BUG 9/BUGCD1997_12.ISO/mulmedia/musworks/readme.txt

Text File | 1997-10-14 | 18.5 KB | 487 lines

       Music Works 2.3 (Build 49) Readme file 14 Oct 1997
         Copyright 1997, MIDDLE EARTH SOFTWARE SYSTEMS
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    This file is best viewed maximized to fill the screen

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      Exclusive Distribution in the U.S.A. and Canada:
    TRIUS, Inc., P.O. Box 249, N.Andover, MA  01845-0249

    Tel: [phone]                  Fax: [phone]
    Email: [e-mail]           CIS:   GO TRIUS
    BBS. 978-794-0762                  FIDO:  1:324/413
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This is ONLY an evaluation copy, it is NOT a full, licensed copy!

  You may purchase a licensed copy and take advantage of a
  Special Limited Time Introductory offer (USA & Canada ONLY!)
  from TRIUS, Inc.

        $69 + s&h   (a $30 savings!)

----------------------------------------------------------------

NEW FEATURES IN VERSION 2.3 Build 49
====================================

Auto Format
-----------
Auto format allows selected notes to be formatted automatically.
Notes will be adjusted onto the beat and beamed and tied as
appropriate. Rests will be added as well. See the manual or on
line help for more information.


Editing Objects
---------------
Pressing the right mouse button when pointing at an object
displays a popup menu. To display the Edit Dialog Box for an
object, choose the Edit option from the menu. For other editing
operations, select the appropriate option from the popup menu.

Double clicking on an object with the left mouse button will
perform the default edit operation (eg for a note with a stem,
the stem will be flipped).


Symbol Palette
--------------
A symbol palette has been added to allow user defined symbols to
be used. A number of symbols have been added for your use.


Adjustable Ties/Slurs etc
-------------------------
Ties and slurs can now be dragged to increase or decrease their
curve.


Transposing Notes
-----------------
Transpose routines have been rewritten. It is now possible to
specify a destination key either from a list of key signatures,
or by specifying an offset as a number of semitones. Select the
approriate option in the Transpose Dialog Box.

Additionally a diatonic transpose is supported. Choose the
Diatonic checkbox in the Transpose Dialog Box. Music will be
tranposed by the number of whole tones specified in the same
dialog box instead of by a number of semitones.

Normally key signatures will be transposed as well. Optionally
the key signatures can be left alone. Notes will be moved, and
accidentals adjusted to achieve the appropriate pitch.


Changing Division Settings Automatically
----------------------------------------
Division Settings can be made to change automatically to match
the value of the current note. This makes it easier to ensure
notes are only placed at legal positions. The option can be
turned on and off in the View|Preferences Dialog Box.


Choosing Language or Nomenclature
---------------------------------
Music Works can display terms in vacabularies suitable for
different regions. At present USA and European nomenclature is
supported. Select the appropriate region from the
View|Preferences Dialog Box. Music Works will have to be
restarted for this option to take effect.


Compress/Expand
---------------
A new option has been added to compress or expand music to take
more or less bars.


Select Special
--------------
Select Special has been modified to select objects other than
notes for easier editing.


Examples
--------
A number of example files have been added to the release. These
can be found in the example subdirectory.


See sections in this file for more information.
----------------------------------------------
Refer also to the file REVS.TXT installed to your Music Works
program directory for a more complete list of revisions to the
program.


INSTALLATION PROCEDURE
=================================================================
You must install Music Works 2 from the Windows program manager.
If you are running a different shell such as Nortons Desktop for
Windows, run Progman by select Run from the File menu in the
desktop and typing PROGMAN.

If you are running OS/2, you must ensure that the Windows Program
Manager is running if you wish to add the Music Works for Windows
group and icons. You may also find that the Setup program does
not terminate correctly when installing from OS/2. If this
happens the blue screen will be left open with no dialogue box
displayed. In this case you will need to terminate the Setup
program using the OS/2 Window list that pops up by pressing Ctrl
Escape.

Once you are running the Windows program manager, choose Run from
the Windows program manager File menu, and type either
d:\direcory\SETUP where "d:\directory" is the drive and directory
where the contents of the MW2NET.EXE file were extracted to.


