Standalone tool and Java library for guitar chords representation, manipulation and presentation.
XChords converts XML guitar chord definitions to SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) images and then further to JPEG/PNG/TIFF/PDF/HTML documents. Project includes XML Schema and/or DTD. It uses XSLT as the main engine (XML->XSLT->SVG).
There is also a possibility to generate just plain text chord information ( something like C:032010 ).
List of companion projects:
Command line tool can be run with (requirements: JRE/JDK and ant):
ant svg -Dparam.archive=basic
It looks for chord library basic (bundled) and transforms all chords there into SVG files.
Java classes can be used to model guitar chords in your application, with dynamic transformation into String with SVG content. It can be further displayed with your favorite SVG library. I successfully used SVG Salamander library, when I was embedding XChords into the RoboTarPC project.
Prepare chord definition
<chord id="basic-C">
<name>C</name>
<position base="1">
<string name="a" fret="3"/>
<string name="d" fret="2"/>
<string name="b" fret="1"/>
</position>
</chord>
XChords XSL will transform it to this SVG (screenshot):
<chord id="basic-C">
<name>C</name>
<position base="1">
<string name="a" fret="3" finger="3"/>
<string name="d" fret="2" finger="2"/>
<string name="b" fret="1" finger="1"/>
</position>
</chord>
<chord id="basic-D">
<name>D</name>
<position base="1">
<string name="e6" state="no"/>
<string name="g" fret="2" finger="1"/>
<string name="b" fret="3" finger="3"/>
<string name="e1" fret="2" finger="2"/>
</position>
</chord>
<chord id="basic-A7">
<name>A7</name>
<position base="1">
<string name="d" fret="2" finger="1"/>
<string name="b" fret="2" finger="3"/>
<string name="e1" fret="3" state="opt"/>
</position>
</chord>
<chord id="basic-F">
<name>F</name>
<position base="1">
<barre low="e6" high="e1" fret="1" finger="1"/>
<string name="a" fret="3" finger="3"/>
<string name="d" fret="3" finger="4"/>
<s
61FE
tring name="g" fret="2" finger="2"/>
</position>
</chord>
With or without fingers:
The position element finally reveals its role.
<chord id="basic-G">
<name>G</name>
<position name="first" base="1">
<string name="e6" fret="3" finger="2"/>
<string name="a" fret="2" finger="1"/>
<string name="b" fret="3" finger="3"/>
<string name="e1" fret="3" finger="4"/>
</position>
<position name="third" base="3">
<barre low="e6" high="e1" fret="3" finger="1"/>
<string name="a" fret="5" finger="3"/>
<string name="d" fret="5" finger="4"/>
<string name="g" fret="4" finger="2"/>
</position>
</chord>
- started: 25.6.2003
- current version: 0.4
- license: LGPL (Lesser General Public License)
- repository: https://github.com/miira/xchords
- old homepage: http://xchords.sourceforge.net
If you would like to see more future versions and features, please, donate this project. Thank you.