's the
>rationale behind how Asaph uses IDs.
>
>IDs are meant to be a unique, permanent, serializable reference to a song,
>chordset, variation, or block. Song IDs are unique within a database.
>Chordset, variation, and block IDs are unique within a song. They are
>intended to provide a permanent way for external entities to identify
>songs, or certain elements within songs, even if the song changes in minor
>ways.
>  
>
OK, that makes sense, I can see why you have them now...

>Thus, IDs should not change if changes are made around them. For instance,
>the ID of a song within its database will not change even if you change
>the song title. Or the ID of a block within a song will not change even if
>you reorder blocks, delete blocks, or otherwise cause the block's
>numerical index within the song to change. Therefore, it is "safe", for
>example, for an external entity like a URI to refer to the chorus of a
>song by its block ID, while it is not safe to refer to it as "The second
>block", because the former will not change if a block is inserted in the
>beginning, whereas the latter will.
>
>IDs should never be visible to the user, except if they show up in a URI
>or something like that. Unfortunately, they do show up in filenames in the
>indexed database, but the intent for indexed databases is that users
>shouldn't mess with the individual files anyway.
>  
>
OK that makes sense. I think because I had never done extensive editing 
I had only seen sequential ids, but if blocks/songs maintain ids after 
changes, thats cool. Is there a standard syntax for URIs referring to 
songs / blocks?

>>In particular, I was thinking that it would be quite useful to be able
>>to have a song file specified for the song (in an indexed database) so
>>instead of being song_b_a.xml it would be nothing_but_the_blood.xml.
>>The advantage of this would be that you could have multiple indexes on
>>the same set of songs and you could use the indexes to save lists of
>>songs e.g. the list of songs for this Sunday morning etc.
>>    
>>
>The way something like this should work-- at least, the way it is going to
>work in Asaph when it starts doing presentations and more advanced output
>capabilities-- is that you should have a data structure that points to
>songs by their song ID. One of the key APIs I'm looking at designing for
>1.1 is a "song list" API. So a presentation would run off a song list that
>is effectively just an array of pairs (database, songID). For example:
>
>(database 1, song D)
>(database 1, song A)
>(database 2, song D)
>(database 1, song E)
>
>and so forth.
>
>Similarly, within each song, you'd generally not want to show the blocks
>in the order they appear in the database. For a song with three verses and
>a chorus, the song is usually structured like this:
>
>block A: verse 1
>block B: chorus
>block C: verse 2
>block D: verse 3
>
>because that is how it usually is printed in a lead sheet. But when you do
>your presentation, you probably want something like:
>
>verse 1
>chorus
>verse 2
>chorus
>verse 3
>chorus
>
>or even going back and repeating verses, and so forth. So a song list
>with block reordering would actually look something like this:
>
>(database1, song D)
>  block A
>  block B
>  block C
>  block B
>  block D
>  block B
>(database1, song A)
>etc...
>
>That way, you don't have to modify the song in the database. You're just
>building a list of "pointers" to songs and parts of songs in the database,
>and leaving the database itself alone. That's kind of important: the way I
>see Asaph being used is that users should be able to do all manner of
>manipulating songs for presentations and building songbooks and the like,
>without having to modify the database itself. A church can have a central
>database of songs that is read-only to everyone except one person who is
>responsible for managing songs and dealing with all the CCLI stuff. But a
>music team member who needs to just put together a presentation can come
>in and build one of the above lists, and will thus have the freedom to do
>whatever reordering is necessary without having to make database changes.
>  
>
This sounds great, and it all makes lots of sense.

>So the key here is the use of IDs, which are like pointers (to use
>developer-speak) to those elements. Song D is still song D even if someone
>goes in later and changes its title; the song list you're using for your
>presentation won't break. Block B is still the chorus even if someone goes
>in later and inserts an introduction before the first verse. The
>introduction might be located before the first verse, but it will be
>assigned the "next" ID, which would be "E". Block B is still the chorus,
>and your song list doesn't have to change, and your presentation doesn't
>break.
>
>The naming scheme of song xml files (.asml) files within an indexed
>database is song_<id>_<revision>.asml. This is because songs should always
>be specified by their unique ID, not by name or anything else, because
>there is no guarantee that anything else will be unique, nor is there any
>guarantee that other things won't change. In my personal database, there
>are three songs entitled "I Want To Know You". So I can't use the title as
>the filename.
>
>Anyway, that's the vision. And if you have comments on that, please feel
>free to speak up.
>  
>
I think its great. Maybe it would be a nice idea to specify an xml 
format for the song list idea.
That way lists could be saved and loaded relative to a (simple or 
indexed) database.

