It's been a while since I've had use for Chordpro, so my main motivation for this project has dried up.
Joseph Turner has made a fork at https://git.sr.ht/~breatheoutbreathein/chordpro-mode.el/ with the idea of fixing some of the issues here, more actively maintaining this, and perhaps even adding more features, I don't know. I recommend that you take a look at it if you are interested in this mode.
This is an emacs major mode, derived from text-mode, for editing files in the Chordpro format (see, for example, http://www.vromans.org/johan/projects/Chordii/).
It is currently somewhat crude, but it does simplify a few things and I do intend to keep adding any refinements that I find useful in my work with Chordpro files. The font-lock is based off a previously existing chordpro mode, but this provides more operations.
I'm still developing and experimenting with this, so as I go along I might decide that different mouse or keybindings work better and will probably provide more functionality as I see things that will make the work that I do easier. There are some fairly obvious things left to do and I'll add them I need them. If you have any ideas feel free to create an issue (or even better do it and send a pull request).
Copy chordpro-mode.el into somewhere in your emacs load path (I put it in ~/.emacs.d).
Then put something like this into your .emacs file (I use the .pro extension for such files):
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.pro$" . chordpro-mode) auto-mode-alist))
(autoload 'chordpro-mode "chordpro-mode")
Now when you visit a .pro file you should automatically get chordpro-mode. The file will automatically be saved in latin-1 encoding (you can change this by setting the chordpro-file-encoding variable in your .emacs, but you probably shouldn't as Chordii currently expects latin-1 encoded files).
Some of the functions use dropdown-list.el, which can be installed with package-list-packages in modern emacs. If you don't have this installed they'll just do nothing.
Most of the keyboard commands use the Ctrl-c prefix.
- Ctrl-c i : Insert a chord at the point. You'll be prompted for the chord name in the minibuffer. The brackets will automatically be inserted, space trimmed, and the chord capitalized.
- Ctrl-c l : Insert a chord at the point, chosen from a dropdown list of chords already in the document.
- Ctrl-c w : Kills the current chord. The current chord is one containing the point - because of the way emacs works this means that this command doesn't do what you want if the cursor is on the opening [ of a chord, only if it is between that and the closing ], inclusive. But there's another command for that.
- Ctrl-c z : Kills the next chord. Finds the next chord after the point and kills it. This one works if you are on the opening [, or if you are between chords.
- Ctrl-c r : Replace the current chord with one chosen from a dropdown list of chords already in the document.
- Ctrl-c c : Copy the current chord
- Ctrl-c x : Copy the next chord
- Ctrl-Meta-n : Move current chord forward PREFIX chars.
- Ctrl-Meta-p : Move current chord backward PREFIX chars
- Ctrl-c h : Insert a chordpro comment
- Ctrl-c h : Insert a chordpro chorus
- Ctrl-c t : Insert a chordpro title
- Ctrl-c s : Insert a chordpro subtitle
Some of the commands can be invoked with the mouse. I still haven't decided what I think the best way to go is, but these are some starting experiments. All of them have corresponding keyboard commands (whether specific to this mode or standard emacs commands).
- Ctrl-mouse-1 : Kills current chord
- Ctrl-mouse-2 : Insert a chord at the point, chosen from a dropdown list of chords already in the document. Note that unfortunately as currently implemented the mouse click can only bring up the menu - you still need to use the keyboard to perform the selection.
- Ctrl-mouse-3 : Kills next chord
- Shift-mouse-1 : Copies current chord
- Shift-mouse-2 : Insert chord
- Shift-mouse-3 : Copies next chord