auto printing of order form

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auto printing of order form

2005-11-21 04:59 am

Hello

Just wanted to let the developers know that we have been demoing the software for the past week. A very nice piece of work.

We wanted to let you know that the reason we won't be purchasing is this - the software is set to automatically print out an order for every time you print off any document you create. We were creating a lot of documents, trying to see if Composer was for us. At the end of the week we looked at the pile of identical order forms that had been printed off. The waste represented by these forced printouts was a little sickening. We come from a part of Canada that has a lot of beautiful forest and we know where this paper comes from. It is pointless to provide a demo version and then force the user to print off useless documents. We feel it speaks to the corporate culture of the designers and marketers of this product. If you want to provide a demo version, provide it. If you don't, then don't, but don't force demo version users to pay this penalty for using the product. We are still unsure why the demo has been programmed in this way - we tried to come up with some possible reasons but there simply weren't any. Let the first printout come with an order form - what is the point of 30 of them?

The sooner that this irresponsible bit of programming is taken out of the demo version, the better off the company will be.

Thank you.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #1 – 2005-11-21 10:32 am

Hi, Nik,

You are of course free to do whatever you want, but it seems like a petty reason not to buy the product.

I've tried a lot of demo music programs where they don't allow you to print or even save at all. Here, you were allowed to print, but had to suffer through getting an order form. If you used the NWC demo to print out a lot of documents, as you indicated, then it seems like a program you need to use. Pay the $39 and you won't have that problem again.

John

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #2 – 2005-11-21 10:52 am

The answer already seems to be 'we won't buy anyway'. That is a pity indeed. When I was trying if Noteworthy was something for me, I hardly printed anything at all; the Print Preview supplied me with all the information I wanted. Two or three order forms I wasted, maybe - and I decided, yes, this is indeed a program that's worth its 3900 dollarcents.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #3 – 2005-11-21 11:25 am

Actually Nik,
while I applaud your stated sentiment, you are equally at fault. Surely after the second order form appeared you realised that they were going to keep coming. Why didn't you simply keep putting an already printed order form in your MP/manual feed tray and over print it the next 28 times?

Surely 30 print jobs constitutes a production run, not a test of a demo!

To refuse to buy a product as excellent as NWC simply because you failed to recognise an opportunity to reduce waste is very petty.

Lawrie

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #4 – 2005-11-21 12:57 pm

Keep the forests alive! No kidding.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #5 – 2005-11-22 07:43 am

Since the printing of the order form is not part of the full version, surely that shouldn't be part of that decision making ?

This sounds like someone intended to make 'extended' use of the demo, rather than buy the full version.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #6 – 2005-11-22 08:23 am

Hi everyone

Wow! I didn't really expect a response. Let me respond briefly where appropriate.

John Ford - you may consider petty my concern about the number of pages wasted in total by all worldwide users of the demo of NWC. For those of us who live where the forests are, it's hardly a 'petty' consideration. I see that not one respondent has addressed the following question - WHY is the program set up this way? If there was a compelling reason, fine. As a Canadian, I generate tons of garbage just by living - I'm not a pie in the sky idealist. My point is, why this waste when it's unnecessary?

Rob - we most certainly did not decide to 'not buy anyway'. What we asked ourselves was this - if the programmers took this approach to the distribution of their product, what other design characteristics will become apparent as we use the product? Also, you may have printed off twice and been satisfied, but we need to understand all the functions of the s/w and creating 2 documents would never suffice to thoroughly demo it.

Lawry - now that is a thought - I honestly did not consider the idea that I could just run the same sheet through the printer 30 times! Wouldn't have been particularly convenient but it would have worked, and I assume you know enough about printers to know that this would not harm the print head - that is, to run it over a piece of paper with 30 layers of ink on it. Anyway, thanks for the idea.

Rob # 2 - Yes, well... your comment speaks for itself. We'll keep trying and you keep sleeping.

Frank - are you saying it's possible to have an 'extended demo'? I ask because we assumed that the demo would stop functioning in 30 days. Secondly, your accusation is maybe just a tad premature. Why the heck would I take the time to post if my intention was to keep using the product? After all, the developers might set my demo to shut down! I am not a techie but I am sure they could do this if they wanted, couldn't they?
Just to let you know, I am big into paying the creators of intellectual property the royalties they are due. I donated to Ad-Aware and techguy.org within the past month, $5 each but I'm sure every little bit helps the developers.

