#7/27/95 version

The song format described here has appeared in the last ISB release, RELEASE 
3.  If you are doing any transliteration, please follow this format strictly
or face the prospects of becoming obsolete!  See also new.s in this directory
for an example template and new_real.s for a real, live example.

Everything below hinges on using ITRANS version 4.  With the ISB release 3.0, 
ITRANS version 3.2 is obsolete, at least as far as its association with the
ISB is concerned.



                     The New ITRANS Song Format/Font

With this document, I want to urge ITRANS song collectors and transliterators 
(especially transliterators!) to start using a fixed format (to be described 
here) and a fixed font (devnag) in favor of reduced work for all involved.  
A commonly agreed-to format will also prove enormously useful when I ultimately 
implement perl scripts to extract information of interest from the songs and 
also to automate various maintenance tasks for the archiver and maintainer of 
the ITRANS Song Book (ISB). 

I. The Approach Behind the New Format:

Since ITRANS now has extensive support for TeX, and since TeX is a great 
typesetting tool, the ISB now uses TeX exclusively for the archived songs. 
Unfortunately, however, many users do not know TeX or do not want to get 
into TeX installation and learning issues.  Because of this, Avinash continues
to provide the direct PostScript conversion with ITRANS.  Basically, you
have to extract just the songbody out of an ISB song (in the *.s format)
and tack on different header and footer commands to do it.  As example files,
Avinash has provided the files direct_ps.doc and new.ips (found in the docs/ 
subdirectory in the ISB 3.0 source).

Also, since Frank Velthuis' devnagari font looks so much better, I will
use it as the default font for this and the future versions of the ISB.

The new format described below appeared in the ITRANS Song Book Release 3.0,
at least for all hindi songs.  

II. The New Song Format:

An example song to illustrate the format specification is probably the best
way of doing this.  I have added comments after the * signs to explain things 
(a line-by-line explanation then follows).

So, song #801 in ISB release 3 looks like this:

% ITRANS Song #801     # The first line - leave the song# blank (will add later)
%
\startsong
\stitle{maine qasam lii}%    * the most popular title in ITRANS format.
\film{Tere Mere Sapne}%      * Note the trailing % in all these.
\starring{Dev Anand, Mumtaz}%
\singer{Lata, Kishore}%
\music{S.D. Burman}%
\lyrics{Neeraj}%
%
% Contributor: Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu)       * See below
% Transliterator: Mani Upadhyaya (mani@eng.utoledo.edu)       * See below 
% Credits: Ravi Rai (rrai@plains.nodak.edu)                   * See below 
% Editor: Anurag Shankar (anurag@astro.indiana.edu)           * See below
% Comments: okay, like, a totally cool song, like, gag me     * See below
%           with a spoon, okay?		      		      * See below
%
\printtitle
#indian						      * note the ITRANS 4's #
% 						      * note a % sign before
... body of the song (without a leading or trailing     the song starts and one 
    blank lines)					after it ends
%
#endindian					      * note the ITRANS 4's #
\endsong
% 
% send songs/corrections to Anurag Shankar (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu)


III. A Detailed Description:

Here is a line-by-line description of the new song format:

1. The first line should be

% ITRANS Song #

Since the song numbers will be frozen once they are attached to a certain song, 
it will be useful to do this.  Just leave the number field blank.  I will write 
scripts to add the song number later when I am ready to integrate them into the
archive.

2. The second and third lines should be
  
%
\startsong

i.e. a delimiter line followed by the \startsong command.  (Note that
the \startsong command now appears near the beginning of the song.)

3. The fourth line should be

\stitle{maine qasam lii}%

i.e. the most popular title of the song, IN ITRANS ENGLISH.   Note that
the line MUST end with a "%" and that there should be no spaces between
\stitle and {.

4.  The fifth line should be 

\film{Tere Mere Sapne}%

The film name should appear as above, i.e. with each word beginning in caps,
and the spelling can be the popular one (i.e. not in ITRANS english).  Please
use the exact format here - words starting with caps but otherwise in lower
case.  Again, the line must end with a %

5. The sixth line should be

\starring{Dev Anand, Mumtaz}%

i.e. the hero, the heroine, and perhaps one or two major sidekicks (again,
we need a trailing %).  Please have the names as here, i.e. starting with
caps, separated by commans.  Try using the spellings as in hindi/db/actdb file
(in the ISB 3.0 source release).

