This is the under-construction home page for Asaph, an open-source, cross-platform program for Christian music groups and worship leaders for managing song databases. Features include printing song books, sheets and transparencies with or without chord markings, and generating presentations for use in group worship. It is written in Java and thus will run on any platform that has a Java 1.4 runtime.
Asaph 0.5.5 is now available! You can download it here. Version 0.5.5 includes further work on the user's guide, and several key bug fixes.
Very important announcement for ALL users of earlier prereleases (0.2 through 0.4.4). I made a few final changes to the song database file formats in 0.5, and have now locked down the formats. They will not change again prior to the release of 1.0. As before, version 0.5 contains code that will automatically convert older databases to the new file format. HOWEVER, the 0.5.x versions are the LAST versions that will contain this legacy parsing code. In the next major milestone, the version 0.9 beta, I will remove the ability to read pre-0.5 databases. Therefore, if you have ANY song databases created using a version of Asaph prior to 0.5, you MUST use version 0.5 (or any 0.5.x version) to convert the database to the final file format. This can be accomplished by simply opening the database using version 0.5. If it is an indexed (i.e. directory-based) database, just the act of opening the database will cause it to be updated. If it is a simple (i.e. one-file) database, you must save it after you open it, in order to update the file on disk. Note that if you do not do this, then Asaph 0.9 and later will not be able to open your old databases.
Asaph now includes an optional experimental import plugin for importing plain text lead sheets into Asaph. The Asaph distribution includes an "experimental" directory. Inside that directory is a directory called "fileconversion_0_5"-- that is the experimental plugin. To install it, just move the entire "fileconversion_0_5" directory into your plugins directory, and re-launch Asaph. The plugin causes an extra menu item called "EXPERIMENTAL Import Songs..." to appear in the Song menu-- the new command lets you choose a text file, and attempts to import it into the currently selected database. To uninstall the plugin, move the "fileconversion_0_5" directory out of your plugins directory and re-launch Asaph. Note that this plugin is a work in progress right now. It works in principle on MY lead sheets, but it has some limitations, and I haven't yet been able to test it on a variety of sources. If you have any problems with it, please submit a bug report, and include the lead sheet you were trying to import.
If you are using prereleases of Asaph, I encourage you to join the asaph-users mailing list. It's an unmoderated general discussion list for questions, tips, bugs/workarounds, announcements, stories or any other discussion around using Asaph.
SourceForge project page: Detailed development information, downloads, source CVS tree, bug reporter, and much more.
Download page: Download the latest version.
Progress Log: Periodic updates on development progress.
Roadmap: Tentative development roadmap.
Screenshots: Demo screenshots.
Javadoc: Current draft API.
Daniel Azuma: The developer.
Java: Java 1.4 is required to run Asaph.
Last updated on January 02, 2005