>Now, that said, I'm guessing your problem is that you're just copying
>songs into a new database, and feeding the entire database into pyasaph
>for a presentation, (which is fine for now), and you're having trouble
>coming up with an easy way to allow a user to specify the order of songs,
>because in Asaph's database, there really isn't the concept of the order
>of the songs, and so Asaph doesn't provide any user interface to reorder
>songs. I don't really have a good solution for this, because the intent
>for Asaph itself is eventually to hide all of the ID junk behind an API
>and user interface for creating song lists. You could throw together and
>document a simple mechanism for specifying the order of song IDs in an
>input text file or something. (Sorry, I still haven't had a chance to
>download and try out pyasaph myself, so I don't really have a good
>understanding of what it's currently doing in terms of ordering songs.)
>  
>
Yes I think I will have a look at this, though I think an xml file for 
song lists would be the best solution.
Actually what I've focussed on more is having a simple way to search 
song titles.
So there is a text box above the list of songs that filters as you type 
(matching substrings).
This makes it very quick to find songs if for example the worship leader 
chooses a song that wasn't on the list.
So we generally have the whole database loaded, and then open all the 
songs that are on the list.
There is a multiple document interface so you can see a few songs at 
once or select one from a window drop down.
It seems to be working OK for now. I'll post some screenshots when I get 
a chance.

The main improvement I would like to make is that at the moment I just 
use an HTML window to display the songs (on the second display if there 
is one). But this doesn't have any concept of blocks, so you have to 
scroll up and down in it using the mouse.
What I want to do is allow the controller to double-click a block on the 
main screen and for that block to move to the top of the display screen. 
So I have to define a view class that will do this...

Thanks for the help and info

David

Re: [Asaph-developers] xml format

[Daniel A. <da...@ka...>]

Hi David,

Okay, time for a view into the (largely undocumented) guts of the XML
format...

On Tue, 11 May 2004, David Fraser wrote:

> 1) Is there a way to mark blocks as chorus / verse etc. The reason this
> would be useful is for style changes e.g. displaying the chorus in
> italics (I know it can currently be indented).

In the model, SongBlocks are FieldContainers. That means, in the XML, you
can have a <fields> element inside <block>. (It needs to be the first
element if it is present.) See the <song> elements for examples of the
structure of <fields>.

The canonical way to mark the block type is to use a stringfield with name
"type". Set the value to "verse" for verse, "chorus" for chorus, "bridge"
for bridge. I don't have any other constants defined at the moment.

(Also note that the constants for these in model/SongBlock.java are
currently wrong and will be fixed in 0.5.4. The field name should be
"type", not "name".)

This is undocumented and not currently actually used by Asaph's GUI for
anything, but block fields are part of Asaph's model, and so Asaph will
preserve them when it edits the file.

> 2) Likewise, it would be nice to be able to mark lines as translations
> (we sing a number of non-English songs that often have translations
> below each line).

Lines can't be marked. That was a design decision I went back and forth
on, but finally decided it wasn't necessary. However, runs of text CAN be
marked with a type. In fact, that is how "comments" are implemented.

Here's how it works:

The <line> element is a container that is supposed to contain <text> and
<c> elements. So the "clean" way to represent a line in XML would look
something like this:

<line><text>I </text><c main="D"/><text>love You Lord</text></line>

The <text> element can include an optional "type" attribute. Comments are
actually text elements with type="comment". For example:

<line><text type="comment">(chorus)</text></line>

However, Asaph's XML format includes several "shorthand" modifications of
this notation. First, if raw text appears in the <line> element, it is
treated as though it were in a <text> subelement. So the first example
above could be written as:

<line>I <c main="D"/>love You Lord</line>

Second, the <comment> element is equivalent to <text type="comment">. So
the second example above could be written as:

<line><comment>(chorus)</comment></line>

Asaph outputs its files using the above two shorthand rules because they
result in smaller files, and because I found them easier to read in a text
editor.

Anyway, the point of the above discussion is that you can mark any text
run with a type by explicitly including the <text> element, and supplying
a type. The only canonical type I have defined right now is "comment". But
you can define your own for now, and Asaph will preserve it when it writes
out a file. You can't mark a line, but you can mark all the text runs
within a line. If you're including translation lines in a song, the
translation line probably won't have chord markings in it, so there will
probably only be one text run in each line. It would look something like:

<line><text type="translation">translation of the above</text></line>

> I was also wondering about the use of ids to mark lines, blocks, songs,
> etc. They seem a bit redundant to me in that they are predictable and
> don't neccessarily add much information to the song database.

Okay, IDs. I figured this question would come up eventually. Here's the
rationale behind how Asaph uses IDs.

IDs are meant to be a unique, permanent, serializable reference to a song,
chordset, variation, or block. Song IDs are unique within a database.
Chordset, variation, and block IDs are unique within a song. They are
intended to provide a permanent way for external entities to identify
songs, or certain elements within songs, even if the song changes in minor
ways.

Thus, IDs should not change if changes are made around them. For instance,
the ID of a song within its database will not change even if you change
the song title. Or the ID of a block within a song will not change even if
you reorder blocks, delete blocks, or otherwise cause the block's
numerical index within the song to change. Therefore, it is "safe", for
example, for an external entity like a URI to refer to the chorus of a
song by its block ID, while it is not safe to refer to it as "The second
block", because the former will not change if a block is inserted in the
beginning, whereas the latter will.