I'll make a little bet. Not one of you will explain why it is that the program doesn't print out an order form on the first printoff only, or maybe every 10 printouts.

Lastly... I hope everyone reading this will try as hard as possible to save every scrap of paper possible. It's part of an approach that is summed up in the phrase 'Think globally, act locally'. How many pieces of paper have been wasted as a result of this small programming decision? Is it the right thing to do?

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #7 – 2005-11-22 10:03 am

Nik,
unfortunately the industry I'm in generates an obscene amount of waste in the form of packaging.

It appears that manufacturers of modern technology seem to think that their products need protection when being transported around the world.

We recycle where possible and try (where possible) to purchase from vendors like Kyocera who at least seem to be trying to minimise waste.

As for overprinting the orderform. I'm assuming you are using a laser printer. As long as the toner has been properly fused on the previous pass there should be no problem overprinting.

If you have an inkjet, wait till the ink is dry. If a dot matrix, then there's no problem at all, though the paper will be pretty ordinary by the time you're finished.

If you have a wax printer then forget it. The paper gets wasted!

As for printing an orderform with every job in the demo, I cannot answer for the developers but may I suggest that if there weren't some "incentive" (read reminder), the vast majority of "tyre kickers" would continue to use the product without paying for it.

So what do you suggest?

Perhaps a big "watermark" over the page? Easy on a laser, not so easy on an inkjet, harder still on a dot matrix. In any case it would seriously detract from being able to see clearly the results. Hmm, not such a good alternative afterall.

Maybe, as you suggest, only printing the orderform after every tenth "test" print - not much of an "incentive" there, virtually no annoyance value. In any case how do you count it - entries in the registry? An .ini file? Some marker in the music file itself?

What if the product becomes really crippled? But then you can't give it a real test because the very features you need to test may be amongst those that are unavailable. You can't easily predict which features that will be because your needs are different to mine etc..

The reality is, as you have indicated yourself, the developer needs to be rewarded otherwise there would be no product for us to use or bitch about.

So there must be some way to encourage payment. As far as possible I use paper that comes from recycled sources - not always possible but I try.

If you and most others do the same then a "few" wasted sheets (that could easily be overprinted multiple times) is a much smaller price to pay than the obscene waste (which I despise) that is involved in selling computers and other such hardware which is part of my business (network integrator and computer reseller).

I'm sure NWC would be open for reasonably achievable alternatives but please don't get so hung up on this that you miss out on what is, in my opinion, the most flexible and user friendly music notation software available. I've checked a lot of them out and while some of the others have some very desirable features that are not (yet, one hopes) in NWC the sheer ease of use of NWC far outweighs them.

Yes, let us help save forests, I fully concur. Hemp makes very good paper, but most governments around the world won't let you grow it! And I don't mean the varieties high in THC either! Lobby your government to allow alternative pulp sources - you won't get far because the global logging industries are far too powerful. Yet I suggest it is better to attack them than the developers of any useful piece of software!

Lawrie

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #8 – 2005-11-22 01:12 pm

Okay, Nik -

In answer to your question, I would only comment that I have to presume that every score you generated was absolutely perfect before you printed it out and any minor imperfections (because we're not all perfect) were merely penciled in. I can only presume that no paper was used to reprint any scores that might have had any imperfections.

And since you are just evaluating the software (that's what the evaluation version is for), I presume that you printed on the backs of all the paper you generated? For every order form printed, you could have printed on a score on the back of it. That's actually what we do here in our house, because we do re-use our paper.

And don't forget - there was always print preview and there is always print to PDF (which you can find on the web for free, and where you can look at the exact results on the screen). I suspect after the 2nd order form printout, you realized what was going on with the order forms. If it bothered you so much, there were simple things (like I just stated) that you could have done to solve your problem.

The program is only $39. Go look at Sibelius or Finale; talk about wasting (money) paper when NWC gives you 90% or more of what they give you with a much better, simpler interface.

If you printed out the number of scores you said you did, then it seems to me that you've already gotten your money's worth, even if you had bought it outright. And once you do buy it, if you are creating scores as you say you are, it will pay for itself many times over (and will never print an order form again). If you are not buying it for the reason stated, you are just cutting off your nose to spite your face. The program is great, and if you are into creating music scores, I challenge you to find a more robust piece of software with the same bang for buck ratio.

I don't mean to offend you with my comments; that's just my feelings about it.

I hope you will reconsider and join this great, helpful family. I've been using NoteWorthy Composer since the early 90's. I've looked at other programs (some inexpensive, some very expensive) and I keep coming back to NWC. I'm sure many others on this forum will attest to that fact as well.

