NoteWorthy Composer Forum

..., they may as well buy Finale (churches get a 42% discount!),... to enable that content to be usable in my app.

Hope, because lasconic’s .nwctxt -> MusicXML converter makes mistakes when multiple lyric lines use voices to change rhythms on a man additional verse.  Without that bug fixed (and it doesn’t look likely), my users will be unable to import the content they created in NWC unless I write an importer from scratch.  And without proper documentation on what might appear in the file, interpreting my users files will be “best guess” instead of reliable.

...Another mystery to me, and this may be related, is how to use the visibility options. I have only ever used Default and Never. What's up with all the  other settings?

The anchor is just an annoying presence I just wish weren't there.....what I'm really trying to do is erase the text-letter (chord name) I placed there.  I have moved the cursor up and down the edge of the letter, front and back and tried to delete it from a number of possible positions "on or near" the letter and anchor and nothing works....it just keeps erasing the notes down below it.  When you try to highlight the letter, it highlights the entire vertical strip from the letter down through the measure below.  How do I isolate the text-letter I inserted.  Example...i want to change the chord from G to C....I seem to not be able to erase the G at all.  I've tried the delete and backspace buttons.  It used to be very simple in 2.5.5

Rikbel:
 One problem is when I play both staffs in C I get 2 different tones even though they are in the same key.

I would like to target my texts mainly to new users, who should see images and text useful for solving their problem - and not much more.

...The main necessary feature is that the number 1 must appear above the notes defining the repeated segment. Why?  The tool doesn't seem to increment the number in the repeat bars and I don't think I've ever seen the number 1 appearing above the repeated bar in professionally engraved charts..Of course, one could create this label manually. However, to me this simply seems cumbersome - why not use the same object, but without a symbol? This seems quite logical to me.  I'm not sure what you mean.The same effect (label, but no symbol because notes are visible) is necessary after a line break, according to one example in B.B. Yet in "Repeated bars and line break" you put the number in the visible bar that begins the second system../b]

• First, I did not want to pop up two dialogs, therefore I put the flag that says whether the symbol should appear into the sign of the label; but maybe the alternative design, with a separate checkbox dialog with default "show symbol" does not need more key hits ... I have not counted them. 
    Agreed.  The fewer the clicks the better.  Getting to the label box in the dialogue window is a little awkward.
• Second, for single staff printing, the user tool should add useful spacers.
    As it currently works, you need spacers before and after the symbol to make it sit inside the bar instead of over the next bar line.  You want the double bar repeat to sit on the bar line, so it's only the single repeat that needs to be tweaked.  How about changing the symbol from % to .....%..... (where ..... is a space set with the space bar), and using the Preserve Width setting?  The dialogue box could ask the user how many spaces to use..
• Last, the tool should make all the notes and dynamics (and what else??) invisible when applied.
    In percussion parts, jazz bass and jazz solo charts, the single bar repeat is dictating the rhythm or the chords  but not necessarily dynamics, text, dynamic variations, or tempo variations.  For instance, I occasionally see hairpins in the last few bars of single bar repeats.  In such cases, the repeat sign is not "correctly" a repeat, since you want the player to do what the rest of the group is doing.  I think it would be enough to simply change the notes within each bar to invisible, rather than make everything else invisible too.

Other thoughts.

• I'm not sure what you mean by "label" but I think that is what you're calling the little number you place over the simile symbol every bar or every nth bar.
• RepeatMark.ms places brackets around the label:  (4), (6) etc.  That is preferable to the label currently generated by RepeatMark_ms.hmm.  Why?  I recently sight read a chart with many successive two-bar repeat signs, each of which had the required 2 over the symbol.  The chart also had small printed bar numbers above each bar line as well as labels showing the repeat iteration number.  Brackets around the label make it easier to differentiate from the other numbers.
• Each repeat sign seems to need to be entered manually, with labels (if needed) set individually. The numbers in the label don't seem to increment automatically (maybe I missed it).  Automatic would be better, since suppressing the label with 0 or setting the label requires some awkward mouse movement in the popup window.
• I wonder if the logic could work like the multibar rest sign?  Insert the tool in the bar after the one that is to be repeated, set the number of times it is to copy that bar, make the notes invisible and insert the sign, and give the user control over which repeat iterations get labelled.
• Each simile bar may be labelled with a number if the user wishes, but it's more common to only see the label every 4 or 6 bars. Your tool allows the label to be suppressed, but the best way to invoke that is simply set it up in the first repeat bar and copy that entire bar as many times as desired, changing the ones you want to label.

