TOPIC

DETAIL

Chord Charting issues

Error message during Chord insertion:

Some users have received an error message when attempting to insert Chords.  Others have been able to insert Chords, but they appear as "thumbnails" (a reduced version of the bitmap with the name of the .bmp file displayed beneath it).  We have found that both of these issues are related to a Microsoft browser bug and can be reproduced in MS Wordpad. The good news is that they are commonly resolved with a minor registry tweak.  We have created a file that will perform this tweak easily and safely.

From the Lyricist Help Menu, select the option to “Reset Bitmap Association”  If this does not work, please try step below:
Click here to download Paint.reg to your desktop or another folder and double-click it.  Answer Yes to the prompt.
Chord insertion should now work properly. If it does not, contact VSS Technical Support by emailing support@virtualstudiosystems.com.

Chord alignment during printing:

Our Rich-Text Format window uses your computer's font metrics to display and print your lyrics. Font metrics are a set of values Windows uses to determine how big to make the letters, how far apart to space them, etc. For most fonts, there is a slight difference between the display metrics (the values used to display text on your screen) and the print metrics (the values used to print the text on your printer). This difference can cause a minor misalignment between your lyrics and chords when printing. Generally speaking, the further right the chords are placed, the more noticeable the misalignment.

To work around this Windows issue, we recommend four possible options:

1. Use a non-proportional font (on lyric and chord lines).  Non-proportional fonts do not differ in their print and display metrics, and therefore are not subject to this phenomenon.  Common examples of such fonts are Courier, Andale Mono, Letter Gothic, Lucida Console, MS Gothic, and MS LineDraw.  (Note: This is the only method that will completely eliminate the issue; the following options will simply minimize the effect.)
2. When inserting spaces between chord symbols, use tabs (rather than spaces) as much as possible.
3. Break up long lines into smaller ones where possible.
4. Print a test page of your lyrics and check the chord alignment. Adjust the placement of your chords where necessary.

Email error

Some users have seen the following error message when attempting to use Lyricist's email feature: "Unable to load mail system support."  This happens because the user's email program is not set as the default MAPI client.

Different programs will have different ways of setting them as the MAPI default.  Consult your email program's documentation.  In Outlook Express, go to Tools > Options on the menu bar, and select the General tab.  Check the box that reads Make Outlook Express my default simple MAPI client.

Help issues

If you are unable to launch the Lyricist Help file, it may be due to the version of Internet Explorer you are running.  HTML Help requires that IE 4.0 or higher be installed on your machine.  If it is not, you may have difficulty running the Help system.  Go to Microsoft's IE download page and upgrade your installation of Internet Explorer.

If upgrading to IE4+ does not fix the problem, or if you are already running a current version of IE, you are probably missing certain Windows files that allow you to run HTML Help files.  Click here to download the patch file.  Save it to your desktop and double-click it.  This will automatically install and register the files you need to run HTML Help files.

Users may experience errors and other problems when attempting to print multiple pages from the Help file.  This is a known issue with the Microsoft HTML Help Viewer and is symptomatic of all .chm files. This issue has been reported to Microsoft.

There are two possible solutions.  One is to print one topic at a time.  The errors appear to occur only when printing multiple topics. The other solution is to download the current version of the Lyricist documentation (.pdf) and print it out.