Formatting problems when copying and pasting in lyrics

[djwiltsh]

I'm having issues copying and pasting in lyrics (with chords on one line and words on the next) to the "lyrics" box on the bandhelper website. I'm using a Windows PC and Chrome as the web browser. Here are the results:

File created in MS Word. Courier new, font size 10: Extra line breaks are created, so I have extra blank lines throughout

File created in notepad: No extra line breaks, but chords are not spaced properly, just appearing at the start of each "chords" line. When I copy back into a text editor, it looks like the bandhelper HTML entry box has removed all of the "space" characters

File created in notepad++ (tried ANSI, UTF, Windows, Unix formats): Same as notepad

File created in Google Docs: As per MS Word - extra line breaks

How can I copy and paste in plain text files so that the spaces between chords are maintained, keeping them aligned with the words beneath, and with no extra line breaks?

As a suggestion, it might help if the lyrics/chords entry boxes could be resized horizontally as well as vertically, to accommodate longer lines.

I have attached the plain text version of my test file for reference.

[arlo]

I'm not sure what you're asking regarding line breaks. Regarding chord alignment using spaces, you would need to set Settings > Appearance > Lyrics Font to Monospace to maintain alignment.

If this doesn't answer your question, please show an example of what result you are getting and explain what result you want to get instead.

[djwiltsh]

Hi Arlo

Many thanks for the quick response. I can confirm that everything is set to Monospace, both on the website and in the app.

Here as an example. Original text (as attached to my first post):

1                                                           4
  You bought my life with the blood that You shed on the cross
When You died for the sins of men
        5                                     1
And You let out a cry crucified now alive in me
1                                                       4
  These hands are Yours, teach them to serve as You please
And I'll reach out desperate to see
         5                                             1
All the greatness of God may my soul rest assured in You

PRE-CHORUS
4                       5     4                       5
  And I'll never be the same,    no I'll never be the same

CHORUS
           1              4                 1             4
Cause I know that You're alive, You came to fix my broken life
        1          4             6m          4
And I sing to glorify, Your holy Name, Jesus Christ

Here's the output of the "lyrics" box when I paste this into the "add song" screen:

1 4
You bought my life with the blood that You shed on the cross
When You died for the sins of men
5 1
And You let out a cry crucified now alive in me
1 4
These hands are Yours, teach them to serve as You please
And I'll reach out desperate to see
5 1
All the greatness of God may my soul rest assured in You

PRE-CHORUS
4 5 4 5
And I'll never be the same, no I'll never be the same

CHORUS
1 4 1 4
Cause I know that You're alive, You came to fix my broken life
1 4 6m 4
And I sing to glorify, Your holy Name, Jesus Christ

So it appears that the "lyrics" input box is removing a lot of the spaces between chords.

Thanks

[arlo]

Okay, the problem with the spaces is that normally in HTML, which BandHelper uses for text formatting, a series of spaces is collapsed into one space. I added functionality to override that when typing into the editor, but it doesn't handle content pasted into the editor. I should be able to make that work and plan to make some updates on the web editor later this week.

For the line breaks, please post an example of a Word file that exhibits the problem.

[djwiltsh]

Brilliant, thanks.

I'm not too worried about the line breaks issue because I tend to copy in from plain text notepad files in any case, just to be sure that Word isn't adding any extraneous formatting! I was just testing it with Word to see if it made any difference to the spacing issue really.

Dan

[arlo]

I just updated the song edit pages to prevent a series of consecutive spaces from being collapsed into one space, and to allow changing the width of the text editors.

[djwiltsh]

Seems to be working much better, thanks very much!

That's what I call customer service!

Dan

[jamkeys]

Hi-  I am having a similar issue.  Cut and paste from text editor or MS word results in double spacing as does directly typing lyrics into the web interface.... a Enter results in a double space.  The only way I can get single spaced lyrics on web interface is to cut and paste from a web page.  Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Adam

[arlo]

Pressing Enter makes a paragraph break, which normally has space after it. If you want to go from one line to the next without any space between, you can press Shift-Enter. This is how most web editors and word processors work, although it is possible to configure a word processor to have no space between paragraphs, which might be what you're seeing in your Word file.

[jamkeys]

Shift-enter!  Thanks.
I was able to cut and paste my word text into Text Wrangler and then into the web interface to get rid of the double spaces.  Thanks again.

[arlo]

In the website update I published today, the Lyrics, Chords and Notes editing fields insert line breaks (single-space) instead of paragraph breaks (double-space) when pressing Enter, to match the behavior of the apps.

The complete list of changes is here:

http://www.bandhelper.com/support/release_notes.html