Chord Provider
A ChordPro viewer, editor and PDF exporter for macOS
Chord Provider is written in SwiftUI and needs macOS Sonoma.
There are many ChordPro parsers in this world, however, almost none are really native in the Apple world.
I mean, in the macOS world, it is often an afterthought... Not for me. I'm mac user only and I don't use iStuff.
SwiftUI is great and fun, however, on the mac... Not always. Chord Provider has awful hacks to deal with a SwiftUI DocumentGroup Scene For years. While I love my mac, in Cupertino it has not the highest priority...
Also, lockdown goes further and further on macOS. Theoretically for a good reason but in practise a little bit less. I have no intension to bring Chord Provider to the Apple Store but I also can't provide a compiled binary here on GitHub because it is not notarised and signed by the almighty gatekeeper. Well, the source is free!
The icon
A Telecaster shape, of course! In mid 2016 I felt in love with a guitar. An 'Olympic White'. That is the color of the shape. The background is a suitable modification of her 'plate'.
What can Chord Provider do?
- It will view and/or edit ChordPro files.
- It can export a whole folder with ChordPro files to a PDF with a Table of Contents.
- It has an editor that highlights your chords and directives with colors you can change in the settings and you can edit a directive by double-clicking on it.
- It recognise most of the ChordPro directives, but not all.
- It can show diagrams for the guitar, guitalele and ukulele.
- You can click on a chord diagram and it will open a Sheet with all known versions.
- It can transpose a song; however, only in the View. The document will not be changed and that's on purpose.
- You can 'define' a Capo but that will not change any notes in the document; again on purpose.
- It can export your song to a PDF document.
- It can play chords with MIDI with a guitar instrument that you can select in the settings. Note: This does not work in a simulator.
- It can play audio songs when stored next to the ChordPro file when defined with
{musicpath: file-name.m4a}and when a music folder is selected (sandbox restriction). - Full 'left-handed' chords support.
- It has a 'Song List' Window for your songs if you select a folder.
- It has a 'quicklook' plugin for ChordPro files. Select a song in the
Finderand pressspace - It makes thumbnails for your ChordPro files.
- It has a fancier editor with linenumbers and you can edit a directive by double-clicking on it.
Limitations
Some other guitar applications claim the ownership of ChordPro files and then the quicklook does not work anymore. Chord Provider does not own them; nobody should...
Not all chords in the database are correct; especially the more complicated chords. I wrote Chords Database for macOS and iPadOS to view and alter the database with all known chords. Feel free to contribute!
Documentation
The source code is very well documented with Jazzy; including the SwiftlyChordUtilities package that is an essential part of Chord Provider.
SwiftUI previews
I don't use it so there a no #preview macro for any of my Views
TODO
- Make it translatable; now it is only in English
- Use different chord notations for e.g. German (CDEFGAH)
Both are not high on my list, however a PR is welcome!
Thanks
Stole code (and ideas) from:
How to compile
Xcode 15 is required.
- Clone the project.
- Change the signing certificate to your own.
- Build and run!