The main menu bar

At the top of the screen are several pull-down menus which are available at all times while Doggiebox is active. This section enumerates the commands listed in all of the menus and describes what they do, and also details the various settings which you can control via Preferences.

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Doggiebox menu

The application menu, beside the Apple menu and labeled with the Doggiebox title, contains several program-wide commands.

About Doggiebox... brings up an information window containing some credits and other interesting information, including the version and build number of Doggiebox that you are running.

Preferences... opens the global preferences dialog, which allows you to customize various settings which affect the way Doggiebox behaves. All of the preferences options are discussed on the following page.

Services is a sub-menu of various functions offered by other applications installed on your computer. Currently, Doggiebox does not take meaningful advantage of any such services.

Hide Doggiebox hides all windows from the screen and dims the Doggiebox application icon in the dock. Conversely, Hide Others hides all windows that belong to other applications, leaving only Doggiebox windows visible on the screen. Show All reveals windows of all applications which might have been previously hidden.

Quit Doggiebox terminates the application, first prompting you to save any recent changes to open songs or drum kits if necessary.

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File menu

The File menu contains commands which pertain to general document-related tasks.

New Song creates a new, empty song document. The new song will contain an initially empty section, using the most recently chosen drum kit file.

New Drum Kit creates a new, empty drum kit file. The new kit will initially contain no drums.

Open... allows you to choose an existing song or drum kit file to open for editing. The Open Recent menu lists the last several recently-used Doggiebox documents for quick access.

Close shuts the current song or drum kit file, prompting you to commit unsaved changes first.

Save commits any unsaved changes in the current song or drum kit file to disk. Save As... first prompts you for a new filename in which to save a copy of the current file.

Revert will discard any recent unsaved changes, and re-loads the last saved version of the current song or drum kit file from disk.

Export Audio... will mix down the song's current selection (or visible sections) to disk as a full audio waveform, suitable for using with other applications such as GarageBand or ProTools. See Exporting as raw audio for a further discussion.

Export MIDI File... will save the current selection (or visible sections) to a standard MIDI file suitable for use with other sequencing software. See Exporting to a MIDI file for a further discussion.

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Edit menu

The Edit menu contains commands which pertain to making and tracking changes in the current document.

Undo reverses the most recent destructive editing operation. Redo re-instates the change.

Cut removes the current selection (group of patterns, sections, text, etc.) and places it on the pasteboard. Copy does the same without affecting your document. Paste transfers the current pasteboard contents, if applicable, into the document at the insertion point. Clear removes the selection from the document without altering the pasteboard.

Select All highlights everything in the current context (e.g. text in a text field, or bars in the pattern editor) for subsequent editing operations. Select None does the opposite.

Special Characters... opens a palette to aid in entering foreign, special or other Unicode characters into text fields.

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Song menu

The Song menu contains commands which pertain to manipulating things in the current song. (When editing a drum kit file, none of these items are meaningful).

Add Section creates a new, empty section in the section list. This corresponds to the + button atop the section list.

Add to Playlist creates a new entry at the end of the song's playlist. This corresponds to the + button atop the playlist.

Insert Bars... lets you add new patterns to a song at the insertion point, first prompting you for information such as tempo and time signature. Holding the Option key changes this to Insert Bars Again, which will redo the same operation using the most recent paramaters without prompting.

Modify Tempo/Time... presents a dialog sheet similar to Insert Bars, allowing you to adjust the tempo and time signature for any bars which are currently selected in the pattern editor. Double-clicking in the header area of a bar in the pattern editor does the same.

Expand zooms in on the song, revealing finer beat subdivisions on a power-of-two basis (e.g. change from showing an 8th-note to a 16th-note resolution). Collapse zooms out. These correspond to the zoom buttons in the document window.

Play begins playback of bars shown in the pattern editor. If one or more are selected, only they are played; otherwise, all bars in the visible sections are played. While playback is in progress, this changes to Stop. This corresponds to the play/stop button in the document window.

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Window menu

The Window menu contains commands useful for managning open user interface windows.

Minimize will shrink the front-most document window into the Dock.

Bring All to Front moves all Doggiebox windows to the top layer of the screen.

Any open documents are also individually listed; choosing one will bring it to the front.

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Help menu

The Help menu contains general reference tools.

Doggiebox User's Guide opens this manual in a new window for convenient reference.

Doggiebox Web Site jumps to www.doggiebox.com in your preferred web browser, where you can get the latest versions and stay updated on what's new.