And with version 2 on the cusp of release, you get even more.

I hope you will reconsider.

-John

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #9 – 2005-11-23 03:38 am

Hi Lawrie and John

Thanks for the replies. Let me go in order

Lawrie, thanks for a considered response. First, you are clearly tech saavy and I am anything but. You mention that people might continue to use the product if they weren't getting a reminder. In my ignorance, I thought this would be impossible. Doesn't the program shut down after the demo period is over? Also, I am not sure why the demo period is 30 days if the programmers are worried about people taking a free ride with the program. Why not 7 days and then it self-destructs? I have downloaded demos in the past that simply stop working, and give you a message to register and purchase if you want to use it again.

Re: 'encouragement'... for me, the only thing that could ever encourage me to buy a piece of s/w is functionality. If the developers are confident that they are marketing a good product, shouldn't that take care of itself? Maybe I'm naive but I just can't see how this extra order form would ever tilt the scales for someone's decision to either buy or not buy the product. With regard to the annoyance value... do they need to annoy me into buying the product?

I guess you could consider my initial post an 'attack', but really I just wanted to say that this programming decision is resulting in unnecessary waste and I am voting with my wallet against it Nothing I have heard so far from anyone has even come close to convincing me that this is a NECESSARY programming decision. With regard to your suggestions re: what we can do to conserve, thanks. We live a pretty green life around here. Let's see what John had to say...

John, thanks for the reply. Actually, the whole point is that in using the demo for the first time, I tried (unsuccessfully) to fix a recurring problem; the score I created would not print out as it appeared on my screen. Sometimes the extreme margins were cut off and on a few systems the notes stated about 1/3 of the way into the staff, counting from the left hand side. It is at precisely this time, during the demo phase, that a user is most likely to have to print out multiple version of the same document as they try to master the program and figure out its functionality.

Printing on both sides - believe it or not, no - that didn't occur to me. With regard to 'printing to pdf'... John, I hardly know what that means. I'm not really interested in acquiring and learning a separate piece of software simply in order to get around this order form issue. Does that seem unreasonable??

The gist of your argument seems to be 1) I didn't do enough to avoid the multiple printings and 2) It's a good program, just buy it. The second point is a given, but with regard to the first, I think that professional conservators would tell you that when you look at the masses, you need to understand that they will often not do everything they possibly can to conserve, either through ignorance or lack of opportunity or sometimes even lack of concern. I think that 'responsible' product development includes an awareness of this and an attempt to create products which have the lowest potential impact on the environment - in essence, to design the potential for damaging results out of the system as much as possible, especially given the 'lowest common denominator' factor that we know exists when dealing with huge numbers of varied users. You have to design for the worst of them in mind, take any opportunity to pollute out of their hands. This was the point of my original post, and I notice that you didn't address the question regarding whether this is a necessary programming decision. There are obvious negatives associated with the decision - do the positives outweigh them?

Once again, thanks for your thoughts.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #10 – 2005-11-23 06:31 am

Hi Nik,
in order...

"...shut down after the demo period?" to be honest, it's been so long since I used the demo I can't remember exactly. I seem to recall only being able to save files a limited number of times but that's about it.

"...7 days and the it self destructs." Dunno 'bout you but I couldn't possibly test a product of this nature in 7 days. My time is so limited I usually do my NWC related activities between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM - with occasional bouts of access through the day if I happen to be working from my own computer.

"Re: 'encouragement'..." If we lived in a Utopia then I would agree entirely. Unfortunately, in the real world out there, "there be thieves".

Is it NECESSARY? As I mentioned before, I cannot speak for the developers so I have no way of knowing what strategies have been tried and what has had what degree of success.

Does this translate out to "I approve of the current methods"? No! Does it mean I disapprove, again No! I simply do not have sufficient data to make a reasoned assessment.

No one does as the developers have not seen fit to share their research and experience in this area. Nor do I believe it necessary for them to do so - there are such things as trade secrets and this may fall in that category.

For that matter, perhaps they simply haven't thought about that aspect, just as you didn't think about overprinting or using both sides.

Rather than jumping onto the forum with this criticism, wouldn't it have been worth dropping them a polite email first. My experience with NWC support is that they are very responsive and where possible take great pains to try to satisfy.

In any case, we each have the power to use alternative methods for assessing the printing facilities:

Print Preview
Print to PDF (not hard, download one of the many free PDF creators and install it - no configuring necessary, just another printer device in Windows)
Overprint used pages
Print both sides.

