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Messages - William Ashworth

1302
General Discussion / Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug
bidderxyzzy, I don't get it. Where does this attitude that you can't ever possibly be wrong come from?

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
Quote
   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
----------------------------
"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
----------------------------
"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
Quote
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
I've been having the same reaction as Rob has to bidderxyzzy's posts. I suspect some of my posts have had a similar effect on some people, but I do try to modify my tone when others point it out to me, or when I spot the problem myself. I'm afraid I don't see any such conciliatory attempts here.

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
The problem is that when you press "stop" the highlight showing the current location of the playback disappears. That can make it hard to find the precise spot I want to work on....especially when (as is often the case) I'm listening with my eyes closed in order to concentrate on the sonorities rather than the printed notes. I hover a finger over the F6 key when I do that, so I can stop quickly, but I often still get lost. A well-designed pause key could remedy that.
1307
General Discussion / Re: Buglet report - Layering
I'm with Rick, here, although I wouldn't necessarily call it a "feature." More of an inconvenience made unavoidable by the basic program design. If you look at the "force system break" check box in the bar line properties dialogue, you'll see that it only works on the top staff. That's another clue to the fact that NWC uses the top staff as the primary guide to determining print layout. I'm glad you've found a use for it, Rick, because I don't see it going away.
1308
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
Quote
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
I'm not sure if this is a bug or a program feature I don't like, but NWC has a disconcerting habit, during certain actions, of shifting the area I'm working on over to the far left side of the screen. I'm seeing it just now in the process of changing bar line properties. Does this bother anyone else? Personally, I would prefer to have the score stay where I put it vis-a-vis the screen boundaries at all times except during playback. I stay oriented better if I can see the music both before and after the part I'm working on, so every time the program shifts the current bar all the way over to the left I have to stop what I'm doing and shift it at least partway back. This is getting old. Could we have a fix?
1310
General Discussion / Re: Triplet display buglet...
...and maybe while the bug is being fixed we can gain some control over the placement of the triplet bracket. There have been many times I've wanted to shift it around or move it from the stems to the heads to avoid conflicts with lyrics, or tempo marks, or slurs, or....
1311
General Discussion / pause during playback
It occurs to me, as I work on a new score in which sonority needs to be fine-tuned at various points, that being able to pause playback and then start up again at the same spot would be a valuable addition to NWC. Ideally, the point in the score that was being played when the pause button was pressed would remain highlighted (assuming "chase playing notes" was turned on), which would make it easier to find the place in the music you want to work on. Shouldn't be too hard to implement - most of the code could be borrowed from the "stop" and "start playing from cursor" functions.
1312
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
Quote
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
Lawrie has it exactly right. As a beginning piano student I was handed an edition of the Bach two-part inventions that had every decoration written out. It was terrifying. It wasn't until I found an edition with the decorations written as symbols - as Bach himself certainly must have done - that I was able to play the things. In the written-out version, the notes were obscuring the music. Trying to write the swing into "Lady Be Good" has the same effect.
1314
General Discussion / Re: swinging notes
Unlike Lawrie, I'm going to have to be critical here.

Quote
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
Throwing my 2 cents worth in here....

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?
How about simply giving the user a warning message when the 0 volume condition is detected? Something like:

"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?
1318
General Discussion / Re: MIDI volume level being raised?
I agree with those who think NWC should leave the MIDI volume alone and not try to compensate for another program's stupidity. One of my pet peeves is programs that think they know better than I do how I want my computer to be set up, and change things around without asking me first. There is also a practical problem. I use speakers about 2/3 of the time, headphones the other 1/3. My headphones are much more sensitive than my speakers, so the volume level has to be set considerably lower to avoid blasting my eardrums into my head. If NWC decides I've set it too low, and raises it.....well, you can see what the consequences might be.

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.
Sorry to have pounded this so hard, Cyril, and thanks for the graceful clarification. My only reason for bringing it up was to make sure the difference between an edition and a composition was clearly understood by everybody. The value of that, here in the NWC2 forum, is to remind us that editing styles as well as composition styles change, and the program should (ideally) be flexible enough to allow all styles free reign.
1320
General Discussion / Re: Several question vis-a-vis a Bach score.
Well, since Bach died in 1750....

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
There's a workaround for that, too, but it involves a hidden change in the time signature and a precisely calculated hidden change in tempo, and it would certainly be better to have the option of hiding the bracket.
1323
General Discussion / wish list re triplets
....and now my problem is triplets. More specifically, it's triplet brackets. I'd like to be able to position them either upwards or downwards, as we can for slurs, ties, and stems. As is, they interfere with notes on other staves (or in other voices) about 20%-30% of the time. I realize there are workarounds, and I use them. But they take extra time and an extra (layered) staff, and it would be SO nice to just have the program flip the brackets over when asked to.
1324
General Discussion / Re: clef positions
Well, yeah, for courtesy clefs you can just grab a clef from the NWC2 standard font and stick it in as a text expression. I haven't actually tried that, but it should work....and there are other fonts you can use, if you can find a good style match. But that doesn't work for clef changes in the middle of a bar, and anyway, it misses the point: the clefs should be positioned properly by the program.

