[DTownSMR]

Good to know that there is an official maintainer of the ChordPro format and great that you take part in the discussions that are going on in the MS forum.

I'll second the thanks that you have taken over ownership and for your participation here.

As the MobileSheetsPro documentation states:

The chord pro specification can be found at the following website:
http://www.vromans.org/johan/projects/Chordii/chordpro/

I am the current maintainer of the original Chord program (now called Chordii) and the ChordPro specification.

Note that I do not blame *any* implementation for inventing its own directives, that's just the way it is. However, if it is possible to adhere (or stay close)  to the standard, why not do so?

IMHO, if a specification is to survive it needs to be alive. I don't think it's realistic to expect a specification to be static and have folks conform. Things are changing so fast these days. There needs to be a process to manage specification changes. Take for instance the {comment_italic} directive, by your own admission it's lacking in today's environment. So change it. Mark it as a deprecated directive and create a more meaningful one. Develop some standards on how folks should implement both the generation & the digestion of the format.

Perhaps you already have something in place but I suggest that a community of the major consumers of the specification the more likely you'll have a standard and less proprietary directives. The more that participate the better. I know the onSong app has a number of what I would consider highly useful directives. I think an active community would do wonders for the momentum of the specification. Probably a developers mailing list and/or forum on sourceforge or github or something. A place to share files & ideas. 

Just a thought.