1301
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Messages - William Ashworth
1302
General Discussion / Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug
I'm a retired reference librarian, so I know something about finding information; and when I looked up those three definitions of a bug, I wasn't even breathing hard. I could easily find you a hundred more. They would all say the same thing: a bug is a coding error, not a design error. It is something that makes the program do something the programmer doesn't want it to, not that the user doesn't want it to. The use of the word for a glitch in a mechanical or electrical system predates computers. Thomas Edison used it. That famous moth in the IBM in the 1940s was seized on gleefully by the programmers, not because they were looking for a new name for computer glitches, but because their bug was a real insect bug and it struck them as funny.
I could go on like this, but it would be pointless, because you would undoubtedly dismiss it all as wrong, no matter how impeccable the source. Why?
In the matter of the orchestral brackets, yes, they are "wrong" in NWC. I put "wrong" in quotes because the rules of score preparation are conventions, not laws. As long as the music is easily read by performers, and represents the composer's intentions accurately, it doesn't really matter where the brackets go. It would be better if NWC followed the convention. It's not the end of the world that it doesn't. Look at some of the scores from the 1950s and 1960s - the ones with bar lines between staves instead of in them, or with the music's contours represented by wavy lines instead of notes, or with staves that circle around a central point or fly off in several different directions. They don't follow convention either. I don't write music that looks like that, but that doesn't make me right and John Cage wrong. I would prefer standard orchestral brackets. I can live without them until Eric implements them, and so can the people who read my scores. Why are we spending so much time on this?
My academic training, back in the sixties, was in music history, theory, and composition. I have an MA in theory and composition, plus a couple of years. I once directed an early music group. That doesn't make me better than anybody else in this forum, but it does mean that I know a little bit about how to write a score, and what scores have looked like in other eras, and how the current conventions developed. Let's not argue about this, OK?
You strike me as an intelligent person with a lot to contribute. Please get that chip off your shoulder, lose your perfectionism, and get down here in the real old imperfect world with the rest of us. You might find you're having as much fun helping to mold this great little program as we are.
1303
General Discussion / Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug
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Finally, I must insist that neither "unexpectedness" nor the programmer's intent has anything to do with the definition of the term "bug" as used in the software industry. If the result is wrong, it's a bug, period.
"When your program contains a bug, it is of course because somewhere there is something which you believe to be true but actually is not true."
- Norman Matloff, Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/UnixAndC/CLanguage/Debug.html#tth_sEc1
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"In computer technology, a bug is a coding error in a computer program."
- SearchSoftwareQuality.com Definitions, What is a bug?
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid92_gci211714,00.html
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"A bug is unexpected and undesirable behaviour by a program."
- Ian Lance Taylor, Debugging
http://www.airs.com/ian/essays/ebug/debug.html
With all due respect, bidderxyzzy - just what software industry are we talking about?
1304
General Discussion / Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug
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The behavior of the orchestral staff attribute is not an unimplemented RFP item, it is something that is implemented and is done wrong
Nevertheless, it is not code that is doing something unexpected, it is code that is doing something incomplete. It isn't wrong from the standpoint of what the code was designed to do, only from the standpoint of what the code should eventually be designed to do. That isn't a bug, just a shortcut to get things up and running. A sort of built-in, temporary kludge. I suspect all of us have done a few of those.
....but thanks, bidderxyzzy, for offering to tone things down a bit. And welcome to one of the most literate, well-informed, creative users' forums on the Net.
1305
General Discussion / Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug
bidderxyzzy, some of the rest of us also have some programming experience (I worked in C before C++ existed). We also recognize that NWC is largely a one-man operation, and that one man is only human. Suggestions are welcome. Demands are another matter. Demands coupled with insults to the program really don't belong in this forum - or anywhere else, for that matter. Cut us all (including yourself) some slack. You'll be much more likely to get problems like the orchestral brackets (which you are correct about) fixed.
