A text staff is a staff type which contains only text. This text can be edited in the manner of a lyrics line (in fact, a text staff is just a lyrics line without a staff support). Since there are no notes for spacing guidance, a syllable of text can only be inserted one a beat.
Even if the text has no chromatic values, using Virtual Singer, the staff can render sounds, generating a spoken sound.
[]
Due to the small amount of data types that a text staff can contain, several pointless features were excluded.
The staff options menu contains the following:
- An option to activate or deactivate the staff
- A rename option
- The display panel
- The action of selecting the whole staff, which can be also achieved by clicking anywhere in the left side of the staff, except for special fields like adding braces or such
- The action of changing the staff type, which is identical to the staff menu's change staff type item
- An option to show or hide objects on the staff. This option also hides the text itself.
- The chord display setup panel
- An option to enable or disable lyrics. If lyrics are disabled, the text remains frozen.
- An option to display borders around the lyrics lines. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- The edit lyrics panel. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- The action of erasing all lyrics from the staff. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- The action of computing bar widths according to the lyrics of the given staff, so that these lyrics don't overlap. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- The action of moving lyrics to another staff. The lyrics can only be moved to another standard staff or to a text staff. Lyrics will be removed from the original staff. Lyrics will keep data such as font, size and others. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- The action of saving the lyrics into a text file. Note that during this operation certain data might be lost. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- The action of loading lyrics from a text file generated using the previous procedure. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- An option to calculate the notes spacing based on lyrics in realtime. Only available if lyrics are enabled.
- The chord display setup panel (again)
- The action of erasing all the chords from the staff. Only available if chords are enabled.
- The edit chords panel. Only available if chords are enabled.
- The action of moving chords to another staff. The chord line can only be moved to another standard staff or to a text staff. Chords will be removed from the original staff. Only available if chords are enabled.
- The action of saving the chord line into a text file. Note that during this operation certain data might be lost. Only available if chords are enabled.
- The action of loading the chord line from a text file generated using the previous procedure. Only available if chords are enabled.
- The action of creating a staff from the chord line associated with the staff. The name of the resulting staff is calculated like this: [Staff name] (Chords) Only available if chords are enabled and the play chords option is enabled.