Editing Charts

## General Goals

It is the goal of the charts on this wiki to:

* Be consistent in style throughout
* Be readable both on desktop and mobile
* Be understandable to someone unfamiliar with the songs

## Notation style and conventions

* Try to use the same characters for the same things throughout. If there are any unconventional or unexpected markings for a song, indicate what they mean on the chart. Each instrument has a unique legend; they can all be seen on the Instruments page.
* When possible, use repeats. If a section consists of one or two bars being repeated two or four times, notate it as such. It can also help to use colons to surround repeated phrases, similar to repeats in conventional music notation.

This:

```
Tamb: |: X--X ---X --X- X--- :| (4x)

```

is preferable to this:

```

```

Different lengths of repeat can be combined. Here is an example from Drum 'n' Bass:

```

```

Here you can see that the surods and caixas have a repeated four-bar phrase, and the others have a repeated two-bar phrase.

## Editing Charts

This wiki uses Wiki Markup. More on this can be found on the Basic Wiki Editing page. Wiki also has less code-based systems for editing pages, namely its Visual Editor and New Visual Editor. If you are logged in, your editor preference can be saved.

Although there is a slight learning curve, the most effective way to edit chart pages is in the Source Code editor.

If you are editing existing charts, it should not be too difficult to modify what is already there. If you are adding a new chart, or making heavy revisions, there are several things to know:

* When possible, use repeats. If a section consists of one or two bars being repeated two or four times, notate it as such.

This:

```

```

* All charts need to appear in a monospaced font (where all characters are the same width), to ensure that the notes line up with each other.
	+ In the source code editor, this is easily accomplished by preceding any line with a single space.
	+ In the old visual editor, click on the drop-down menu that says "Format" or "Normal Text" and select "Code / Preformatted".
	+ In the new visual editor, click the drop-down menu that says "Paragraph" and select "Preformatted".

* This results in a "chart block" that has a different background color and has the proper font, like so:

```
X--- X--- X--- X---

```

* Each block of chart text should be wrapped in a table. This ensures that:
	+ The "chart block" will only be as wide as the chart, and not extend to the right side of the page
	+ On mobile, the individual instruments will not wrap around on a new line (see below)

* In the source code editor, this is accomplished by wrapping the block with some code:

```
 (chart text here - remember the space at the front)

```

You can learn more about Wiki table formatting at MediaWiki's Table page.

## Use of Templates

Wikis employ the use of "templates" which allow for content from another page to be included in the current page. Read more on templates on MediaWiki's page.

To use templates, you don't necessarily have to know how they work. You can just enter the code to get what you want and it will appear.

Here are some common templates used on this wiki:

**R** - rimshot. Rimshots need a special way to be notated sometimes, and in order to keep them consistent (in case we decide on a different convention), they only need to be changed in one place and all of them will be changed.

Called by itself, it will default to "R". With any parameter, it will display that parameter instead. Examples:

**32** - 32nd notes. This reduces the size of the text included in the parameter to help the music better line up. Its default is "rl". Examples:

 `Rep: | ---{{32|rl}} {{R}}-r- r-{{R}}- {{R}}--- |`

results in:

```

```