Walter, I copied your first message over to the Mudcat HTML Guide (you'll find links to various guides in the FAQ). This method works great in the Forum, but I can't see it being incororated into the Diital Tradition Database (DT) - the DT is published in various formats, DOS, Mac, Unix, and online - not to mention the Windows Donkeyworks search engine for the DT. All of the song files are text files, with no bold print or other fancy doodads, and most probably they'll stay that way.
If you want to post chords in the Forum, Walter's way works quite nicely, or you can use the <pre> preformat tag explained in the Mudcat HTML Guide. Although it's not best for use, the Rise Up Singing method of showing chords is probably the most practical for the Digital Tradition. [I suppose somebody would like me to explain that method now, but I'll leave that job to somebody else since I'm stuck on WebTV for now.]
Otherwise, you can use something like ABCMUS, which takes the DT tunes and sets chords accoding to the tune - and does a fairly good job of it.
-Joe Offer-