IDs should never be visible to the user, except if they show up in a URI
or something like that. Unfortunately, they do show up in filenames in the
indexed database, but the intent for indexed databases is that users
shouldn't mess with the individual files anyway.

> In particular, I was thinking that it would be quite useful to be able
> to have a song file specified for the song (in an indexed database) so
> instead of being song_b_a.xml it would be nothing_but_the_blood.xml.
> The advantage of this would be that you could have multiple indexes on
> the same set of songs and you could use the indexes to save lists of
> songs e.g. the list of songs for this Sunday morning etc.

The way something like this should work-- at least, the way it is going to
work in Asaph when it starts doing presentations and more advanced output
capabilities-- is that you should have a data structure that points to
songs by their song ID. One of the key APIs I'm looking at designing for
1.1 is a "song list" API. So a presentation would run off a song list that
is effectively just an array of pairs (database, songID). For example:

(database 1, song D)
(database 1, song A)
(database 2, song D)
(database 1, song E)

and so forth.

Similarly, within each song, you'd generally not want to show the blocks
in the order they appear in the database. For a song with three verses and
a chorus, the song is usually structured like this:

block A: verse 1
block B: chorus
block C: verse 2
block D: verse 3

because that is how it usually is printed in a lead sheet. But when you do
your presentation, you probably want something like:

verse 1
chorus
verse 2
chorus
verse 3
chorus

or even going back and repeating verses, and so forth. So a song list
with block reordering would actually look something like this:

(database1, song D)
  block A
  block B
  block C
  block B
  block D
  block B
(database1, song A)
etc...

That way, you don't have to modify the song in the database. You're just
building a list of "pointers" to songs and parts of songs in the database,
and leaving the database itself alone. That's kind of important: the way I
see Asaph being used is that users should be able to do all manner of
manipulating songs for presentations and building songbooks and the like,
without having to modify the database itself. A church can have a central
database of songs that is read-only to everyone except one person who is
responsible for managing songs and dealing with all the CCLI stuff. But a
music team member who needs to just put together a presentation can come
in and build one of the above lists, and will thus have the freedom to do
whatever reordering is necessary without having to make database changes.

So the key here is the use of IDs, which are like pointers (to use
developer-speak) to those elements. Song D is still song D even if someone
goes in later and changes its title; the song list you're using for your
presentation won't break. Block B is still the chorus even if someone goes
in later and inserts an introduction before the first verse. The
introduction might be located before the first verse, but it will be
assigned the "next" ID, which would be "E". Block B is still the chorus,
and your song list doesn't have to change, and your presentation doesn't
break.

The naming scheme of song xml files (.asml) files within an indexed
database is song_<id>_<revision>.asml. This is because songs should always
be specified by their unique ID, not by name or anything else, because
there is no guarantee that anything else will be unique, nor is there any
guarantee that other things won't change. In my personal database, there
are three songs entitled "I Want To Know You". So I can't use the title as
the filename.

Anyway, that's the vision. And if you have comments on that, please feel
free to speak up.

Now, that said, I'm guessing your problem is that you're just copying
songs into a new database, and feeding the entire database into pyasaph
for a presentation, (which is fine for now), and you're having trouble
coming up with an easy way to allow a user to specify the order of songs,
because in Asaph's database, there really isn't the concept of the order
of the songs, and so Asaph doesn't provide any user interface to reorder
songs. I don't really have a good solution for this, because the intent
for Asaph itself is eventually to hide all of the ID junk behind an API
and user interface for creating song lists. You could throw together and
document a simple mechanism for specifying the order of song IDs in an
input text file or something. (Sorry, I still haven't had a chance to
download and try out pyasaph myself, so I don't really have a good
understanding of what it's currently doing in terms of ordering songs.)

Daniel

[Asaph-developers] xml format

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Hi Daniel

As I said I have a few questions about the xml file format.
These mostly arise from the differing needs of presenting songs I guess.
1) Is there a way to mark blocks as chorus / verse etc. The reason this 
would be useful is for style changes e.g. displaying the chorus in 
italics (I know it can currently be indented).
2) Likewise, it would be nice to be able to mark lines as translations 
(we sing a number of non-English songs that often have translations 
below each line).
If there isn't a way to do the above, could there be a way to specify 
such attributes so that they will still be preserved when Asaph edits 
the files?
I think the way you have specified chords is great, it makes it really easy.

I was also wondering about the use of ids to mark lines, blocks, songs, 
etc. They seem a bit redundant to me in that they are predictable and 
don't neccessarily add much information to the song database.
In particular, I was thinking that it would be quite useful to be able 
to have a song file specified for the song (in an indexed database) so 
instead of being song_b_a.xml it would be nothing_but_the_blood.xml. The 
advantage of this would be that you could have multiple indexes on the 
same set of songs and you could use the indexes to save lists of songs 
e.g. the list of songs for this Sunday morning etc.

