Morning Mark

Well, I'll take it on trust from you for the moment - let's make it a 'thought expt.'

Are you pointing the finger at Biab ?
Variant expt:
If 3 held good, but there was a time gap of say 1 week before 4 took place, and Composer (i.e. on the same PC) had been used regularly on other things in the meantime, would the notation still look the same ?

But that doesn't get us very far, anyway, since, for good personal and musical reasons, I do want to go to (and from) Biab. Your step four 4 would sound 'straight', not swung ? Which is not what I want - that is one reason for going through Biab.

Is there a means in Composer of telling it AT THE OUTSET to apply the swing eighths convention ? (I've just run a search for 'swing eighths' in the pdf Guide, and found nothing.)
If it were possible to input within the convention, AND hear it right without further fiddling, one significant strand of this whole issue would vanish. Inputting outside the convention to get the swung sound is much more fiddly - either you've got to start in 12/8, or stay in 4/4 and mess with dotted notes and triplets.

(I prefer swing eighths notation (where applicable) for 3 reasons:
1. it's easy to input
2. it is the convention
3. once you've internalised the convention, it strikes, for playing, exactly the right 'distances' between the player, the score and the music - it is not mathematically precise [as a straight notation of the same phrases would be] but it is close enough, and it allows space in the mind for variation. )

Sincerely

Ian