Songrs: Song Lyrics Projection Application
I recently released v0.1.0 of Songrs. It is a free and open-source application for projecting song lyrics with a projector, similar to OpenLP, although at this point with a quite minimal set of features.
Songrs is written in Rust, and uses GTK for the GUI. The fundamental idea was to make a projection program that runs on GNU/Linux and uses local plain text and media files for its content, as opposed to databases, binary file formats and forced online services. This way, the content files can easily be managed with standard desktop programs and synchronized using general purpose file sync services such as Nextcloud.
Why have I done this, and why not just use OpenLP or some other existing program?
- Musicians at my church use OnSong.
- Song lyrics written in the OnSong (plain text) format are abundant. However, I cannot stand the OnSong app’s projection mode for projecting lyrics during service. I find it clumsy, and very unsuitable for editing the lyrics (it is a mobile app, after all). Hence the need for a proper desktop projection program that supports the OnSong format.
- Managing the set of song lyrics in circulation is a hopeless endeavour, because the OnSong app offers near to no control over the actual lyrics files. Every week the musicians would share the same lyrics with me, every time with the same mistakes for me to fix. Hence the need for a solution that can make use of a regular file sync service, so that we can have a central repository of song lyrics in which the projector operator’s edits persist.
- I wanted to learn Rust and GTK.
- I want to promote the use of free software in the otherwise completely Apple-infested church (and in society in general).
The program will hopefully be field-tested within a couple of weeks. We’ll see how that goes.
Songrs is licensed under the GPLv3, and its repo is here: https://gitlab.com/janikarki/songrs