Let me know what you think about the above.

Thanks
David

[Asaph-developers] pyasaph now in asaph cvs, version 0.1.1 released

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Hi all

Thanks Daniel for setting up cvs access etc. Makes life easier!
pyasaph is now in asaph cvs under the pyasaph module ; I have imported 
version 0.0.5 through 0.1.1 for history's sake.
I have also uploaded the source distribution and a windows installer to 
the file release system. The windows installer requires python and 
wxPython to be installed - wxPython 2.5 is better as it gives better 
display control
Any feedback welcome...

David

Re: [Asaph-developers] pyasaph 0.1

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Sandra Capri wrote:

>David,
>
>This is exciting news!!  It sounds like development is doing well!
>  
>
>>A bit hairy as we only had a single display output so we had to keep 
>>turning them off to switch songs etc, but it worked.
>>    
>>
>Hmm, so is it required to use 2 video cards?  This could cause a problem
>for those using notebook computers (2nd video can be expensive there). 
>That isn't our situation - I have an extra video card to put in the
>tower we use.
>  
>
No, it is not required. You can set whether to use the primary display 
or a secondary display.
In wx 2.5 upwards, it can automatically detect the displays, in wx 2.4 
it guesses based on the main screen size.
But there is no User interface for this yet, just command line options.
But a lot of notebook computers, you can have the display output through 
the video out as a secondary display.

The main problem with only having a single output is that people 
watching the projection will see the switch of the screen, and selection 
of songs.
But we can add code to minimize this

>>  easy way to display notices
>>    
>>
>Agreed, this would be very nice.  The preacher might want to be able
>to seamlessly go into his slides for his/her teaching as well - is
>this a possibility?
>  
>
Well tonight we had a few presentations (using PowerPoint) - its fairly 
easy to just switch programs.
The idea of notices was for things like people who've left their car 
lights on, etc - displaying it over the text of the song for a while.
I've started adding some code for this now but haven't got it working 
nicely yet.

>>I have also written a sxw2asaph script (included) that tries to convert 
>>an OpenOffice document to a song database.
>>A bit like the import songs feature except it can handle multiple songs 
>>in a file (and doesn't yet include the chords)
>>We've used this to convert songs (a few missing lines though)
>>    
>>
>Excellent!  All of our songs are in various openoffice files.  Some
>songs are 1 per file, and some are several per file.  I was really
>hoping for this import feature (and a script is an excellent way to
>accomplish this).  Thank you!
>  
>
Great, you should just be able to do:
 ./sxw2asaph.py *.sxw -o test.adml
There could be more improvement on the import, and how it detects 
different songs etc... but all in good time.

>When things settle down around home, I'm hoping to download and try out
>pyasaph.  I've told our songleaders it's coming, and they're excited
>about it.
>
>For anyone on the mailing list that is familiar with Tkinter, but not
>wxPython (like myself), there is an interesting article at:
>http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/196
>
>which gives a comparison.  It's kind of based around mswindows thought,
>but since we're talking about python, it mostly applies to the Linux
>world as well (it also compares PythonWin for those familiar with that)
>  
>
Great

David

Re: [Asaph-developers] pyasaph 0.1

[Sandra C. <sc...@sp...>]

David,

This is exciting news!!  It sounds like development is doing well!

> A bit hairy as we only had a single display output so we had to keep 
> turning them off to switch songs etc, but it worked.

Hmm, so is it required to use 2 video cards?  This could cause a problem
for those using notebook computers (2nd video can be expensive there). 
That isn't our situation - I have an extra video card to put in the
tower we use.

>   easy way to display notices

Agreed, this would be very nice.  The preacher might want to be able
to seamlessly go into his slides for his/her teaching as well - is
this a possibility?

> I have also written a sxw2asaph script (included) that tries to convert 
> an OpenOffice document to a song database.
> A bit like the import songs feature except it can handle multiple songs 
> in a file (and doesn't yet include the chords)
> We've used this to convert songs (a few missing lines though)

Excellent!  All of our songs are in various openoffice files.  Some
songs are 1 per file, and some are several per file.  I was really
hoping for this import feature (and a script is an excellent way to
accomplish this).  Thank you!

When things settle down around home, I'm hoping to download and try out
pyasaph.  I've told our songleaders it's coming, and they're excited
about it.