6. The seventh line should be

\singer{Lata, Kishore}%

i.e. the playback singer(s).  Please use \& instead of the word "and".
If there are three singers, please use

\singer{Lata, Asha, Rafi}%

and don't forget the trailing %.  Follow the caps and comma convention
here too and shorten most popular the names.  Use the names in 
hindi/db/singdb directory in the source release.


7. The eigth line should be

\music{S.D. Burman}%

i.e. the music director(s).  Remember the trailing %. Follow the caps 
convention.  Use spellings from the hindi/db/mddb file.


8. The ninth line should be

\lyrics{Neeraj}%

i.e. the lyricist(s). Remember the trailing % and the caps/comma
convention.  Also, use spellings from hindi/db/lyrdb file.

9. The tenth line should be

%

i.e. another delimiter line.

10. The eleventh line is where credits, etc. should begin:

% Contributor: Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu)            
% Transliteration: Mani Upadhyaya (mani@eng.utoledo.edu)   
% Credits: Ravi Rai (rrai@plains.nodak.edu)           
% Editor: Anurag Shankar (anurag@astro.indiana.edu)      

Note that the names appear first (as proper nouns, the first, middle, and 
last names starting in caps), followed by the e-mail address in parentheses
(and not in <>).

If there are multiple people per field, use the following format:

% Credits: Ravi Rai (rrai@plains.nodak.edu)
%          Anurag Acharya (anurag.acharya@cs.cmu.edu)
%          Anurag Shankar (anurag@astro.indiana.edu)

The only possible fields are:

% Contributor:          The person(s) who contributed the song
% Transliterator:       The person(s) who transliterated the song into ITRANS
% Credits:              The person(s) who provided corrections/words later
% Editor:               The person(s) who did the final archival integration
% Comments:             Any comments which are added about the song, etc.

As for comments, try not to add any unless absolutely necessary.  General
comments and people's personal feelings about the songs are fine great they
waste disk space and should be kept private maybe?

11.  The next line after the credits etc. should be

%

i.e. just a delimiter.

12.  The next three lines should contain the correct ITRANS beginning control 
sequences followed by a delimiter line with just a %:

\printtitle
#indian 
%

NOTE that \printtitle is a NEW command and replaces the \startsong and
\songtitle sequence.  Note also that I have taken out the extra text 
which normally appears after #indian to save bytes.  Also note that
the old style \indian is no longer supported by ITRANS (version 4) -
in fact, all ITRANS commands in a song file now must start with a #
(note that \startsong, \title ... etc are NOT ITRANS commands; they
are just TeX macros defined in idevn.tex file).

13.  The body of the song should start now.  There should be NO BLANK LINES
BEFORE THE SONG (because it produces an unnecessary space and is wasteful).

In the main song body, the following conventions should be used to save space:

i.   Don't indent the song.  The song should be left justified.  This is to
     avoid wrapping long lines when the songs are all catenated and printed
     in a two-column format.

ii.  If you want to indicate which line is sung by who, please use the first
     syllable of the name of the singers.  For example:

ki:	he maine kasam lii
l:	lii
ki:	he tuune kasam lii
l:	lii

     for a song sung by Kishore and Lata.

iii.  Don't repeat lines.  Use the following convention instead:
  
a) for single repeated lines, use

he maine qasam lI \- 2

which basically means

he maine qasam lI 
he maine qasam lI

b) for multiple repeated lines, use

(he maine qasam lI
he tUne qasam lI ) \- 2

which means

he maine qasam lI
he tUne qasam lI 
he maine qasam lI
he tUne qasam lI 

iv.  Don't use commas at the end of the lines.  A song is a poem and lines 
     in a poem are normally not ended with commas (except in rare
     circumstances).  Also, don't use a period (.) at the end of the line
     in a song.  

v.   Don't use dots anywhere in the song body.  Use \threedots
     instead if you have to.

13.  After the main song body, please use an

%

i.e. just another delimiter line, and, finally

14.  the ITRANS song should end with the following 4 lines:

#endindian 
\endsong
%
% send songs, corrections, etc to Anurag Shankar (anurag@astro.indiana.edu)

Note that the the last line should contain my name and address (and not 
Avinash's) and that the "endindian" is preceded by a #, not a \ as of
ITRANS version 4.
---
Anurag Shankar, Research Associate           (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu)
Astronomy Department, Indiana University               812-855-4838 
Swain West 319, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA            812-855-8725 (fax)
WWW home page: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu
