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display suggestion

This may have been suggested before: but it would help me a lot if the information in the lower RH corner of the editor screen included, along with the name of the staff, the number of the measure in which the insertion point is located.

Cheers,

Bill

Re: display suggestion

Reply #1 –
It has and would help me too.
Registered user since 1996

Re: display suggestion

Reply #2 –
ditto
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #3 –
Amen.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #4 –
Ditto -  I think that bit of info would be much more valuable than the %age of the staff used and would willingly forgoe that. I don't recall ever being near that (except when I tried just to see what happens).

There of course is the work around - Ctrl G, which immediately tells you where you are, followed by ESC - but a visual marker that is always available would be much better.

Rich.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #5 –
   There are many items that I would very much like to see down there at the bottom right hand corner of the Status Bar, but mainly the current value of the tempo, the dynamic, any non-default Multipoint Controller Property (such as the volume), and the instrument.  It would be good, obviously, if one could select which item was shown ... just like one can select which buttons appear in the toolbars.

   And while we're at it, wouldn't it be nice to be able to apply a "Find" backwards!  That would let us search for the running value of any item!

   MusicJohn, 6/May/08

Re: display suggestion

Reply #6 –
<control><G>, <esc> is fine if you're just curious. If you're trying to position a score whose top staff has scrolled off the top of the screen - carrying the measure numbers with it - it's extremely tedious. (It's possible to use <control><G> to navigate directly to the measure you want, of course, but if you're only scrolling horizontally by a couple of screens' worth of data it's a lot easier and faster to just move the thumb in the scroll bar - if you can figure out where you are.)

And I agree with Richard that the [% used] field is unnecessary. The wind quintet I'm currently working on would have to be 8450 measures long to use up the whole staff. That would be 285 hours of music. I don't think so.

Bill

Re: display suggestion

Reply #7 –
Yes, yes, yes please!
It seems like a little change to do.
Please let it hitch a ride in the next update!
Down with percentages, up the bar numbers!

Re: display suggestion

Reply #8 –
While we're at it, I'd like to see measure #'s in the editor all the time, independent of the settings for printout.
Registered user since 1996

Re: display suggestion

Reply #9 –
Quote
I'd like to see measure #'s in the editor all the time,

I'd agree if it could be a toggle on/ toggle off feature.  I wouldn't want the clutter most times.
 

Re: display suggestion

Reply #10 –
Hey, can I resurrect an old wish of mine for the status bar to contain:
1) current bar number
2) current beat
3) current key signature (might be tricky for weird key sigs, I guess, but maybe just "F# C# Bb" would do)
4) current time sig
5) hmm... I thought I had more, but can't remember them...

Re: display suggestion

Reply #11 –
Long time wish of mine also (to have more status bar info).

+1
John

Re: display suggestion

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Andrew Purdam –
Hey, can I resurrect an old wish of mine for the status bar to contain:
1) current bar number
2) current beat
3) current key signature (might be tricky for weird key sigs, I guess, but maybe just "F# C# Bb" would do)
4) current time sig
5) hmm... I thought I had more, but can't remember them...
Clef and transposition might be useful.

After doing all that, if it could be shipped out to User Tools as a comment you would have something.

Bar number is a nebulous concept in NoteWorthy. It could be the bar number as seen on the printout which is taken from the topmost visible staff, the bar number of the current staff or the bar number as seen by MIDI.
Registered user since 1996

Re: display suggestion

Reply #13 –
I do agree that the bar number can mean any of those.
The bar number that corresponds with the Ctrl-G command (go to bar number ...) would be the most useful.
"Let's see, where am I now? Bar number 123. Fine. Fiddle and fool around... now let's get back."
Ctrl-G, 123. That should get you back to where you were.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #14 –
Quote from: Rick G.
Bar number is a nebulous concept in NoteWorthy. It could be the bar number as seen on the printout which is taken from the topmost visible staff, the bar number of the current staff or the bar number as seen by MIDI.

Good point. I think we can discount the MIDI view, because we're mostly looking at ways to help navigate the editor. But the question of insertion point vs. current screen position is one I've gone back and forth on for quite a while. My original post suggested using the insertion point, but I'm not sure that's the one that would be the most helpful.

The most common scenario I run into is trying to determine what part of the score I'm looking at. What are the numbers of the measures that are currently on the screen? If I've scrolled away from the insertion point, I have two choices. I can use the thumb in the vertical scroll bar to scroll up and look at the measure numbers (provided that I've activated them); or I can click somewhere in the window and then use <control><g>. If I use the first method, I've lost track of my vertical position in the score; if I use the second, I've moved the insertion point. And I don't really want to do either one of those things.

I guess what I'd really like to see is two changes, not just one. Put the insertion point in the status bar; but also change the measure numbers so that they display on the staff that is currently at the top of the screen instead of on the top staff of the score. If there were a button-bar button and a keyboard shortcut to turn measure numbers on and off, so that screen clutter could be reduced when needed without moving the current window back to the beginning of the score (snarl snarl snarl), my joy would be complete. At least for a moment.

Cheers,

Bill

Re: display suggestion

Reply #15 –
I think I'd like to see the visible number reflect the insertion point.   

One complexity that may arise is when you've got 6 staffs visible, but they're instruments 3 through 8 (so today's method of displaying bar numbers won't show). 