For anyone on the mailing list that is familiar with Tkinter, but not
wxPython (like myself), there is an interesting article at:
http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/196

which gives a comparison.  It's kind of based around mswindows thought,
but since we're talking about python, it mostly applies to the Linux
world as well (it also compares PythonWin for those familiar with that)
-- 
Sandra Capri <sc...@sp...>

[Asaph-developers] pyasaph 0.1

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Hi

Well , it was a bit nerve-wracking but we did it...
We have a weekend of stuff going on in our church with Matt Redman from 
the UK leading worship and Terry Virgo speaking.
And we actually managed to use PyAsaph this morning to display the songs 
through the projectors!
A bit hairy as we only had a single display output so we had to keep 
turning them off to switch songs etc, but it worked.
Anyway after the meeting put in a new video card that has a second 
output and PyAsaph is now displaying stuff nicely on the secondary output.
I think that merits calling this 0.1
The source is at http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/pyasaph-0.1.tar.gz and a 
Windows installer (requires wxpython and python, and I haven't tested 
it) at http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/pyasaph-0.1.win32.exe
If anyone tries it out I'd be glad to hear feedback.
Things at the top of my TODO list:
  being able to scroll past the bottom of a song (hard to see the bottom 
of the screens)
  easy way to display notices
  toolbar/buttons/accelerators to switch songs being displayed
  big one: building our own display instead of using a HtmlWindow, so we 
can do better paging based on blocks

Looks like other guys from my church and other churches may be keen to 
help, so it should develop quickly...

I have also written a sxw2asaph script (included) that tries to convert 
an OpenOffice document to a song database.
A bit like the import songs feature except it can handle multiple songs 
in a file (and doesn't yet include the chords)
We've used this to convert songs (a few missing lines though)

Anyway just wanted to give progress feedback, I know Daniel you're still 
busy with papers, I have a few questions about the file format, but will 
ask later...
Also I think cvs on sourceforge may become useful soon so let me know if 
you have a chance to do this...

David

[Asaph-developers] PyAsaph 0.0.4

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Hi there

0.0.4 is probably understating it - beginning to look really nice now, 
can open multiple songs in a MDI interface (tabbed on GTK, not so nice 
on Windows), then just uses open songs for slideshow.
Also can handle a secondary display (though need to add interface to 
select this)
And a search box to search the list of songs
And lots of internal refactoring

I'll try build an installer for the next release...

http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/pyasaph-0.0.4.tar.gz

David

Re: [Asaph-developers] wxAsaph 0.0.2

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Hi Daniel

Thanks, CVS would be great because then maybe others could help :-) My 
sourceforge username is davidfraser
Just not sure what we should call the module, it could be wxAsaph but 
actually there is general Python code that may be useful for e.g. 
generating HTML.
Maybe PyAsaph. Or was trying to think of an inventive name (Moses lifted 
up the snake in the desert...) but got stuck
I guess the CVS repository name doesn't matter, but it would be great to 
have one!
Hope your papers go well

David

Daniel Azuma wrote:

>
> Thanks, David. I'm snowed under with two major final papers right now, 
> so I'm afraid I won't be able to look at it myself until next week, 
> but good to see you've made some progress on this. Let me know if you 
> think space on Asaph's sourceforge page (e.g. CVS access) would be 
> useful for your project.
>
> Daniel
>
>
> On Apr 19, 2004, at 15:16, David Fraser wrote:
>
>> OK, have added support for indexed databases and an initial 
>> fullscreen display (some support for second monitor too)
>> http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/wxasaph-0.0.2.zip
>>
>> David
>>
>> David Fraser wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Finally found the time to put together an initial start at 
>>> displaying an
>>> Asaph database without chords in wxPython, aim is to head towards a
>>> presentation-mode program as discussed before.
>>> So far loads a list of sings, lets you select them and displays the 
>>> song
>>> lyrics in the main part of the screen. No nice fonts, and only handles
>>> simple databases (but should be easy to enhance).
>>> Main initial goal is to work towards a fullscreen display, particularly
>>> on a second screen - our church has just bought a new projector and are
>>> wanting to display lyrics, I want to use Asaph.
>>> Code is at http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/wxasaph-0.0.1.zip - 
>>> requires wxPython and elementtree from effbot (I'm using wxPython 
>>> 2.4 and Python 2.3.3 on Linux). Any feedback/contributions appreciated
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> David
>>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
> Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
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Re: [Asaph-developers] wxAsaph 0.0.2

[Daniel A. <da...@ka...>]

Thanks, David. I'm snowed under with two major final papers right now, 
so I'm afraid I won't be able to look at it myself until next week, but 
good to see you've made some progress on this. Let me know if you think 
space on Asaph's sourceforge page (e.g. CVS access) would be useful for 
your project.

Daniel


On Apr 19, 2004, at 15:16, David Fraser wrote:

> OK, have added support for indexed databases and an initial fullscreen 
> display (some support for second monitor too)
> http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/wxasaph-0.0.2.zip
>
> David
>
> David Fraser wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> Finally found the time to put together an initial start at displaying 
>> an
>> Asaph database without chords in wxPython, aim is to head towards a
>> presentation-mode program as discussed before.
>> So far loads a list of sings, lets you select them and displays the 
>> song
>> lyrics in the main part of the screen. No nice fonts, and only handles
>> simple databases (but should be easy to enhance).
>> Main initial goal is to work towards a fullscreen display, 
>> particularly
>> on a second screen - our church has just bought a new projector and 
>> are
>> wanting to display lyrics, I want to use Asaph.
>> Code is at http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/wxasaph-0.0.1.zip - 
>> requires wxPython and elementtree from effbot (I'm using wxPython 2.4 
>> and Python 2.3.3 on Linux). Any feedback/contributions appreciated
>>
>> Regards
>> David