And by the way, a bug is a flaw in the code that creates unexpected results, not a part of the rfp that hasn't been fully implemented yet. If you're going to bitch, can you at least bitch with the correct terminology?
1306
General Discussion / Re: pause during playback
1307
General Discussion / Re: Buglet report - Layering
1308
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
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Bottom line; I think NoteWorthy Composer (it's official full name) is a much better sequencer than it is an engraver, and I can not understand why so many really obvious and easy to fix problems in both areas are ignored.
I think it does really well as both. As a composer, I find both that it helps me get the sound right (the sequencer angle) and puts out great-looking scores and parts (the engraver angle). But you have to meet it on its terms, and you have to be willing to put in the necessary work.
The need for hidden tracks to get the sound right is due more to deficiencies in MIDI than it is to deficiencies in NWC. A machine will simply never sound like a human without a great deal of tweaking, because that "human element" really consists of small variations in timing, volume, accent, etc. - you can notate these, but the score gets very messy very quickly, and it's best to hide them. Performers get intimidated, or lost. (And by the way, very fine adjustments to get the sound "just right" aren't necessarily going to help people who take your file home and play it on their own machines. The MIDI standard may be universal, but sound cards differ in their ability to interpret it accurately. I have some issues with my Soundblaster.;-)
Getting that "professionally engraved look" is also often a matter of extra staves, in this case layered together. This is particularly necessary in choral music, where performers often have to follow one of several independent lines on the same staff. To maintain that independence, you really must write the lines on individual staves and then superimpose them. Putting items on separate staves and then layering them allows very fine adjustments to be made to notes, dynamics, etc., without affecting anything else in the music. Takes a little extra work, but it's a lot better than hiring an engraver.
As to the "many really obvious and easy to fix problems" - perhaps you are expecting too much of a beta release? Helping the NWC programmers find and fix these problems is a principal purpose of this forum.
I guess it's really all a matter of perspective. My masters' thesis was a piece for concert band - 20 staves per system, 53 folio-size pages. I wrote it all out on blueprint parchment using a calligrapher's pen and a straightedge (I had to create the staves as well as the notation) on a drafting table I built specifically to do the thesis. This was in 1967. Had NWC been available then, even in much more rudimentary form than we currently find it, I would have knelt down and kissed the feet of the person who brought it to me.
1309
General Discussion / shifting work area problem
1310
General Discussion / Re: Triplet display buglet...
1311
General Discussion / pause during playback
1312
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
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mark the first of every pair as tenuto and the second as staccatto
That gets the durations approximately right, David, but it doesn't get the attacks right. But I think you're on the right track - and here we get back into something NWC could do something about. It would be nice to be able to stick a free-floating bar at either the top or the bottom of the first page of a score, in a smaller point size, containing something like this:
!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.0,Single)
|Clef|Type:Treble
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:-1|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam=First
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:-1|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam=End
|Text|Text:" to be played as "|Font:StaffItalic|Pos:0|Wide:Y
|Note|Dur:4th,Triplet=First|Pos:-1
|Note|Dur:8th,Triplet=End|Pos:-1
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End
A small free-floating bar like this could also be used in a footnote anywhere in the score to show how an obscure ornament was to be played. This is a fairly common practice in printed scores, especially of early music. One of the disadvantages of NWC is that we can't do it. It would probably be fairly hard to implement in the program, but I'd sure like to see Eric try.
1313
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
1314
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
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My scores are all prepared for singers who need a way of practicing at home. For them, any discrepancy between the notation on the screen and what they hear would be disastrous.
From the standpoint of vocal pedagogy, this is flat wrong. If you don't teach your students to interpret in the style the music is written in, you aren't teaching them music.