Lawrie

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #11 – 2005-11-23 07:20 am

Even if I did not contribute much in the right way, here: This thread started off with a little difficulty, but even here one sees a fine example of 'The Friendliest Forum On The Web'.
Thanks Lawrie and John!
Any contestants?

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #12 – 2005-11-23 08:10 am

Hi Lawrie

Just a couple of quick points - it's late here.

Re: encouragement. Again, I was under the impression that distributors of products like this could plant a self-destruct into their demos so that people couldn't use them on an ongoing basis. If by 'there be thieves' you are referring to problems of piracy, again, I would ask if this feature is going to do anything at all about that problem. Most people are smarter than me and will figure out a way around the 'print an order form' problem. Thieves are cunning, as you know, and internet thieves generally have a workaround for these things, or so I assume.

Re: the length of time necessary to fully demo the product - I agree. It just occurred to me - why not put a limit on the number of copies that can be made within the demo period? Just as you can only save 10 times during the demo period, include a limit, say 25 copies before you are forced, every time you print a page, to also print out an order form and an essay on the evils of software piracy?

Re: Trade secrets... first, I did see the boldface 'may' - I understand that you are just throwing the idea out there. Lawrie, you seem very level headed and reasonable so I am going to have to say that we will have to agree to disagree about even the possibility that protection of trade secrets could be a compelling reason for the inclusion of this feature in the demo, UNLESS the program doesn't self destruct after the 30 day period. If it doesn't and I could go ahead and use the fully functional "demo which has now become the program itself" version forever, then all I can say is why the heck wouldn't they make their demo like the majority of other demos, and program it to simply shut down after the demo period is over?

In any case, you must be right that either they simply didn't think of this issue, or they haven't received enough complaints about it to believe that it is perceived as a net negative by the user community (actually it is obvious that this latter is the case).

It may have been harsh on my part to describe this bit of programming as 'irresponsible', and for that I apologize. However, I still haven't seen any compelling evidence that this is a necessary feature in the program. If one of the developers trolls this thread (which they should) then they will see this exchange and either act or not. In any case, I appreciate your efforts; certainly a user group like this would mitigate in favour of purchasing and using the program.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #13 – 2005-11-23 09:06 am

Hi Nik,

I assume you live in BC. I'm in (Delta. I suspect you're still interested in NWC because you're continuing with this discussion.

You make a good point about the wasted paper - as Lawrie suggested and you conceded, it probably just never occurred to the developers. By now, Eric and his staff will have noted your concerns for further consideration. Sometimes we hear whether or not they intend to make a change, but their corporate policy is to usually not announce upcoming changes.

If you decide not to buy NWC, well, it's your decision to make. Please do decide based on what the program can or cannot do for you, though.

When I extract parts from scores, I have a great deal of flexibility. If a part ends with a couple of staffs at the top of a new page (shows in the print preview window), I can very easily adjust the staff and note sizes to have the piece end on the preceding page. It seems to be much easier to do than in the only other notation software I have.

Support for NWC is excellent, largely due to this very forum. The basic commands are easy to learn and use. When you get stuck, just ask a question. Most of us are satisfied, experienced users who, having bought the program, have enjoyed experimenting with how to do many things. If you ask how to accomplish something, often you will get 2 or 3 different suggestions and often within a very short time. Some of these are based on experience, but often it's someone taking the time to understand what your problem is, and developing a solution.

Hang in there. Give the program a good workout, compare it to similar software packages, and have fun.

David
(now it's bedtime)

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #14 – 2005-11-23 10:06 am

Hi, Nik -

Okay, I will retract my "petty" comment. Now that you've explained yourself, I can definitely see your point of view.

With regards to NWC, on the whole, the non-demo version doesn't print the order form (unless you intentially do so yourself) and it has tons of features. I think that is all everyone is saying here. While, yes it bothers you to have to see that extra piece of paper come out of your printer, please try to overlook that for now and concentrate on the features you really need to do your work.

By the way, PDF is "portable document file". If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader (free!), you can read PDF files. There are many free PDF creators on the web (since Adobe doesn't restrict the PDF format patent/copyright and allows others to develop their own PDF writers). A PDF creator/writer installs on your computer as a print driver, so all you have to do is print your document to the PDF writer, instead of the printer. It will ask you for a file name, and then create a print image of your document. It uses your computers fonts (true-type or otherwise), so except for graphical images, it creates a file with just the commands necessary to print it out, not a huge bitmap image of the file. That keeps the files relatively small. You even have the option to embed fonts in the file, so that other people who might not have those fonts can print out the document as well. This makes the file a little bigger, but not excessively so.