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
I hadn't noticed this previously, but in at least the latest beta, when I place a courtesy clef before the barline at the end of a system it isn't tucked right up against the barline where it belongs, but is moved back into the measure by at least a full clef width. The same problem appears when I change clefs in the middle of a bar: the new clef leaves a full clef's width of space before the first note it applies to. This might not be a problem if the clef properties dialogue had a standard NWC2 "expression placement" tab on it (allowing the "best fit forward" or "at next note or bar" options to do their stuff), but it doesn't. Does this bother anyone else?

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?
1327
General Discussion / Re: "This file was not properly saved"
Rob, to clarify a problem you pointed to earlier, i.e., not being able to remove the "read only" attribute of a file folder: this is actually a built-in Windows feature. File folders are always read-only: you can uncheck the read-only box in the properties dialogue, but the system will simply re-check it as soon as you close the dialogue. This has been the case since at least XP, and I suspect from the beginning. I have no idea why. It doesn't affect your ability to write to the folder, rename it, delete it, or do much of anything else with it as far as I can tell. I wasted a good number of perfectly good curse words before I discovered this.
1328
General Discussion / Re: suggestion: flexible defaults
I guess I count myself an experienced user, having used (and loved) NWC since the mid-90s, back when it was only a little baby program with a whole lot of potential. I use a mix of keyboard and mouse - keyboard to insert notes, rests and bars; mouse to do nearly everything else. That pattern hasn't changed much over the years. I suspect that keyboard/mouse use habits depend more on individual quirks than on levels of experience.

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
I have "smart insertion point" checked. I use the toolbar button to insert the dynamic (my use of the machine is very mouse-oriented, so it's easier for me to do that). And Lawrie is right - if you use the button, the program doesn't remember the visibility setting for the dynamic. Maybe all we need is a fix for that.
1330
General Discussion / suggestion: flexible defaults
As I work on a piano score where I have to enter dynamics in the LH stave and then make them invisible - over and over - it occurs to me that it would help a lot if I could temporarily reset the default visibility for dynamics to "top stave only." I can also think of some other situations where being able to reset a default to a different vaule would speed the work flow tremendously. Seems like a relatively simple feature to add. Does this make sense to the rest of you?
1331
General Discussion / Re: wish list - radio buttons
Lawrie is right about radio buttons vs. check boxes. They serve different functions. Check boxes are for cumulative attributes; radio buttons are for mutually exclusive attributes. And I'm thinking the same thing you are, Lawrie, about the design. Look at the visibility dialogue box, for example. It has a lot of empty space in it, and two drop-down boxes close together in the upper left corner. The color box could be moved to the right and the "show on printed page" box could then expand downward as an array of radio buttons. Really a simple design change. (There are too many color choices to make radio buttons a viable option there, although some programmers might disagree.)

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
Good idea - I'd love to have visibility and slur/tie-direction buttons in the toolbar. That would make my life a lot simpler. But I'm not sure it renders a change to radio buttons moot. There are more places than these that the buttons could be used, and if you're changing more than one attribute it's often easier to work in a dialogue box than move around the button bar. And Lawrie's right (as he usually is); the button patterns would be a quicker read for the current status of an attribute than the menu box is.

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
I guess I should have said "mouse button pushes." The drill, if you're using the mouse, is highlight, right-click to bring up the context menu, click on "properties", click on the "visibility" tab (if it's not already chosen), click on the "show on printed page" drop-down menu to bring it up, then click on "Never." With radio buttons, clicking on the drop-down menu wouldn't be necessary, eliminating one mouse-button push. My guess is that it wouldn't change a thing for you keyboard people. And by the way, David, when you're in a dialogue box in NWC2, the tab key already shifts you from field to field rather than inserting a barline in your music. Barline insertion via tab wouldn't be affected.

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
In most (maybe all) of the software I've seen with radio buttons, you can move among the buttons with the tab and shift-tab keys (sometimes also the arrow keys), so people who use only the keyboard should be OK. But Lawrie is right - they shouldn't be used for places where there are more than three choices.

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
Would it be possible for NWC2 to use radio buttons instead of drop-down menus for some of the more commonly-used commands? I'm thinking particularly of "show on printed page" and the direction of slurs and ties. Each of these has a limited set of options, and lots of blank space in their dialog boxes for showing buttons. I use these three commands a lot, and having buttons instead of drop-down menus would save me a keystroke each time.

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:
The simplest way to do repetitive inserts of the same dynamic is to just use copy and paste. This also has the advantage of retaining any special formatting you've done to it (such as making invisible dynamics for controlling crescendos/diminuendos). Works across staves or even across files, and all you need is one control-c plus a bunch of control-v's.
1337
General Discussion / Re: beams across barlines
Well, looking at my score (which started life as a copy of the quartet template), I find that all the staves are orchestral but that the upper and lower boundaries are smaller on the added staves. Lawrie and Rick are right. (Thanks. I like the way we all take care of each other so well in this forum.)

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 don't know if this is a wish list item or a bug report, so I'm posting it here.

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?