Notation Software Users Forum - Invitation to beta test prerelease of Composer 21

Hello Notation Composer folk:

It has been many weeks since the Composer 2.0.4 release. I've been preparing version 2.1 (previously pre-announced as version 2.0.5) as a major maintenance release with these overall goals:

Completely new setup program that promises higher reliability.
A new automatic software update feature. Just choose the Software Updates command in the Help menu, and Composer will visit Notation Software's web site to see if an update is available. If so, it will download and automatically install the update for you.
Tested for Windows Vista.
Forward file compatibility for Notation .not files. If in a later version of Composer, such as 2.1.1 or 2.2, you save a Notation .not file, another Composer user running a prior version, such as 2.1, will still be able to open the Notation .not file. The only data that will be lost will be the new types of data that were introduced in the later version. (Versions of Composer prior to 2.1 will not be able to open files saved by 2.1 or later; but this is the last time there will be such a problem.)
New features. Several new features have been introduced:
- The Layout tool now supports a fixed number of measures per line! This has been one of the most requested features, especially by jazz musicians. To use this feature:
  - Choose Layout in the main toolbar.
  - Click the Page Layout button, which icon includes a lock, arrow, and red spring.
  - Click the Number of Barlines Per Line button, which icon shows "1234/5678" to suggest 4 lines per line.
  - In the Number of Bars Per Line menu, specify how many bars per line you want. And you can specify this for just a range of lines if you don't want to do this for the entire song.
- For transposing instruments, chord names are automatically transposed.
- A new Solo All Instruments command in the Part menu turns on playback for the track(s) in the current part and mutes all of the other tracks. An alternative short-cut is "qsolo". Or even easier, just Shift+Click any staff Solo button.
Improved usability. For example:
- In Window View, the vertical scrollbar correctly grows as you add notes and music symbols, so that the bottom-most staff is not partially hidden out of view.
- If you change the default MIDI playback device, you now have the option to automatically reassign it to Notation .not files that were previously saved with track assignments to your old default MIDI playback device.
- The accent mark tool in Add Mode now adds only one accent at a time. It was too confusing that it tried to support adding two accents with a single click.
- In the Staff Setup window, duplicate MIDI channel assignments are now highlighted in yellow only for staves assigned to the same MIDI device and channel.

Composer (and Musician) version 2.1 will be a free upgrade to all 2.0 customers.

The final release of Composer 2.1 is scheduled for sometime during the next 10 days, perhaps as early as April 15, if it passes a final round of internal testing here.

I'd really appreciate your trying out a pre-release (version 2.0.4.91) of Composer 2.1, to let me know if you run into any problems. Click the following for:<blockquote>the patch for Composer full version 2.0.4 to 2.0.4.91.</blockquote>
If you run into any problems with this pre-release, you can return to version 2.0.4 with this:<blockquote>reverse patch from version 2.0.4.91 back to 2.0.4.</blockquote>
PLEASE NOTE: Any files you save with this pre-release 2.0.4.91, as well as 2.1 and after, cannot be reopened with version 2.0.4 or before. Therefore, you should make backup copies of any Notation .not files that you edit using 2.0.4.91.
ALSO NOTE: Your \Program Files\Notation\Composer\MidiDev.cfg file will be updated by 2.0.4.91, as well as 2.1 and after. It cannot be reopened with version 2.0.4 or before. Therefore, you should make a backup copy of that file before the first time you run 2.0.4.91.

Cheers
-- Mark