I've made this request on related threads over the years, and I've seen it come up from others as well (e.g. https://support.stagetraxx.com/d/1441-mix-in-fixed-font-for-tablature)
I'd love to be able to use different Fonts, i.e. fixed-width AND variable-width, in the same lyric sheet, much like you can with any standard word processor.
Current Limitation / Use Case:
With ST3 and ST4, when using the native lyric sheet and editor, you can only use a single font for the entire rendered lyric sheet.
By default, this is a Variable-width font and in the Settings, there is a toggle for Fixed-width font. This, however, is a global setting and applies to all lyrics on all songs.
There is limited text formatting (colour, bold, italic, underline, etc.) to provide some visual differentiation on the screen. However, if you want to use a mix of variable-width and fixed-width fonts, you cannot do this.
The scenario for this is that you might want a small section of tablature (tab) in your lyric sheet. You might need a reminder of some chord voicings, or a specific riff. Tab really only renders effectively with a fixed-width font.
If you leave ST in default variable-width font - the tab rendering is not really usable.
If you switch to global fixed-width font to solve the tab rendering, all of your lyrics now change spacing and look like they are from the 70s.
If this is a critical use-case, your only option is to change to using PDF lyrics which brings a different set of limitations and constraints.
Proposed Feature:
It would be awesome if you could use both variable and fixed-width fonts in the same lyric sheet. Suggestion below on how this could be used.
Some people may even wish to extend this idea to having choices of multiple font faces/families as opposed to the default variable-width font choice.
Benefit / Impact:
- This would improve quality and usability of the native lyric sheets and editor.
- Many people might find they could dispense with PDF lyrics if this feature was available (and then benefit from other features of native lyric sheets such as Chord line, chord transpose, etc.)
Implementation Idea:
My suggestion would be to use the existing text formatting tags concept and create new tags for font type (and even font if the idea of supprting muliple fonts is desirable)
On the assumption of the default Setting of using a variable-width font, then have a formatting tag for enclosing a line or block of text that defines it as fixed-width, e.g.
normal lyric
normal lyric
{font:fixed}
| F F F# G | G - - - | - A - B |
{font}
normal lyric
or for bass tab (each line represents a string)
normal lyric
normal lyric
{font:fixed}
|--------|--------|----------|--------|
|--------|--------|:--------:|--------|
|5--5----|5--5----|:--------:|--------|
|-------5|--------|----------|----11-1|
{font}
normal lyric
As an extension of the idea, if there was a desire to support multiple fonts, you can have a Global setting for the default Font and then use the tabs to define different fonts to use in a lyric sheet, much like a Word Processor, e.g.
default lyric font
default lyric font
{font:Arial} this text would be in Arial font {font}
default lyric font
{font:Verdana} this text would be in Verdana font {font}
default lyric font
Of course, this would assume that the fonts are installed on the iPad (or other iPads in the case of Network Sessions). Much like a word processor, there would need to be a built-in 'fall back' so that if a font used in a tag doesn't exist on a device, then it reverts to the Default font.