[Sticky] How To Align Text For TAB or Chords

How to align text for TAB, etc.

1. You can enter text, directly into the GN text box - go to 3.3

2. Input to Word Processor.
If you want to input the text, using Word, Wordperfect, OpenOffice, or similar, you need to switch the character set to "Courier". You can do this before entering any text, as all following characters will assume that attribute. Once you've done that, you can proceed as for the text editor - 3.1.

3. Input to text editor.
If you use a text editor, such as Windows Notepad, Notepad++ (freeware), Ultraedit, or similar, you can enter all your text and it will be, automatically, aligned for you. This is because, in text editors, each character has the same amount of space allocated as every other character. Allow the program to wrap text at the end of a line, do NOT change line, using the "Enter" key - this is only for going to a new paragraph.

Example:
"I wrote all of this, using Notepad++. This text has been deliberately split,
using the "Enter" key."
"Had I allowed the program to decide where to split the line I would get a far better usage of space, within the text area of the BB."

3.1. To take the text, from the editor, to GN, mark all of the text - you can do this using "Ctrl+A" - and copy the text (Ctrl+C) to the clipboard.

3.2. Go to the text box of GN and click on the place that you want to paste the text, to give the text box the focus and to position the cursor. Now, paste the text, using "Ctrl+V".

3.3 The text is in the box, but, by default, in a variable font, so you need to replace this with a fixed-pitch font, such as courier (even though you may have entered it, into a processor/editor, using a fixed-width font). The simplest way is to use the "code" option. GN offers two slightly different ways to do this.

The first, and least elegant, is to click on the "code" button. This will add the opening "code" tag - the word "code" surrounded by square brackets "[" & "]" - but it will be put at the end of the text, not where the cursor is standing, so you'll have to manually move it to the start position of the text to "code". To close off the "code" block, you'll need to use the "end-code" tag ("/code", surrounded by square brackets "[" & "]"). GN will also put this tag at the end of the text (totally ignoring whwere the cursor is standing), so you'll, again, have to move it to the end of the "code" block.

The more elegant way, is to mark all of the text, that is to be enclosed by the "code" tag, and click on the "code" button. Both the opening and closing tags will be, simultaneously, added at the right place (not at the end of all the text).

I'll give you a short example, but enclose the "code" tags in curly brackets ("(" & ")"), instead of square ones, to make them visible:

Here's a couple of lines, from "Imagine" in the Easy Songs Forum:

C Cmaj7 F
Imagine there's no heaven,
C Cmaj7 F
It's easy if you try.

As you can see, the chords, scrunch up to one end of the line, even though the required number of spaces have been entered into the text. By adding the code tags, but changing nothing else:
(code)C Cmaj7 F
Imagine there's no heaven,
C Cmaj7 F
It's easy if you try.(/code)

everything now comes out correctly
C Cmaj7 F
Imagine there's no heaven,
C Cmaj7 F
It's easy if you try.

Here's another example, from "Walk Don't Run"

A F E
E:--------------------- -------------------
B:--------------------- ------------1----0-
G:--------------------- ------0--2---------
D:------------0--2--3-- -(3)---------------
A:--0--2--3------------ -------------------
E:--------------------- -------------------

(code) A F E
E:--------------------- -------------------
B:--------------------- ------------1----0-
G:--------------------- ------0--2---------
D:------------0--2--3-- -(3)---------------
A:--0--2--3------------ -------------------
E:--------------------- ------------------- (/code)
A F E
E:--------------------- -------------------
B:--------------------- ------------1----0-
G:--------------------- ------0--2---------
D:------------0--2--3-- -(3)---------------
A:--0--2--3------------ -------------------
E:--------------------- -------------------

That's all there is to it, folks.