Great, so what does that do for you? It lets you create files that you can easily share with others. If you create a musical score, you can email them a PDF of it and they can either view it on the screen just as you intended it to look by using the Adobe Acrobat Reader, or they can print it out and it will print exactly as you intended it (even though they may have a completely different kind of printer than you). Pretty much, if you can print it, you can create a PDF of it. That's where "portable" comes from; the ability to share the file with others, but preserving the formatting of the original. The person you share it with does not have to have the application you created it with to see the results of your work.

A lot of user documentation comes in PDF these days. That way, manufacturers save costs by not having to ship heavy books; they just create the book to PDF, and then you, as the user, can either read it on the screen, or print it out to your printer, or just print out the sections you are interested in.

Talking about saving paper; I am currently beta testing another product and needed to read the 60-some-odd page user manual for correctness. While it printed somewhat small, I was able to print 4 pages to a single page (one in each quadrant of the page). It was still readable and I was able to mark it up and provide my comments.

I personally use a product called PDF995. It's free as long as you put up with the registration nag screen (which bothered me, just like the "extra paper" issue bothered you), but I plunked down the money and bought a license for it. It has worked great for me and has actually, in a number of cases, created better PDF's than Adobe's own PDF creator software (which I have at work and is not cheap at all!).

There are other PDF creators as well, some completely free. I've tried a number, but I found I was happy with PDF995, so that's what I use. Your results may vary. Search the forum and you will find previous discussions on this.

Again, I hope you will reconsider this fine program (if you are looking to create scores). It's not perfect, and sometimes you have to do some creative workarounds, but there is a whole community of other users both here and on the newsgroup that will help you out. I've sometimes gotten an answer to a complex problem within minutes of posting (that's not the norm, but it does happen). Also, with version 2, there are user tools, so now users can develop custom code to solve problems that the program itself maybe doesn't inherently do. And they are sharing the results of that code with the Version 2 beta testing community (and I suspect will continue to do so once Version 2 is finally released).

I apologize for being so long winded, but hopefully this explanation has helped a little. Either way, good luck with your musical pursuits. NWC will carry you a long way towards that.

- John

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #15 – 2005-11-23 12:41 pm

Hi Nik,
it's now late here too... So I'll try to be brief.

"encouragement" - use whatever term you want here if that one seems inappropriate. For myself, I HATE pop up nag screens. I find they seriously detract from the assessment experience - so much so that if I'm testing a product that does this during use I simply don't buy it. A nag screen at startup is different, I don't mind that at all. To that end I much prefer a forced order form. In this case it at least doesn't happen until the last step.

"...self destruct" I really can't comment, as I said, I don't have access to their previous results from whatever has been done and I no longer remember all the details of the demo functionality - it's been too long.

"...include a limit, say 25 copies" To my mind, most people can determine suitability in much less than 25 printouts - I suspect that virtually no one would ever see it.

"...haven't received enough complaints...net negative..." In several years - don't remember exactly how many - you are the first I'm aware of. Perhaps most of us have done primary testing without paper at all until the last step of actually printing a score to use... As previously stated, preview is a wonderful tool.

"...compelling evidence" You are unlikely to see any - your point of view (please don't be offended, this is not intended as a criticism) is such that there can be no compelling evidence, just as I will never be convinced to change my mind about certain issues. "A man convinced against his will is of his own opinion still."

While I have enjoyed this "little game of tennis" I think it's time to stop. I can only give you my view on things, I cannot speak for NWC.

In the meantime, if you are still assessing suitability, then install a PDF creator and don't print any paper...

Actually, you could test something for me. Normally, in a print dialogue, you have the choice of selecting which pages to print... You know print pages 2 to 7 say. If I'm right, the order form won't print. I can't believe I didn't think of that before!

Lawrie

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #16 – 2005-11-23 06:22 pm

Hi John and Lawrie

Just have a few minutes, but I needed to respond briefly.

David - yes, you're right, I am interested in the program and will probably buy it now that I have started to use it (isn't that the way it usually goes). Right now, my print-offs do not look like the screen, with notes beginning halfway through the staff in the printed version. One thing I need to figure out is how to make NWC 'auto-justify', that is, to automatically do the 'return carriage' function that a typewriter would do, so that I don't create one long line of music that is way to long to fit in the width of an 8.5 x 11 page. Anyway, no response is necessary yet, let me see if I can figure it out.

