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In Appreciation

As a frequent user of the forum and the newsgroup I can't help noticing that the variety and extent of questions and discussions posted really push computer notation to the limits.
It really makes me appreciate the job the NWC support team has done in producing a great product at a modest price and helps me understand why 'professional quality' notation packages are such an astronomical price!
When I was working in the music profession my main source of income was copying.
It was quite easy to place marks where the arranger wanted them, add pedal marks to harp parts, tremolos to strings or trills and shakes to horn parts. But it's another thing altogether to write a program to do this at the whim of the user.
I take my hat off to the notation programmers of the world - you're doing a great job!
(Now if only MY wish list items were implemented)!

Re: In Appreciation

Reply #1
  As a frequent user of the forum (and scarcely of the newsgroup, alas), I must admit that I fully share the opinion of Barry.
  As a musician and a programmer, I must push the congratulations further, for having written a small score editor myself in Pascal/Asm under Dos a long ago (for 8086 processor). Such a good GUI and bug-free (at 99.8%) program is really diffcult to achieve, especially when making new versions that include various (and sometimes opposed) users wishes.
  As a user, I have to say that the program is really easy to use, easy enough to let me do almost what I want or find turnarounds ; and when sometimes I have questions, they always have been answered (and sometimes in next version).
  As a registered user, I'm glad that the registration fee was affordable, even for a student !
  As a font-creator, I must ask Barry if he plans to release a version 3 of BoxMarks, and if not, if I could propose him a new version (instead of creating one entirely)...
  As a "dreamer", I dtram of certain usage of space-bar...

  Oh, and did I tell you I once tried to write scores with NWC via voice ?? it works perfectly (with an old Win3.1 program), but has the same inconvenience as mouse: it's much slower than (PC)keyboard!!

Enough said, NWCly yours,
                                   Marsu

Re: In Appreciation

Reply #2
Not a surprise Marsu! This baby can do lotta things. And, by the way, for me the non-practising musician (due to practical complications) this programme is a blessing, and what keeps me into music.

Thank you NWC team. All of you.

Re: In Appreciation

Reply #3
Marsu, what usage of the space bar were you dreaming of?

- seb

Re: In Appreciation

Reply #4
Steve,
I was dreaming of the space bar as a tool to "pause" the music. In many music programs (I have ProTools in mind, a _big_ professional music/tracks manager), the space bar is used to pause/unpause the playback. But this "cuts" the music, since the flow of data is interrupted.
In MIDI (thought I) the music should continue, since if data flow is stopped, no "shutdown" (or other) event is sent to the synthesis card. Thus making a "fermata" (point d'orgue) at will during playback. It seems that this is more complicated, since midi data are "compiled" at the beginning of midi playback, and that no real "delay" midi event exist.

For rehearsal purpose, as well as composing, this could be very helpful to study a score note by note...

Did I answer your question?

NWCly yours,
Marsu

Re: In Appreciation

Reply #5
Just thought I'd chime in with a wee bit of praise as well. As a grad student in musicology, I frequently need to include examples in papers - and we all know how much those "big-guys'" software packages cost, even for students. I am thrilled with this program, suggest it strongly to others and do so often. Sure, I'd love to see stuff added - who wouldn't - but I wouldn't trade noteworthy in now for anything!

--- A frequent user and almost never a contributor to the discussion...

 

Re: In Appreciation

Reply #6
Yup, and I only recently discovered (thx to Andrew with his NG faq) the "copy special" function for such a purpose... Really useful!!! No need any more to generate gifs/tga files. Neither .wmf (which make Word explode on low-memory systems).