From the standpoint that we should be observing in this discussion - its effect on NWC, and vice versa - it is also wrong. To make NWC jump through all the hoops necessary to render every style of music exactly as heard would make it so unwieldy as to be useless. While I agree that there are some improvements that could be made in playback, NWC is primarily a means of generating scores, not generating MIDI files. Scores are a means of transmitting music to musicians, and they depend on the musician's knowledge of style to transmit the music accurately. Back in the '60s, when I was taking composition, composers went through a spell of trying to notate everything exactly. Those scores (including the ones I did at the time) are largely unplayable, and if you do manage to play them accurately, they leave listeners cold because they sound mechanical. Better to write the jazz tune or the hornpipe in even notes and trust the musician to know how to swing.
When you write the score, you are writing the music. When you hack the tempo track (or any other hidden track) you are interpreting the music. Let's not clutter up NWC by confusing the two.
1315
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
Jazz isn't the only place where you have the problem of music notated one way and meant to be played another. I have played in Irish dance bands. Jigs are notated in 6/8 (9/8 for a slip jig) and are played straight. Reels are notated in 4/4 and played straight. Hornpipes are notated in 4/4 but are played with a little swing, someplace between a jig and a reel in feeling. Decorations are played as triplets in all three dance forms, no matter how they're written. And if you get a good fiddler or whistle player going, all of the notation goes out the window anyway.
The crux of the matter really is that the way a good performer in any style plays music is not capturable in notation. What we write down is an approximation which is then put through the twin filters of tradition and the performer's experience. When I write for a string quartet I notate very differently than I do when I'm preparing a chart for a folk band or a jazz band. IMO, it's unfair to expect any notation program - NWC included - to take care of this. If you're writing for musicians to play, notate in the style they're used to playing. If you want MIDI playback, of course, that's a different story, and the score you come up with will look quite different. If you want both - well, that's what hidden staves are for. I curse the extra time preparing them, but as a performer I sure wouldn't want to have to read them - even though they are the most accurate possible representation of what I am trying to get performers to do.
1316
General Discussion / Re: MIDI volume level being raised?
"WARNING: Your computer's sound may be set too low to hear playback."
A link to a help topic on how to set the Windows volume control might be provided, along with a "don't show this again" check box for those who don't want to be nagged by warning messages during startup. Would anyone out there object to this?
1317
General Discussion / Re: MIDI volume level being raised?
1318
General Discussion / Re: MIDI volume level being raised?
Bottom line, here: swearing at Media Player is not a good reason to set up NWC so we feel like swearing at it, too.
1319
General Discussion / Re: Several question vis-a-vis a Bach score.
1320
General Discussion / Re: Several question vis-a-vis a Bach score.
The 1850s pub dates are, of course, the dates of editions produced by later editors. The composition of the Goldbergs took place in - actually, Bach didn't date them, but most music historians place them in 1742. Not critical for the discussion here - I just like to see facts kept straight. Too many years as a librarian, I guess.
1321
General Discussion / Re: wish list re triplets
1322
General Discussion / Re: Several question vis-a-vis a Bach score.
1323
General Discussion / wish list re triplets
1324
General Discussion / Re: clef positions
And custom clefs are often found in 20th-21st century music, especially in the music of the serialists and the experimentalists. I've never had occasion to use one, but I've seen them in scores. A text clef and a layered staff, properly transposed, will take care of the matter; but, again, why? It seems a simple thing for the program to take care of itself.
1325
General Discussion / clef positions
An "expression placement" tab on clefs would also allow the occasional use of oddball clefs created by moving a clef up or down the staff. This is usually done with C clefs, but I've seen G and F clefs moved as well, both in very old and very new music. Could we maybe have such a thing in NWC2?
1326
General Discussion / Re: suggestion: flexible defaults
1327
General Discussion / Re: "This file was not properly saved"
1328
General Discussion / Re: suggestion: flexible defaults
I have mixed feelings about defaulting the attributes of each new dynamic to the previous dynamic in the same staff. It's done partially now (vertical position and justification), and it can get annoying when you want something different - but it can also be useful when you have to add a bunch of dynamics that belong in the same relative position on the staff. I think that overall it might be better if the visibility attribute were set in the same way as the vertical position and justification attributes, but I still think it would be better to have a user-changeable, overrideable default for each staff, even if it reset to the factory default every time the program was restarted.