[Asaph-developers] wxAsaph 0.0.2

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

OK, have added support for indexed databases and an initial fullscreen 
display (some support for second monitor too)
http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/wxasaph-0.0.2.zip

David

David Fraser wrote:

> Hi
>
> Finally found the time to put together an initial start at displaying an
> Asaph database without chords in wxPython, aim is to head towards a
> presentation-mode program as discussed before.
> So far loads a list of sings, lets you select them and displays the song
> lyrics in the main part of the screen. No nice fonts, and only handles
> simple databases (but should be easy to enhance).
> Main initial goal is to work towards a fullscreen display, particularly
> on a second screen - our church has just bought a new projector and are
> wanting to display lyrics, I want to use Asaph.
> Code is at http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/wxasaph-0.0.1.zip - requires 
> wxPython and elementtree from effbot (I'm using wxPython 2.4 and 
> Python 2.3.3 on Linux). Any feedback/contributions appreciated
>
> Regards
> David
>
> Daniel Azuma wrote:
>
>> If you folks are interested in pursuing this yourselves, I'd be happy 
>> to provide whatever support I can, on the file format, on my 
>> classes/interfaces if you want to use them, and so forth. I also have 
>> a whole bunch of ideas on the design and features for a presentation 
>> mechanism.
>>
>> Anyway, if you want to pursue this, let me know, and I can start a 
>> developers mailing list for it (so we don't burden this list with 
>> developer discussion.)
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>> On Mar 09, 2004, at 22:44, David Fraser wrote:
>>
>>> I'm sure Daniel will answer you since he is the real developer!
>>> But it's nice to see someone else wanting to do stuff in Python ...
>>> This is a feature I have been very keen to see as well, although I 
>>> think what is really needed is a presentation-mode program that 
>>> would let you use any songs from the main database if required, but 
>>> would have a shortlist that would be quick to select from ...
>>> The question is what is the best way to quickly develop something 
>>> like this?
>>> One option would be to use Jython, since then all the layout and 
>>> database reading classes from the main app could be used, and we'd 
>>> have Python for quick development...
>>> But I have no experience with Jython.
>>> Otherwise the layout + database classes could be reimplemented in 
>>> Python, or finally (the obvious) the new stuff could just be coded 
>>> in Java...
>>>
>>> If this was only used for projecting the words and not the chords, 
>>> the layout would be much simpler, so the chord layout wouldn't have 
>>> to be done at first.
>>> And since the database stuff is in XML, that should be easy.
>>>
>>> Anyway just throwing around some ideas...
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>> Sandra Capri wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I just downloaded Asaph 0.5.1 a few nights ago, and have been running
>>>> through the menus, as well as the README.html file, and I am very
>>>> impressed with all the excellent features! I have been playing around
>>>> with creating a similar program (in Python), and came to the 
>>>> realization
>>>> that it is a lot more work than I first thought. I'm thrilled to find
>>>> that someone has done that work for me!
>>>>
>>>> I seem to be unable to figure out how to display the song 
>>>> presentation,
>>>> once it has been setup. I am imagining that we would enter all of our
>>>> songs into an indexed database, then for a given service, create a
>>>> simple database containing just the songs that we sing that night. At
>>>> that point, I would have expected to select a menu item that would
>>>> display the first song - words only, covering the whole screen. 
>>>> Then it
>>>> would allow the song leader to go through each song in order (such as
>>>> clicking the mouse button for the next song). Since we have a
>>>> projector, this is the way we allow the congregation to see the 
>>>> words to
>>>> the song.
>>>>
>>>> How do I do this? Or is this a future feature?
>>>>
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
> Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
> GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
> administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click
> _______________________________________________
> Asaph-developers mailing list
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/asaph-developers
>

[Asaph-developers] Re: [Asaph-users] How to generate presentation for group worship?

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Hi

Finally found the time to put together an initial start at displaying an
Asaph database without chords in wxPython, aim is to head towards a
presentation-mode program as discussed before.
So far loads a list of sings, lets you select them and displays the song
lyrics in the main part of the screen. No nice fonts, and only handles
simple databases (but should be easy to enhance).
Main initial goal is to work towards a fullscreen display, particularly
on a second screen - our church has just bought a new projector and are
wanting to display lyrics, I want to use Asaph.
Code is at http://davidf.sjsoft.com/files/wxasaph-0.0.1.zip - requires 
wxPython and elementtree from effbot (I'm using wxPython 2.4 and Python 
2.3.3 on Linux). Any feedback/contributions appreciated

Regards
David

Daniel Azuma wrote:

