NWC Viewer - Song Version, Font and MIDI Information

2011-09-26 10:06 pm

The Viewer, currently NWC Viewer 2.5 Beta 3, is often a potential purchaser's first introduction to NoteWorthy Composer.
It has been noted in Extra fonts in the NWC installation pack?, that when used with the Scriptorium, the experience is somewhat wanting.

My purpose here explore how the Viewer might inform the user as to why the song performs the way it does and provide information that would enable the user to improve the Viewer's rendering of the song.

IMO, the Viewer would be improved if it would display:

1) the song's NWC version and a range of years indicating when that version was the current version. If the user sees that the song was produced by 10 year old software, he might be more forgiving of the quality of the display.

2) a font substitution report. As has been noted, inappropriate font substitution can result in a hideous display. The report might consist of the font name, including bold/italic attributes, the font name substituted and a count of the times this substitution occured in rendering the complete song. This would assist the user in assessing the severity of the degradation and suggest a path to improving the display.

3) the song's MIDI device mapping. This might suggest a path to improving playback.

My thought would be to change the Info popup into a tabbed control with tabs for 'Info', 'Version', 'Fonts' and MIDI.

I welcome comments, but try to stick to the subject of "the information that the Viewer provides and how the Viewer should present that information." Otherwise, please start a New Topic.