Feature Requests

From OpenLP

This is a list of feature requests posted to the openlp forums/sf.net over the years. It also includes a few popular features from other worship presentation software.

This is by no means a target, rather a place to come and get ideas for future enhancements.

This list should only contain items which are not already in released versions or the current trunk, so please remove any that you know are already implemented. It is likely that this page will contain things that may never be implemented either due to technical or political reasons. However unless a feature request is completely outside of the scope of Worship Presentation software, it should remain here so we can get an idea of the features users want in the software. In the future technical or political hurdles may be overcome!

If you are not an OpenLP developer, please do not add new requests here yourself. Instead use the openlp.org forums where the request is more likely to be noticed, and can be discussed first.

Contents 1 Service 2 Control 3 Display 4 Theme 5 Songs 6 Bible 7 Presentations 8 Video/Media 9 Image 10 Custom Slides 11 External interface 12 Other

Service

• Option for save service to show a calendar, and to save on a date/time rather than entering filename (+ corresponding load)
• Ability to page/cursor-down throughout the entire service, with blank slides inbetween each item
• Service templates, e.g. Communion services with liturgy/comment items in place so just need to fill in the gaps
• Time stamp on songs and copied to service items. If lyrics are different, only update database if timestamp in service file is newer than that in database.
• Ability to spawn an executable file from service file
• Timings/loops in service file
• Separate comment items in service
• Save extra properties with service, e.g. date, time, service type and worship leader. This could help with analysis of services as to who has done what songs, when.
• Ability to define what to do after an item is finished (e.g. after song is completely finished -> switch to background or to black or display next item)
• Improved highlighting of the item in the Service Manager which is currently live.

Control

• Additional Keyboard shortcuts. Mainly just verse/chorus shortcuts left: (1/2/3/C/B, etc)

Display

• Separate title slide for showing copyright/author information instead of on songs
• Option to hide title/copyright/etc info after fixed amount of live time
• Option to specify which slide(s) the footer information appears on i.e. First|Last|All
• Ability to split out Title from other Footer info, and position this separately to author/copyright info. Also option to only show it on first, last or all pages.
• Set colour/image of blank slide, .e.g black, white or church logo, etc
• Built-in three (or more) monitor support (e.g. different outputs/alerts to Operator, Congregation (lyrics) and Stage (chords, pdf's, ppt's or images containing music))
• On screen countdown timer (overlay) - Main screen and/or Stage view
• On screen clock (overlay)
• Ability to scroll the song on the output, rather than having slides see WorshipSession
• Good-looking line-wrapping and intelligent slide-wrapping

Theme

• More transitions
• Ability to wrap line/resize font on a theme basis, rather than global
• Optional semi-transparent textbox behind lyrics, for situations where theme image is too bright
• Integration with the openlp.org website to upload/download themes
• Add option to stretch the background image. It currently maintains aspect ratio.
• Option to update properties on multiple themes at the same time

Songs

• Ability to sort songs by title, first line of lyrics
• Ability to store the key the song is written in
• Print a listing of the song database (by title/firstline/author)
  • Sequence/Total number of songs by SongBook/Topic/Theme/Author
• Store the songbook number and ability to search for it
• Search by song CCLI number
• Ability to set songs as not in CCLI, so hide the CCLI number on screen. (E.g. for songs written by church members or songs in the public domain)
• Import text from pdfs
• On-demand song import from websites, e.g. kingswaysongs.co.uk, nethymnal.org, www.pwarchive.org
• Ability to loop a subset of slides for a pre-determined time before proceeding to a slide after loop
• Bilingual songs - Store multiple translations against a song, and display them together (with optional separator/colours) (See easislides or songbeamer for examples)
• Modeless song editing, so OpenLP can continue to be operated (slide/song changes etc) whilst same or different song is being edited
• Option to override verse order just in service item, leave media item untouched.
• Search for keywords
• Ability to select multiple songs and update Theme/Songbook/Topic information on all in one step (with the same information).
• Option to override the background image for individual verses

Bible

• Sometimes Preachers unexpectedly read beyond the planned Bible verses. Therefore the ability to click a button to lookup and show the next verse would be useful.
• Zefania Bible import
• A popup search which instead of dropdowns, contains buttons for each Bible book/chapter/versefrom/to to allow quicker search. The OpenSong live Scripture chooser is one example of this.
• Mouse over to preview verses, or possible have the first few words of the verse listed to make finding verses easier when the speaker is jumping around.
• Ability to set default search method
• Ability to create a Custom item from the selected search results. (I.e. allows operator to change pagination, quote part of a verse, format differently if required)

Presentations

• Autostart/stop/loop powerpoints from any slide
• Option to pause automatic advancing presentations
• Impress, Keynote and Powerpoint on Mac
• PDF's

Video/Media

• Option to loop media
• Live video feed/webcam
• DVD
• Support Flash
• Option to quickly switch audio to a specific output/soundcard on the computer, to allow operator to listen to next media item without it going through the PA.
• Keep the theme displayed while playing audio files. The current system of going to a black screen is not nearly as appealing when you are only playing an audio file.

Image

• Basic image editing: Brightening, darkening, cropping and resizing are probably the most useful within the scope of OpenLP.
• The ability to group images in the media manager that we use for announcements weekly and then drag the group to the service manager.
• Drag and Drop images from file manager straight into media manager. Same for PPT's/video.

Custom Slides

• Import and Export
• "Add from Service" like songs

External interface

• Control projector via RS232
• Ability to communicate to LED display via a specified port
• Ability to control openlp via midi interface. [1]

Other

• Portable version that can run from a memory stick without installation or storing anything on host
• Chords + Transpose functionality
• Ability to hold musical notation (advanced and low priority!) (lilypond/frescobaldi, musescore/musicxml)
• More customization of openlp, (e.g. for touchscreen monitors need bigger buttons and to operate without context menus or double clicks)
• "Favourites" - To quickly access frequently used songs/videos/etc
• Show webpages
• Scripting/Macros
• Context-sensitive help, rather than PDF
• Basic Line-in recording of audio + export to mp3/ogg. [2]
• Remote Network Viewer (for songs). OpenLP server would send lyrics, theme and slide change events. OpenLP client (e.g. laptop in band) would render screen itself. PPT/Video would obviously be outside scope of this.
• Backup/Restore - Ability to easily backup all database/configuration files, and transfer to another machine with corresponding restore function.
• Ability to keep multiple machines over a network "in sync". Databases and configuration, but options to exclude some settings (e.g. monitor setup) and working folders.
• Option to export rendered slides as images.