> If you folks are interested in pursuing this yourselves, I'd be happy 
> to provide whatever support I can, on the file format, on my 
> classes/interfaces if you want to use them, and so forth. I also have 
> a whole bunch of ideas on the design and features for a presentation 
> mechanism.
>
> Anyway, if you want to pursue this, let me know, and I can start a 
> developers mailing list for it (so we don't burden this list with 
> developer discussion.)
>
> Daniel
>
>
> On Mar 09, 2004, at 22:44, David Fraser wrote:
>
>> I'm sure Daniel will answer you since he is the real developer!
>> But it's nice to see someone else wanting to do stuff in Python ...
>> This is a feature I have been very keen to see as well, although I 
>> think what is really needed is a presentation-mode program that would 
>> let you use any songs from the main database if required, but would 
>> have a shortlist that would be quick to select from ...
>> The question is what is the best way to quickly develop something 
>> like this?
>> One option would be to use Jython, since then all the layout and 
>> database reading classes from the main app could be used, and we'd 
>> have Python for quick development...
>> But I have no experience with Jython.
>> Otherwise the layout + database classes could be reimplemented in 
>> Python, or finally (the obvious) the new stuff could just be coded in 
>> Java...
>>
>> If this was only used for projecting the words and not the chords, 
>> the layout would be much simpler, so the chord layout wouldn't have 
>> to be done at first.
>> And since the database stuff is in XML, that should be easy.
>>
>> Anyway just throwing around some ideas...
>>
>> David
>>
>> Sandra Capri wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I just downloaded Asaph 0.5.1 a few nights ago, and have been running
>>> through the menus, as well as the README.html file, and I am very
>>> impressed with all the excellent features!  I have been playing around
>>> with creating a similar program (in Python), and came to the 
>>> realization
>>> that it is a lot more work than I first thought. I'm thrilled to find
>>> that someone has done that work for me!
>>>
>>> I seem to be unable to figure out how to display the song presentation,
>>> once it has been setup.  I am imagining that we would enter all of our
>>> songs into an indexed database, then for a given service, create a
>>> simple database containing just the songs that we sing that night.  At
>>> that point, I would have expected to select a menu item that would
>>> display the first song - words only, covering the whole screen.  
>>> Then it
>>> would allow the song leader to go through each song in order (such as
>>> clicking the mouse button for the next song).  Since we have a
>>> projector, this is the way we allow the congregation to see the 
>>> words to
>>> the song.
>>>
>>> How do I do this?  Or is this a future feature?
>>>

[Asaph-developers] Re: [Asaph-users] How to generate presentation for group worship?

[Sandra C. <sc...@sp...>]

I played with openLP a little last night.  I run Windows 2000 in a
vmware window on my Fedora machine.  I don't know if running vmware
hindered the program any, but (like David) I couldn't see full
functionality - my guess is that it's still a pretty early version.  My
thoughts:

negative: Doesn't appear to support chords - the guitar players at my
church are pretty excited about Asaph's chord support.

positive: quick search for lyrics or author - "hmm, I don't remember the
title of the song, but I know it has 'Hallelujah what a saviour' in it -
Oh look - that's 'Man of Sorrows'.  negative: the search doesn't ignore
punctuation, so I actually had to search for "hallelujah! what a
saviour"

positive: very easy to create presentations from the song db - when the
program starts up, you see a list of songs available.  Click on a song
to select it, then hit a button to add it to the current presentation. 
This is exactly what I need for our song leader.  She's the one that
creates our song presentations for the song service, and she *really*
wants something just that easy.  She hates having to use Powerpoint
(actually, now openoffice presentations) to create the song list.

positive: Easy to add background picture and change fonts (and color of
fonts) in a song (though it looks like it currently enforces the same
color and backgrounds for all songs - a negative in my opinion).

Interesting features:  it looks like the author is planning to allow you
to put other things into the presentation - such as any Bible verse,
powerpoint presentation, or video.  Cool idea.

Non-existant feature: A feature we really want is during the display of
the presentation, if the song leader decides on a song in the middle of
the service, have some way to throw in another song quickly.

David - as to your comments - I guess I'm of Daniel's opinion currently
- I would also like to focus on the base Asaph application.  In the
future it may be very nice to be able to import/export between the
applications.  Asaph has some really cool features (like the optional
chord display) that would probably be difficult to add to OpenLP, or
implement in a standalone presentation program.

Just my $.02 worth.

-- 
Sandra Capri <sc...@sp...>

Re: [Asaph-developers] Re: [Asaph-users] How to generate presentation for group worship?

