Formatting Lyrics field (web interface)

[ajfkeith]

There are a few threads on this topic and I've tried a few things but still don't quite understand how to resolve the following:

- I'm trying to copy online-posted lyrics into a song
- Once I paste the lyrics I want to center-justify them and bold the chorus lines
- All looks good until I save, then typically about half the lines go back to left justification, and in some cases multiple lines concatenate into one
- I've tried to manually re-adjust using different combinations of command-return or shift-return (I'm using a Mac)
- I've also tried copying the lyrics into the TextEdit app and converting the document to plaintext, then pasting into BH

After a number of iterations I finally get it to stick, but I'd surely like to know what the best combination of actions is so I don't have to keep trying different things.

[arlo]

I don't recall a problem with that, but I can try it and see what I find.

You're trying to center all the lyrics, and then bold the choruses?

[ajfkeith]

Arlo,

Pretty much.  I'll walk you through it (with pics!):

1. I copy the lyrics from a web page into TextEdit and convert to plaintext (see pic)
2. I copy that and paste into BH Lyrics field (see pic 2)
3. Then I center justify everything (select all, center justify)
4. I change some font colors to differentiate verse from chorus, etc. (see pic 3)
5. Then I save
6. Typically about half the lyrics go back to left justification (see pic 4)
7. It usually takes me 4 or 5 attempts of this and that before it finally centers everything correctly

Thanks for taking a look.

[arlo]

Okay, I think the problem is in step 3, "select all, center justify." If you do this, the HTML editing plug-in, which was developed by another company, places one centering tag around all the paragraphs, rather than applying a centering tag to each individual paragraph. Then that surrounding tag gets lost when you save. I can see if there's a way to configure that to work differently.

Meanwhile, instead of selecting all and centering, you could click inside the first paragraph (no need to select it all) and click the centering button, then click inside the next paragraph and repeat. That will take a few clicks, but then the centering will be applied at the paragraph level and should stick.

It looks like selecting all to apply a color is fine, because that is always applied at the paragraph level.

[ajfkeith]

Thanks Arlo,

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be that straightforward.  Prior to my first post I was selecting individual paragraphs and aligning them.  After saving they would either go back to left alignment and about half the time they would center but strip out all the carriage returns like this:

"Hey, Jude, don't be afraidYou were made to go out and get herThe minute you let her under your skinThen you begin to make it betterAnd anytime you..."

When this happens the only way out is to put the 'returns' back in and hope it works the next time.

[arlo]

I'll look again and try to reproduce the problem with line breaks getting lost.

[ajfkeith]

Thanks Arlo.  I appreciate your responsiveness although this is merely an annoyance.  The app overall is aces.

[arlo]

I have confirmed this is a bug in the text formatting plug-in, and reported that to its developer. Meanwhile, it's working as expected for me if I center the paragraphs one at a time. In fact, I can even select all but one paragraph and click the center button and it works ... I just can't select the entire text and center it all at once.