And by the way, regarding the "top staff only" visibility attribute: I write a fair amount of vocal music, where the top staff of the piano is actually the middle staff of the score. The "top staff only" attribute is pretty useless there. Again, a user-changeable default would be a better solution.
1329
General Discussion / Re: suggestion: flexible defaults
1330
General Discussion / suggestion: flexible defaults
1331
General Discussion / Re: wish list - radio buttons
I'm not sure I agree with you, though, about the default option. Most programs only have one "reset to default" button that takes care of everything. That is probably oversimplification, and resetting individual defaults can definitely be useful. But there are really only two options on visibility - on or off. Same with slurs and ties - up or down. If you want to turn visibility on or off, or turn a slur around, it's because you're dissatisfied with a specific spot and you need to fix that spot. My instinct there is to go for the visibility or direction I want, not to click "default" and hope the program agrees with me. A good compromise might be one "reset to default" option per dialogue box tab, resetting all options on that tab.
And I agree with everyone on the size of the program. Keep it small and simple! I love the fact that NWC isn't bloatware, and I will cheerfully do without any option on my personal wish list that requires a significant increase in code size to pull off.
1332
General Discussion / Re: wish list - radio buttons
And you've opened another question here, David. Does "default" really count as an option? I've never found it a particularly useful entry in the menus. Seems to me there's really only three choices for visibility - always, top staff, and never - and "default" just says the program is going to decide which one of those to use. It would be better, from my standpoint, if the program actually told you which one it was choosing instead of just saying it was taking over the choice. How do the rest of you feel?
1333
General Discussion / Re: wish list - radio buttons
As for selecting the whole staff for slur/tie up or down: sometimes I want the default, sometimes not. Depends on the place in the music. I've tried changing the whole staff, but then I have to change about half of the slurs and/or ties back. Works out to about the same effort either way. I'd be interested in hearing about others' experiences along these lines (especially other mouse users).
1334
General Discussion / Re: wish list - radio buttons
I use the keyboard to enter notes, too, but I find it easier to reach for the mouse - actually a trackball, in my case - to activate the menus. As for carpal tunnel, yeah, that's a problem. That's why I want the radio buttons, because those extra mouse-button pushes really add up. The trackball and a wrist brace help, but they don't get rid of the problem completely.
1335
General Discussion / wish list - radio buttons
I haven't done any programming for a long time, but I seem to recall that the OOP front end I used to be familiar with let you choose "radio buttons" or "drop-down menu" and then made the necessary code changes automatically, so it should be a no-brainer to implement.
1336
General Discussion / Re: "Insert Dynamic" bug report:
1337
General Discussion / Re: beams across barlines
Now comes the logical follow-up request: when the "layer with next" box is checked, could NWC not check the size of the staff to be layered with and adjust accordingly? When the two staves to be layered differ in upper and lower boundaries, the smaller boundaries should be adjusted to match the larger ones. It seems as though this could be made automatic with a minimum of programming (though, as I said once before, I know just enough programming to be dangerous).
1338
General Discussion / beams across barlines
I need to beam a group of 8th notes across a barline in a score using orchestral staves. Since NWC won't beam across barlines (there's the wish list item), the logical approach is to use layering and simply leave out the barline in the staff with the beamed notes. But when I do that, and activate layering, the barlines on the layered staff don't quite connect to the barlines in the staves above and below - vertical gaps are left that are roughly the width of the space between two ledger lines at the current score's font size (there's the bug).
Has anyone found a way around this little peculiarity? Is there a chance it could be eliminated in an upcoming release? If there's a reason one might need non-connecting barlines in an orchestral score (I can't think of one), could we at least have adjustable barline lengths so we can grow them together when a gap like this occurs?
1339