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Daniel Azuma wrote:

> An interesting possibility that just came to my attention is to 
> integrate with OpenLP
>    https://sourceforge.net/projects/openlp
> I was just contacted by the developer, who expressed some interest in 
> maybe figuring out how the two projects could work together.
>
> OpenLP is Windows-only at the moment, and since I don't have Windows, 
> I can't evaluate it or get any sense for how far along the project is 
> or what it would take to make Asaph and OpenLP talk to each other.
>
> Daniel

I've just downloaded and run the program.
Basically it seems to use a SQLLite database to store the song lyrics, 
which are plain text with page breaks to indicate different slides.
I couldn't work out how to get it all working though.
The program is written in Delphi currently ... I have attached a screenshot.
He says he has plans to "port this application to C#/C++ or something 
with a good, free, IDE"
It says it has the ability to interface with PowerPoint for 
Presentations ... but I don't have PowerPoint so I can't comment on that.
I wonder whether the route AsaphDB should go is to
1) allow OpenLP/Asaph to import/export songs from each other.
2) allow exporting Asaph songs to HTML or the OpenOffice Presentation 
format. (This shouldn't be too hard).
3) also investigate other options for a standalone presentation program 
(wxpython comes to mind)

I know Daniel is wanting to focus on the base application before paying 
attention to this ; is anyone else keen to be involved with any of the 
above?

David

>
>
> On Mar 11, 2004, at 05:04, David Fraser wrote:
>
>> Seems like the list is here now ... moving over to asaph-developers
>> (Let me know if I missed any discussion...)
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
> Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
> GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
> administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click
> _______________________________________________
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>

[Asaph-developers] Re: [Asaph-users] How to generate presentation for group worship?

[Daniel A. <da...@ka...>]

An interesting possibility that just came to my attention is to 
integrate with OpenLP
    https://sourceforge.net/projects/openlp
I was just contacted by the developer, who expressed some interest in 
maybe figuring out how the two projects could work together.

OpenLP is Windows-only at the moment, and since I don't have Windows, I 
can't evaluate it or get any sense for how far along the project is or 
what it would take to make Asaph and OpenLP talk to each other.

Daniel


On Mar 11, 2004, at 05:04, David Fraser wrote:

> Seems like the list is here now ... moving over to asaph-developers
> (Let me know if I missed any discussion...)

[Asaph-developers] Re: [Asaph-users] How to generate presentation for group worship?

[David F. <da...@sj...>]

Seems like the list is here now ... moving over to asaph-developers
(Let me know if I missed any discussion...)

David Fraser wrote:

> Hi Daniel
>
> I think a development list would be great... I'd like to at least get 
> a simple thing working...
>
> Cheers
> David
>
> Daniel Azuma wrote:
>
>> If you folks are interested in pursuing this yourselves, I'd be happy 
>> to provide whatever support I can, on the file format, on my 
>> classes/interfaces if you want to use them, and so forth. I also have 
>> a whole bunch of ideas on the design and features for a presentation 
>> mechanism.
>>
>> Anyway, if you want to pursue this, let me know, and I can start a 
>> developers mailing list for it (so we don't burden this list with 
>> developer discussion.)
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>> On Mar 09, 2004, at 22:44, David Fraser wrote:
>>
>>> I'm sure Daniel will answer you since he is the real developer!
>>> But it's nice to see someone else wanting to do stuff in Python ...
>>> This is a feature I have been very keen to see as well, although I 
>>> think what is really needed is a presentation-mode program that 
>>> would let you use any songs from the main database if required, but 
>>> would have a shortlist that would be quick to select from ...
>>> The question is what is the best way to quickly develop something 
>>> like this?
>>> One option would be to use Jython, since then all the layout and 
>>> database reading classes from the main app could be used, and we'd 
>>> have Python for quick development...
>>> But I have no experience with Jython.
>>> Otherwise the layout + database classes could be reimplemented in 
>>> Python, or finally (the obvious) the new stuff could just be coded 
>>> in Java...
>>>
>>> If this was only used for projecting the words and not the chords, 
>>> the layout would be much simpler, so the chord layout wouldn't have 
>>> to be done at first.
>>> And since the database stuff is in XML, that should be easy.
>>>
>>> Anyway just throwing around some ideas...
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>> Sandra Capri wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I just downloaded Asaph 0.5.1 a few nights ago, and have been running
>>>> through the menus, as well as the README.html file, and I am very
>>>> impressed with all the excellent features!  I have been playing around
>>>> with creating a similar program (in Python), and came to the 
>>>> realization
>>>> that it is a lot more work than I first thought. I'm thrilled to find
>>>> that someone has done that work for me!
>>>>
>>>> I seem to be unable to figure out how to display the song 
>>>> presentation,
>>>> once it has been setup.  I am imagining that we would enter all of our
>>>> songs into an indexed database, then for a given service, create a
>>>> simple database containing just the songs that we sing that night.  At
>>>> that point, I would have expected to select a menu item that would
>>>> display the first song - words only, covering the whole screen.  
>>>> Then it
>>>> would allow the song leader to go through each song in order (such as
>>>> clicking the mouse button for the next song).  Since we have a
>>>> projector, this is the way we allow the congregation to see the 
>>>> words to
>>>> the song.
>>>>
>>>> How do I do this?  Or is this a future feature?
>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
>> Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
>> GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
>> administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click
>> _______________________________________________
>> Asaph-users mailing list
>> Asa...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/asaph-users
>>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
> Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
> GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
> administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click
> _______________________________________________
> Asaph-users mailing list
> Asa...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/asaph-users
>