Kernow John - thanks for that link. I've just had a quick look at the program (literally a few minutes) and it looks quite good. I'll check it out more throroughly later

Pavane - If you have the abc files with the (synchronised) words on 'w' lines (instead of on the older, unsynchronised 'W' lines) abc2midi will generate Karaoke midi files automatically (and it's free!). (My technical problem in the batch conversion from Songwright to abc is that originally I was outputting only 'W' lines (trivial n this case - simple copy of the input words) but to output 'w' I have to actually process the text(Songwright and abc handle syllables on tied notes differently), so for now I've only generated the vanilla midi files).

(The generated abc also makes use of the newer V: lines for separate voices in the dozen or so DT files that have mutivoice tunes, and the K:bass and K:treble for the handful of DT tunes which use the bass or bass and treble clefs. also the !fermata! and !tenuto! notations. These are in the newer draft specs for abc on the abc homepage).
It shouldn't take me long to do this, but unfortunately (not really!) I'm off to Bruges for the week, so this will have to wait until I come back. I'll put up a post when this is available, along with the abc files (and probably PostScript scores too - another trivial production from the abc via abcm2ps).

Mick