@(#)$Id: relnotes.txt,v 1.18 2002/04/26 00:55:26 christopher Exp $

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			   R E L E A S E   N O T E S
                                   
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	         LaTeX Songbook Style, Version 4.0, 2002/04/25
                                   
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		   Copyright (c) 1992--2002 Christopher Rath
			     All rights reserved.

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		    Christopher Rath <christopher@rath.ca>

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Legal Stuff:

    This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at
    your option) any later version.

    This package is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
    ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
    FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU Lesser General Public
    License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
    along with this library; if not, I'll be glad to provide one.


Apology:

    This change brings a number of significant changes to the songbook style; a
    few of them incompatible with previous versions.  I haven't lightly
    undertaken incompatible changes: I maintain a 300+ songs in a 400+ page
    songbook and such changes cause me songbook maintenance work too.

    As I have learned more about TeX and LaTeX, and also as I have attempted to
    completely conform to the new LaTeX2e practices, I have discovered that
    some of how the songbook style had previously been implemented was very
    poor.  Whereever possible I have implemented new functions/macros to
    correct past sins, leaving the old macros in place so that old songbooks
    would not require reformatting when the new songbook version was being
    released.

    Despite the small amount of work this release will create if you choose to
    adopt it, I truly hope you find it useful.

Changes in Release 4.0:

    * the Songbook style has now almost completed its transition to
      LaTeX2e: there is now a single .sty file which accepts options in order
      to invoke the different songbook styles.  The Songbook style now also
      accepts and produces reasonable output for all of LaTeX2e's standard
      papersize options.  The last remaining bit of work to be done is to
      change the way Songbook's font commands are implemented; the
      \DeclareTextFontCommand command should be used instead of the current
      method
 
    * the song title block (where the title, copyright info., etc.  are listed)
      has been changed, use of the \centerline macro has been replaced with a
      center environment.  This change is not compatible with previous versions
      of songbook.sty and requires you to re-verify all page breaks (mostly in
      words only mode).  The reason for making the change is to allow long song
      titles to line-wrap (instead of hanging off the edge of the page), and
      this means that the definition of the following macros has been changed:
      \STitle, \CpyRt, \WAndM, and \ScriptRef.  The centering of these lines is
      now also done within a center environment; in each the centering may now
      be disabled by adding an optional first parameter (any value except `Y')
 
    * since the change to the title block invalidated pagination of the
      previous version I have taken the opportunity to fine tune the value of
      \SpaceAfterSong, a value that is used primarily in wordsonly mode: the
      inter-song gap has been decreased to \vspace{0ex plus10ex minus3ex}
      (from \vspace{0ex plus15ex minus0ex})
 
    * a new space command, \SpaceAfterTitleBlk, has been created to allow the
      space between a song's title block and its versicles to be tuned by the
      user; this was a previously hardcoded value 

    * a bug in the SBBracket environment has been corrected: long lines were
      not always exhibiting their hanging indentation
 
    * the style now supports all of LaTeX2e's standard papersizes.  While the
      output will not be ideal for all papersizes, it does produce sane and
      usable results for all papersizes.  I would be most appreciative if
      European users would send me page layout corrections for the A4, A5, and
      B5 sizes
 
    * added a new environment, SBOpGroup (i.e., ``an open group''), serves to
      group the lines of a verse or chorus together, but not indent or label
      them.  Use of this environment allows for better control of font changes,
      proper indentation of wrapped lines, and automatic spacing of open groups
      which follow one another.  I strongly suggest that SBOpGroup be used to
      enclose any set of lines which don't otherwise end up in one of the
      songbook environments when typsetting with this package
 
    * chordbk mode now supports one variation: compactsong.  In
      compactsong mode the songs are laid out in two columns; note that the
      song title block spans the two columns.  The songs are set in a smaller
      typeface to allow them to fit into the smaller space two column mode
      supplies.  This mode should be considered experimental for the present
      time
 
    * conditionals.sty has been updated with more current information and
      macros, as supplied by Donald Arseneau
 