  Overall, a very useful tool, please carry on developing.  My thanks to both Mike and you.[/list]

... Another suggestion that has been offered in the past is to have "transparent" as one of the notehead colors. This is a bit different than what a blank space notehead does, since that only "hides" the notehead, not the accidental or augmentation dots associated with a notehead.

Hi David, though you don't really need it for this, it is available as part of an optional suite upgrade I did in 2009:
http://zoundz.pardyline.com.au/SupportFiles/Fonts/ChordFontsDoSiGermanic.zip

The link is on the Scripto in the same place as my other suites:
https://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful.html#Fonts

...If you go to Tools-->Options-->Folders, what is the folder near "Object Plugins"? Is this exactly the folder where you installed (copied) the Beam.hmm.nwcuser.lua file to?

Hi -
...I don't think it has to do with fonts. First, the .nwctxt files do contain the font names embedded, so one should see in the page setup whether there would be any unusual fonts.
But second and more important, I do not use fonts, but rather draw the beams with NWC's plugin machinery (in concrete, the nwcdraw module; the code for drawing a beam is copied verbatim from the nwcdraw documentation).

Just to make sure - I use NWC version 2.75a.2.

And I have attached an image on how "Stemlets.nwctxt" looks in my NWC ... what does yours look like?

//Edit:
Do you see any alerts - either

• when opening NWC (which would indicate a problem with Beam.hmm's source code),
• or when opening an example .nwctxt file (which would either indicate that Beam.hmm is not installed at the expected folder, or again an error in the source code which for some reason does not occur on my computer)?

H.M.

...CueHeads.ms was mentioned as part of a number of the original post's requests;... I still consider CueHeads as a workaround to having true cue-sized noteheads (which NWC already knows how to render for grace notes.)

I suppose you know that BarCounter.nw.nwcuser.lua does this too, do you?

...I continue to be frustrated by:
Not knowing what staff size I should make my scores. As a performer,  I often use smaller sizes to reduce the page turns. But it seems too small for others and I want it to look professional.
How much space should be between systems? I like to enlarge the margins to get more on the page but some printers aren’t happy with that and cutoff the lower notes.
Choosing staff size: Sometimes I get it wrong and the music looks too big and thus intimidating (strange how our brains work!)
The text issue: choosing font and size for things like “ a tempo “ and “ rit” or “Unison. “

C-1.  I would expect that with such a multi-staff selection, one could at least delete it copy it and paste it somewhere else (with accepted shaky semantics if boundaries at source or target location do not line up exactly) change properties (as with current single-staff selections)

I think it is sufficient to have only multi-staff selection over contiguous staffs - especially if the following feature C-2 is also supported.

C-3. "Overwrite mode" - this is customary in many other score editors: The score is implicitly or explicitly filled with (probably invisible) rests; writing of a note replaces the rest (or, most of the time, part of it) with the note. The main reason for this feature is that notes present later in the staff are not shifted - this is extremely helpful for some use-cases like actually composing pieces. It also mimics the way one writes on paper.

C-6. Staffsig-copying Ctrl-A: ..."New staff" (Ctrl-A) should create a new staff immediately below the active staff

C-6. Staffsig-copying Ctrl-A: ..."New staff" (Ctrl-A) should ... copy over all the leading Staffsig items (clef, key, and Staffsig plugins) to the new staff (this could be controlled by an option "old-style Ctrl-A" or, like 2. above, by a sticky "Edit" checkbox).

C-9. Score scanning - "everyone has it" >> Also here, a separate program is sufficient.

G-1. Reduced-size staffs.

G-4. Placing arbitrary images into a score.

... numbered simile marks as used in brass band voices