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  #1  
Old 12-15-2006, 10:16 PM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default The Notation Musician 2.0 and

The Notation Musician 2.0 and Composer 2.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) are now available at: www.notation.com/MidiNotateBetaRelease.htm

A "release candidate" means that we consider the software ready to be released and sold. The "release candidate" is offered for review by beta testers and for in-house testing, to investigate whether there are any possible serious bugs that should hold up the final release.

Please let me know if you find any "show stopper" bugs. The final 2.0 release is planned for December 16, 2006.

I know that there are minor usability problems and minor bugs in the software. There always will be in any software of this size and complexity. I already have scheduled several minor bug fixes for 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 maintenance releases in the next few weeks. I have assessed that all of these remaining minor bugs do not compromise the usefulness of Notation Musician 2.0 and Notation Composer 2.0. If you find a bug that you find to be serious, please do not hesitate to tell me about it, as this might be a bug I do not know about rather than a bug that I considered to be minor and have postponed its fix.

This Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of the Notation Musician 2.0 and Composer 2.0 has a 30-day trial period, that starts on the day that you install the software.

Here is a list of the most significant usability improvements and bug fixes in this release, since the previous release 1.9.6:

New Song Wizard.
  • Improve usability: If you choose the "one instrument" blank sheet, and then assign an instrument type, the corresponding part should be renamed from "Unknown Inst." to that instrument name.
  • Fix bug : The different steps of the wizard did not refresh the window elegantly.
File handling.
  • Improve usability: There is now a better set of error messages that distinguish reasons while a file cannot be opened.
  • Fix bug: Sometimes a file named "New Playlist Song" would incorrectly be listed among the names of recently opened and saved files.
Context-sensitive help. In Musician, the old Musician 1.1 Users Guide was incorrectly displayed instead of the 2.0 Users Guide.

Playback.
  • Change behavior: During playback, lyrics are now always highlighted, even if the staff with the lyrics is muted.
  • Fix bug: The Fast Forward button did not latch down during fast foward playback. Also, this same button would incorrectly latch down when it was clicked for Next Page, when playback was not in progress.
Note editing.
  • Fix bug: The method of entering notes using only your computer keyboard now works much better. When you hit the Right Arrow key, the red to-be-added note stays on the same staff line rather than unexpectedly jump up or down a little.
  • Improve usability: The Snap As-Performed to As-Notated command, when applied to an arpeggio, now snaps the written-out version of the arpeggio, rather than play all of the notes of the arpeggiated chord at the single attack of the chord.
  • Improve usability: If you change the pitch of a note by an octave, Composer now uses its same enharmonic spelling.
Staff Setup.
  • Improve usability: The Staff / Setup window now warns you to save changes if you attempt to cancel the window after having made changes in the Staff Setup.
  • Improve usability: The Staff / Setup window now remembers adjustments you make to column widths.
Parts. Improve usability. The Define Parts dialog box now sorts the part names alphabetically, except that the Conductor's Score is listed at the top.

MIDI performance editing.
  • Fix bug: In Piano Roll view, a large portion of the window would sometimes display a large block of yellow.
  • Improve usability: The are new shortcuts CTRL+SHIFT+Y, CTRL+SHIFT+X, and CTRL+SHIFT+V to toggle Show/Hide Piano Roll, Graph, and Velocity Vectors. In general, Notation avoids CTRL/SHIFT/ALT combination commands, but these commands are parallel to the SHIFT+Y, SHIFT+X, and SHIFT+V commands for navigating to the Piano Roll, Graph, and Velocity Vector palettes.
  • Improve usability: If some notes are selected and you navigate to the Piano Roll or Velocity Vector palette, then the status bar will now immediately reported the attack/release or velocity statistics for the selected notes.
  • Fix bug: Help tips were missing for many of the Piano Roll palette buttons.
Lyrics. Fix bug: The Region menu Convert to Selection of Lyrics sometimes did not work.

Page Text. Improve usability: A new Page Layout View button has been added to the Page Text Palette so that it is easy to go back and forth between Page Layout and Page Text View.

Ties. Change behavior: "=" is now the shortcut rather than "-" for adding a tie, because the minus "-" NumPad key is now used for lowering the pitch of a selected note.

Chord names. Fix bug: The TAB key did not advance to the last chord in a song if that chord did not already have a chord name.

Braces and brackets.
  • Fix bug: If more than one brace or bracket is displayed, some of them would incorrectly display the instrument names as well as the brace/bracket group name.
  • Fix bug: The shortcut "n" did not work for adding the group name displayed to the left of a brace or bracket.
Lines. Fix bug: A dotted or dashed line between dynamic marks was not correctly drawn after the .not file was saved and reopened.

Measure numbers. Fix bug: If you specified a negative starting measure number, when you reopened the file, the measure numbers incorrectly started at around 65500 rather than at a negative measure number.

Split hands. Improvement: The Split Hands command now recalculates the clefs in the newly prepared right- and left-hand keyboard staves.

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #2  
Old 12-15-2006, 11:44 PM
Clyde (clyde)
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Default Hi Mark, Neither of the two

Hi Mark,
Neither of the two links work - I get a 'page not found message'

Incidentally, you say (in red) to uninstall previous versions. Does this mean the V1.1.7 which is the latest official release, or are you talking about the Beta test versions, eg 1.9.xxx

Cheers ... Clyde
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  #3  
Old 12-16-2006, 12:14 AM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hello Clyde, Thanks for the

Hello Clyde,

Thanks for the report! The links are now fixed.

It is necessary to uninstall only previous beta releases, not Composer 1.x. I've now updated the advice (in red) on that web page. Thanks for asking for that clarification.

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #4  
Old 12-20-2006, 04:21 PM
John Smith (johnsmi)
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Default Hi, Just wondered if Composer

Hi,
Just wondered if Composer 2 will be released this week as I was hoping to build some templates using the new version. I didn't really want to install the RC version and then uninstall it a few days later if can avoid it. (Well,thinking about it, if I can keep my templates I don't mind doing that).
Regards and Season's greetings to everyone.
-John S
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  #5  
Old 12-20-2006, 05:42 PM
Sherry Crann (sherry)
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Default Howdy John, Oh yeah! Compo

Howdy John,

Oh yeah! Composer 2.0 is out now

ttfn,
Sherry
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  #6  
Old 12-27-2006, 01:58 PM
Bernie Ackerman (bernie9)
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Default Composer 2.0 is fine overall e

Composer 2.0 is fine overall except I find that Staff Setup is all scrunched together, and I have to drag it apart to mute a track. Besides going in and using staff controls, is there a global fix for this ?
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  #7  
Old 12-27-2006, 06:57 PM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hello Bernie, This was a in

Hello Bernie,

This was a in the beta and pre-releases of 2.0 that was fixed in the final 2.0 release.

If you drag the edge of the Staff Setup window to change its width, the columns will automatically stretch or shrink to fit the new size of the Staff Setup window. It uses a simple proportional column width calculation, which is less than ideal-- I intend to improve that calculation. However, after you change the width of the Staff Setup window, you can then adjust each column width in the window. Your column width adjustments will be permanently saved for subsequent sessions of Notation Composer or Musician.

You are advised to settle on a certain Staff Setup window width and not change it thereafter. Otherwise you will waste time adjusting the column widths in the window each time you change the overall width of the Staff Setup window.

Cheers
-- Mark
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