[madoues]

Much thanks for your reply!

You know what? I think just erasing all the {Key:#} (edit: I meant the {capo:#}) directives in all the chopro files is my best solution.
This can be done easily in one shot with a find/replace program.

To be honest, I don't really see the use for it. It's just as easy to use the transpose function in MS,
since MS remembers the key after you have transposed it.

The only thing that could improve on this and I have mentioned it in the past,
is to have MS remember the key transpositions for songs in each setlist.
So if you play a song in one key with one group and the same song in another key with a different ensemble,
MS would always show you the song in the correct key every time since it would be a different setlist.

I have this situation happen to me on a fairly regular basis.
To compensate, I currently add annotations on the top of the chart for each ensemble so I don't forget,
and use the transpose function in MS every time. It's a workaround that is fairly easy to do.

Dan

[jlgtx]

If you typed it up with mismatched {key} directive and chords, I'm actually not sure how MS processes that. I would probably bow to my OCD muse by standardizing the original CP and re-importing it, to save myself confusion down the road.

I've made myself curious. Mike, if MS imports a CP that, for example, was typed using D chords, but has a {key: E} directive, how does it handle this? Does the {key} directive trump the actual chords in the file, or vice-versa?

[jlgtx]

The only thing that could improve on this and I have mentioned it in the past,
is to have MS remember the key transpositions for songs in each setlist.
So if you play a song in one key with one group and the same song in another key with a different ensemble,
MS would always show you the song in the correct key every time since it would be a different setlist.

I've noticed this too. MS stores the transposition or capo setting with the song rather than within the setlist, which usually makes the most sense...but there have been times when I've wanted to, for example, change keys in the middle of a song, so I wanted to add that song's ChordPro to a setlist twice, and be able to capo (or transpose) each one differently. Or I wanted to use two different transpositions to accommodate two different instruments, and didn't want the musicians to have to fiddle with the transpose/capo settings during the set (we use a set of shared tablets as the majority of our musicians don't have their own, or at least not one large enough for practical sheet music display).

Maybe the feature request, if there's enough demand for it, would be the ability to add setlist-level transposition/capo settings, just as you can add setlist-level and song-level notes. The same logic would apply: when in the setlist, the setlist-level settings are used instead of the song-level settings.

[madoues]

I've made myself curious. Mike, if MS imports a CP that, for example, was typed using D chords, but has a {key: E} directive, how does it handle this? Does the {key} directive trump the actual chords in the file, or vice-versa?

Yes, that is a good one. It will display the chart in the key of D but if you want to change keys,
the pop up window to change keys says it is actually in E. 
So if you want to play down 1 full step to C for example, you have to set to the transpose function in D.
I believe this is how it works. It can become confusing, especially if you have minor key directive.
That is also one of the reasons I may remove all my minor key directives and just put the corresponding major key.
Now, say you have a {Capo:#} directive on top of this, that one is a doosy.  

However, MS can't be responsible for correcting for mistakes in pro files,
after all, some songs don't necessarily start or end in the same chord as the key directive.
I prefer it this way, just make sure the pro files are correct.

my 2 cents...
Dan

[jlgtx]

However, MS can't be responsible for correcting for mistakes in pro files,
after all, some songs don't necessarily start or end in the same chord as the key directive.
I prefer it this way, just make sure the pro files are correct.

And therein lies the key (ha!). The ChordPro format reminds me very much of the early days of HTML, when you could hand-code pretty much whatever you wanted, but if you didn't pay close attention to the standard, your page might look very different in different browsers. At first glance, ChordPro seems somewhat "loosey-goosey" in terms of what you can do with the formatting; e.g. "Well, the song is actually in E, but I've already transposed the chords into D so I'll embed those in the lyrics, but I'll put {key: E} at the top to remind me of the original key, and oh yeah I should add {capo:2} to remind myself to use a capo," makes sense from a certain standpoint but is incorrect according to the standard.

In my own usage, I have long been embedding "pipe" symbols [|] to denote measure downbeats, and some ChordPro display apps have not liked that at all. I just now looked it up, and it turns out the standard calls for an asterisk [*|] for non-chord markings to be formatted as chords:
https://www.chordpro.org/chordpro/chordpro-chords/
Looks like I need to do some global search-and-replace on a whole bunch of files!

[madoues]

You are exactly right, jlgtx.

I don't come here all that often nowadays and don't always realize the changes have been made,
more so with the chordpro website. I am in the process of revamping all MS libraries which is why I visited recently.
Have been using MS for many years now, and MS along with Musescore are now at the center of my musical life.
That is saying a lot about these two great programs; couldn't do without them.

I did know about the asterisk [*text] and have been using it.
However, I also use [!] for punches and [/] for stops with no asterisk and MS handles this no problem.
The only other program I use for chordpro is Songpress to initially adapt text files to chordpro format.
It is a little bit quicker and I don't even use the preview screen, just the editing screen.

Dan