Then you've copied a few bars from instrument 4 to instrument 5, and now you've moved to the right (a whole screen away, perhaps), to edit a bit.  Overall, instrument 5 temporarily doesn't have the same number of bars as the others.  Now you want to copy something else from instrument 9 (off the screen) into instrument 5 in the centre of what you already copied from instrument 4. 

It can get messy. 


Re: display suggestion

Reply #16 –
Quote from: David Palmquist
It can get messy.

Oh, it certainly can!

But making one staff being longer than the others doesn't alter the local measure numbers - it just adds extra measures at the end of that staff.

Of course, in your scenario, equivalent measures in different staves temporarily don't line up. But that's a problem with or without measure numbers. My method of dealing with it is to count the number of measures I'm about to paste in and add that many barlines at the insertion point in all staves. Then I can tell at a glance which staves have been realigned and which haven't. (Rests aren't necessary, unless you're going to do playback: the extra barlines will do the job all by themselves.) Sometimes I throw in a double barline across the entire system right after the point I'm planning to add measures. Keeping that in alignment assures that I've kept all the following material in alignment as well.

Cheers,

Bill

Re: display suggestion

Reply #17 –
Reincarnating an old thread...

It looks like the status bar has everything you all asked for, except for the key signature.  The best way I've found to get this (assuming it's not trivial to scroll back and find the last key change), is to select an object in the vicinity (I find a measure bar works best) and run the "Variable Dump" user tool.  The key signature is listed via a "fake" object.

Anyone know of anything better?  Is this still listed in a wish list somewhere, to get this in the status bar?

Re: display suggestion

Reply #18 –
The key signature has been achieved slightly differently from the status area.
If you hover over the vertical blue bar on the left hand side of the screen (assuming you have View/Show Label Panel selected) then you will see that the key sig and time sig is given. The key sig is linear in that for a key sig of E Flat Major for example, it will tell you that Bb, Eb and Ab are in the key.

Rich.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #19 –
I turned on the label panel (not sure I want to have to leave it on though), and I turned on the labels, but nothing comes up when I "hover" over any of them?!  In fact, now that I think about it, NWC used to tell me what many of the buttons would do, whenever I hovered over them, but I haven't seen that for some time now.  Do I have some sort of option for that turned off?

Re: display suggestion

Reply #20 –
I'm not aware that you can turn that off. If I hover over one of the buttons, it tells me what the button is.
This is exactly the same effect that you get if you hover over the labels. It tells you the Key sig and the time sig.

Incidentally, you don't have to have the labels turned on. You can have just the label panel with no labels (right click and unselect show labels).

The key and time sigs will only show if the first measure is not on the screen. (If you are at the start of the piece, you don't need it !) - See pic attached.

Rich.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #21 –
Quote from: Randy Williams (purdue) –
but nothing comes up when I "hover" over any of them?!

This implies that something on the system is breaking the mouse hover tooltip from functioning. The most likely cause for something like this would be a mouse driver that never stops sending mouse move messages, so the mouse never goes idle. It is also possible that some other problem is preventing the NWC application from ever being considered in an Idle state, but I cannot think of what would cause such a scenario.

It is theoretically possible that a flaw in the system's device driver could prevent a tooltip window from being displayed, but I have never actually seen such an issue.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #22 –
I would like to see the current tempo and dynamic as well.  If the music needs to get louder, softer, faster, or slower it would be helpful to know where it is right now.
Since 1998

Re: display suggestion

Reply #23 –
This is weird.  My "hover" works fine in Wordpad and Excel and Outlook and IE.  So I wondered if it would work in NWC Viewer, and it does!  I guess I need to try uninstalling and reinstalling NWC.  Perhaps something got screwed up by all the beta incrementing I was doing?

By the way, to try to be clear (since I don't know all the right terminology), when I move the cursor over a button,  the button "raises" (becomes "highlighted") but no text help box appears.  The box seems to appear very quickly after highlighting, but there may be a timer involved between the 2 events, and that timer is "broken" somehow?

Re: display suggestion

Reply #24 –
First: the terminology you are looking for - the name for those little boxes that pop up when you hover over something - is "tooltips." Second, the only thing I'm aware of that will prevent them from showing up is returning too quickly to the same item. (If you pop up a tooltip, move away so that it disappears, then move right back, the tooltip will not reappear.) Dunno how that works into your situation, though. Seems curious.

Bill

Re: display suggestion

Reply #25 –
Eric wrote
Quote
This implies that something on the system is breaking the mouse hover tooltip from functioning.

I don't think there's anything wrong.  As someone said (that message is not visible to me in reply mode), the tool tip with the clef and k.s. info does show up if the beginning bar is not visible.  I think that's likely intentional, and it's good.

Re: display suggestion

Reply #26 –
Quote
...the name for those little boxes that pop up when you hover over something - is "tooltips."

Eureka!  The term "tooltips" reminded me that long ago, I'd unchecked the box that allowed "tooltips on startup" to show.  So I forced up a tooltip via Help/Did you know?, and rechecked the box.  I quit NWC and started it again, and after closing the tooltip on startup, all of my "tooltips" worked again when hovering over buttons (including the key signature when over the label)!  So I then turned "tooltips on startup" back off again, restarted NWC, and all still works!  Somehow, cylcing the "tooltips on startup" on and back off again "kicked" something, and got my hover tooltips back.  Very strange, but all's well that ends well.