    * all of the verse-like environments now have their \baselineskip amount
      expressly calculated just prior to laying out their lines.  This has been
      done in order to overcome the problem all previous versions of the
      songbook style had which was that linespacing differed based upon whether
      a particular line contained chords.  Now all lines are spaced the same,
      regardless of whether they contain a chord.  I consider the previous
      behaviour---where linespacing varied---to be a bug.  If you really must
      retain the old behaviour this can be done by inserting the following code
      into the preamble of your document:
          \renewcommand{\sbSetsbBaselineSkipAmt}
              {\setlength{\sbBaselineSkipAmt} {\baselineskip}}
 
    * the \SBDefaultFont command no longer needs to be specified at the top
      of each songbook
 
    * fixed a bug that was inhibiting the Songbook style from detecting blank
      and empty song parameters

    * the commands which had previously been listed as deprecated (i.e., to be
      removed in some future release) have all been removed
 
    * the following commands have been moved from the ``Obsolete Macros''
      section into ``Deprecated Macros'' section and will be removed in the
      next major release of the Songbook style: \False, \True,
      \ChordBk, \Overhead, \SongEject, \WordBk, and \WordsOnly

    * the spacing around the SBBracket environment has been tuned}:
      \SpaceAfterSBBracket has been increased, and a new \SpaceBeforeSBBracket
      amount has been added

    * added missing space around the SBBracket* environment; using
      \SpaceBeforeSBBracket and \SpaceAfterSBBracket

    * removed unused length, \SBBracketHangAmt

    * added a new \LeftMarginSBBracket length and rewrote the part of the
      SBBracket environment that creates the tag and left indents the versicle.
      The SBBracket environment now left aligns its words with those of the
      SBVerse and SBChorus versicles.


chordbk, wordbk, overhead:

    These styles have been used to produce the songbooks for our church.  We
    needed to produce books that our song-leaders could use, as well as books
    for use in the congregation; so, these styles were written.

    The `chordbk' option is used to print a songbook with words and chords, and
    it also supports a `compactsong' option which lays out the song in two
    columns per page instead of one (the `wordbk' and `overhead' options do not
    support compactsong mode at present).  The `wordbk' option is used to print
    a words-only songbook.  The `overhead' option is used to print overhead
    transparencies.  They all use the same LaTeX input file.  `Wordbk' and
    `overhead' modes simply ignore all of the chord information.


songbook.dtx:

    This is both the formal documentation for the Songbook style as well as
    its source code.  A .pdf file is provided, as well as the .tex file.


sample-sb.tex:

    This is a sample songbook.  This file is used to produce the sample???.dvi
    files included with this package.  To regenerate the .dvi files, simply
    uncomment the appropriate \document line and re-LaTeX the file.


Manifest:

    conditionals.sty    Donald Arseneau's conditional tests.
    contrib/		Directory containing user contributed utilities.
    LesserGPL.txt       Terms & conditions under which the style is 
			distributed.
    mksbkdx		A shell script to make the index by song key.
    mksbtdx             A shell script to make the index by song title.
    relnotes.txt        The songbook package release notes (this file).
    sample-sb.tex       A sample songbook.
    sampleCBK.pdf       Sample-sb.tex formatted using chordbk.sty.
    sampleKdx.pdf       The sample key index run through LaTeX.
    sampleKdx.tex       Key index for the sample songbook.
    sampleOH.pdf        Sample-sb.tex formatted using overhead.sty.
    sampleTdx.pdf       The sample title index run through LaTeX.
    sampleTdx.tex       Title index for the sample songbook.
    sampleToc.pdf       The sample TOC run through LaTeX.
    sampleToc.tex       TOC for the sample songbook.
    sampleWBK.pdf       Sample-sb.tex formatted using wordbk.sty.
    songbook.pdf        The \Songbook's documentation.
    songbook.ist        The songbook package makeindex .ist file.
    songbook.dtx        The base style file.
    songbook.ins	Install script to create .sty from .dtx.


Support:

    Please email me for help using the files.  Please let me know about any
    bugs and problems.

    There is a SongBook Style home page.  Its URL is:

	http://www.rath.ca/Misc/Songbook/

    I will make bug fixes, other user's contributed macros and scripts, and the
    latest release of the software available on this web server.


    Christopher Rath        christopher@rath.ca        (613) 824-4584
    1371 Major Rd.
    Ottawa, ON
    Canada   K1E 1H3




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