While it would be nice to be able to type out the lyrics as you listen to the song, the sad fact of life is that some songs are pretty hard to work out - as anybody who has listened to Cocco's "Blue Bird" will know. And, then there are songs such as Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" that contain so many words it is overwhelming!
The final thing? You might not actually know the words. You might like to record the words to your favourite French / German / Italian / Russian / Japanese (etc) song along with the song itself, either an English translation or - if you are more taken by the way it sounds, the original lyrics (or a transliteration for non-Latin alphabets).
In all of these cases, writing out the lyrics is fraught with difficulties.
There is an easier way. It is called the Internet.
Go Google! Ask it for 'lyrics' to the song you are wanting to store on your MP3 player.
The process of 'importing' the lyrics is to take them from the file that you downloaded (which is usually either a text file or an HTML document) and bring it into the WaxLyrical software so that you can then match them to the song.
Beginning the import
If you have modified, unsaved, lyrics, you will see the following message when you click on the Import button:
It is very important to realise that imported lyrics will replace everything that you may have previously written for this song.
It is not possible to 'merge' in lyrics.
Once you choose the Yes response, you will then be asked to select a file. You can import from plain ASCII text files (.txt) and also web HTML documents (.htm or .html).
Importing text files
Text files are loaded and filtered. The filtering means that unusual characters (such as tabs) are either removed or replaced with spaces. It also means that the line termination is handled by WaxLyrical, so files may be terminated in DOS/Windows style (otherwise known as "CRLF") or RISC OS/Linux/etc style (otherwise known as "LF-only").
Don't worry if these terms are too technical for you. Just rest assured that your text file will probably be loaded okay wherever it came from.
The only thing is, it must be written in the Latin alphabet - you can't expect WaxLyrical to load and display ideograms (such as ) any more than you can expect your MP3 player to be able to cope with it!
Importing HTML documents
HTML documents are passed through a simple parser, which works as follows:
Nothing is imported until the "<body>"
tag has been encountered.
"<br>" is replaced with a line break,
"<p>" with line break followed by a
blank line.
All other tags are ignored.
Anything between comments ("<!-" and
"->") is unconditionally skipped.
The following character entities are recognised -
<,
>,
", and
&.
All other entities are inserted into the file in curly braces, like this:
"{é}".
At this time, the <pre>...</pre> sequence is not recognised, but this may be added if it turns out that numerous lyrics websites make use of it.
Please note that WaxLyrical has little 'protection' for bogus or broken mark-up. By this I do not mean that WaxLyrical will crash - that should not happen - however you may experience odd results such as chunks missing from imported files, or nothing at all being imported.
I am happy to accept bug reports relating to errors in the HTML parsing, however please note that I will not feel obligated to bend my parser to fit any website that uses non-conforming HTML. Oh yes, the first thing I will do with any HTML files you send me is run an sgmls on it - as I want to know that I am chasing problems in my parser's own limitations, and not those in badly created websites.
Importing other files and documents
WaxLyrical is not natively able to import other sorts of file - such as Word documents or RTF files.
If you try to open such files with WaxLyrical, you will be asked if you wish to import the data as a text file. If you choose to do so, then WaxLyrical will import up to 16K of data. In the case of binary documents (Word, OvationPro, etc) this is likely to be mostly gibberish but you may be able to extract what you are looking for. In the case of PDF documents, the data is usually compressed so there is little point looking.
The verification stage
You may wish to tidy up the lyrics, perhaps to insert more linebreaks if the songs contain lengthy lines that you would prefer to be shown in a sequence and not arbitrarily scrolled by the MP3 player.
For example, in the Evananescence song referred to elsewhere in the documentation, there is a line that goes: All I wanted to say was "I love you and I'm not afraid".
Which you may feel would look better on the MP3 player's small display as: All I wanted to say
was "I love you and
I'm not afraid".
Remember that the MP3 player may have a limit on the number of lines that can be loaded.
In the case of HTML imported documents, some degree of tidying up is almost obligatory.
You will see a little text editor, as follows:
The message informs you of what you should do next. The text editor behaves like a very stripped-down copy of Notepad and, essentially, each line in the editor will be a line of lyric - including blank lines.
Edit it until you are happy. You can resize the window if you would like to see more at once.
Transferring this to the lyrics editor
When you are happy with the way the lyrics look, then click on the Update lyrics button. This will prompt you with the following message:
Once you answer Yes, any existing lyrics will be discarded and the information in this verification editor will be transferred to the lyrics editor. You should then match up the lyrics to the song.
Please note that the lyrics file is not saved until you click on the Save button in the lyrics editor. Up until that point, you can still change your mind...
From observation, the MP3 player (specifically the MP-FUB34) only appears to allocate 'space' for seventy lines of lyrics.
Therefore, if you would be transferring more than seventy lines to the lyrics editor, you will be warned of this and given the choice of editing the text in the verification window to reduce the line count (answer Yes), or carrying on and transferring the lines to the lyrics editor (answer No).
And if you change your mind?
Simply close the window!
You will be prompted with this message:
If you reply Yes, all the imported stuff will be discarded and the lyrics editor will re-open with the old lyrics (if any) intact.
) any more than you can expect your MP3 player to be able to cope with it!