The responsiveness of the community here is an encouraging sign, because for the tech-challenged, like me, an active BB is crucial.

btw.... now here in Toronto where the work is but grew up in Grande Prairie... where the trees are.

Lawrie - re: Nag screens vs. forced printouts. For me it's the other way around. I can click a nag screen closed, but once the sheet is printed I can't click it closed. I use Firefox so I don't deal with pop-ups too much anymore. In terms of there not being any compelling evidence that could change my view...you know, I sat here for a minute trying to think of something that would do that and I couldn't so maybe you're right. However, I'm not quite able to believe that it is therefore a matter of faith. Thanks for the game of tennis

John - in a word, wow!! Thanks for the explanation. This is unreal - had I known that I could convert documents in this way and send them around in an non-app-specific format, I would have been doing so a long time ago. I'm always trying to email things that won't work or are too big for the receivers per-email limit. In fact, just today I was sitting here thinking that I wish I could email some charts to a gmail account so that I could go to a local business office and print whichever one I needed, as and when I need it during my day (I teach privately and do studio and live gigs). Another thing that would really come in handy is the ability to take a large number of pages and compress them down so that there are i.e. 4 quadrants in each page. I can't tell you the number of times I could have used that feature over the years. I hate to admit this but... the amount of paper wasted by the NWC forced print feature in the demo is nothing compared to the amount of paper I have used simple printing things off the net that I wanted to read at my leisure or wanted to make permanent copies of. I could have saved a significant amount of paper had I know about this .pdf printer thing. Of course I already have Adobe Reader on my machine. I am not kidding - I will be getting a .pdf maker in the next 48 hours. This is an amazing thing.

So this has been a fruitful exchange for me, for sure. Thanks for taking the time to compose that detailed reply.

Nikku

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #17 – 2005-11-23 06:37 pm

Hey Lawrie

One more thing - I can't test your theory because my printer ran out of ink last night!! (Too many damn order forms! lol... kidding, just kidding). Now, if I had a .pdf maker I could email myself some stuff I need for today and then go out and grab a coffee and print them at my local 'net cafe or whatever, but I don't, so....

I'll try that trick - it'll be funny/sad if it works, because that will make 7 things I could have done to avoid printing all those test pages.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #18 – 2005-11-23 10:12 pm

G'day Nik,
just spotted something that may help:

In your reply to David you mention "...print-offs do not look like the screen....notes beginning halfway through the staff in the printed...'auto-justify'...'return carriage'...one long line of music..."

I know you said no response is necessary but if I'm right then this is something I suspect you might not "get it" in a hurry as some don't. If I'm wrong I apologise... Anyway, a small hint:

In the edit window, each staff continues off to the right indefinitely - they do not wrap!

To see the wrap, you need to use preview.

If you create successive staves in the edit window, these correspond to additional instruments like a conductors score, they are not the next line of music for the first instrument.

To see what I mean, open the file "moonlight" in:
"C:\Program Files\Noteworthy Composer\Samples"

This file is a piano score. In the edit window you see 2 staves; piano right and left hands going off into infinity to the right. In the preview screen you see a full page of music as this is where the music wraps.

NWC is not WYSIWYG.

In your next post... "...ran out of ink... (too many damn order forms...)" I wonder if NWC has shares in the printer ink companies? - just kidding -

Lawrie

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #19 – 2005-11-24 06:27 am

Don't spend any money on the pdf makers, Nik. There are some that are freeware. The one I use is called pdfcreator and you can get it from http://sourceforge.net.

If you need to ship large quantities of files, zip them and send the resulting compressed file using http://yousendit.com. It goes without saying you can send extremely large files that way too.

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #20 – 2005-11-25 06:32 am

Hi David and Lawrie

David, thanks for the links. I have some time tonight so I am off to get that program.

Lawrie, tried the trick you mentioned but no luck - the order form warning box pops up no matter which pages you choose to print (1 of 1, 2 of 7, 2 of 2 etc). Nice try though. Thanks for taking the time to explain how NWC displays new score. It helped a lot

Thanks once again to all for responding. It was an interesting discussion. I have a feeling I'll be around.

Nik

Re: auto printing of order form

Reply #21 – 2005-11-25 09:50 am

G'day Nik,
Lawrie, tried the trick you mentioned but no luck

Oh well, can't win 'em all. Thanks for testing it.

Lawrie