INSTALLATION - CTL3D
====================
If 3D support for dialogue boxes has been improperly installed on
you computer, a warning message box may pop up when you start the
install program. This will not affect the running of the install
program except that the dialogue boxes will be drawn without 3D
effects. Continue with the installation and ignore the warning.
If 3D support for dialogue boxes has not been installed, the
installation program will install 3D support, but will run
without 3D effects. The next time the program is run, the 3D
effects will be used.



INSTALLATION - OVERWRITING EXISTING FILES
=========================================
The installation program will warn you before overwriting
existing files in the Windows or Windows System directories. You
should normally overwrite older versions of files only. Do not
overwrite a newer version of a file. The version numbers are
displayed in the warning box that pops up when the program tries
to overwrite a file.



INSTALLATION - FILE LOCATIONS
=============================
All files are copied to the directory that MW2 is installed to,
and subdirectories with the following exceptions.

Five files are copied to the windows system directory. They are :

  CTL3DV2.DLL     3D dialogue box file
  MWSYMBOL.TTF    MWW font file
  MWSYMBOL.FOT    MWW font file
  GUITFNT1.TTF    MWW font file
  GUITFNT1.FOT    MWW font file


The first file provides 3D support for dialogue boxes used in the
installation program and in Music Works 2, and may be used by
other Windows software.

The next four files are font files used by Music Works 2, and are
unlikely to be used by other applications.

Installation files are copied to your TEMP directory. If you have
a command such as

SET TEMP=C:\TEMP

in your autoexec.bat file, then these files will be copied to
that directory, otherwise they may be copied to the DOS, WINDOWS,
or root directory. At present, these files are not deleted after
use. The files are :

                MWSETUP.EXE
                MWSETUP.INI
                STRINGS.DLL

They can be deleted any time after completing installation.


INSTALLATION - WIN.INI
======================

Music Works 2 will add the following entries to the WIN.INI file
in your Windows directory.

[Extensions]
mww=mw2.exe ^.mww to inform Windows that files with MWW extension
                  belong to Music Works 2

[fonts]
MWW Symbols (TrueType)=mwsymbol.fot
MWW Guitar Tabs (TrueType)=guitfnt1.fot

The above two entries are added when the Music Works 2 fonts are
added.


PLAYING MUSIC ON SOUNDBLASTER CARDS
===================================
Some Soundblaster drivers cause MW2 to crash while playing. This
occurs only when playing through the FM output using more than
one channel at a time. The problem can occur on early 8 bit
standard Soundblaster cards with their own drivers, and on a
Soundblaster Pro card with OS/2 drivers. There may be other
configurations that cause the problem.

Two solutions are possible.
1. Use one channel only in your composition. This is not really a
problem with MW2, as MW2 will automatically generate patch
changes and velocity changes to support multiple instruments on a
single channel.

2. Add an entry to the MW2.INI file in the [Play] section setting
the output channel for all music. This would read as follows

SingleChannelPatch=n

where n is a value between 0 and 15 indicating the channel to
use, eg to send all output to channel 0, use

SingleChannelPatch=0

To disable this feature, either comment out the line by placing a
semicolon at the start of the line, or set it to 65535.

If your music is all assigned to a single channel, it will still
play correctly. See the section titled "assigning the same
channel to more than one track" for details.


ASSIGNING THE SAME CHANNEL TO MORE THAN ONE TRACK
=================================================
It is possible to output a number of tracks to the same channel.
MW2 allows this to happen by automatically generating patch
changes and velocity changes while playing so that the different
tracks do not interfere with each other. This allows you to
produce multichannel type output on a single channel. The
automatic generation of velocity changes can be turned on and off
from the MW2 INI file, and is on by default.

This option does not work correctly on all devices. Some devices
ignore patch changes sent while a note is being played. On these
devices, if a note is playing on a given channel at the time a
note from a different track is sent to the same channel the
second note will probably be lost or played incorrectly.


NOTES MISSED OUT OR PLAYED INCORRECTLY
======================================
You may need to assign each track to a different channel. See
"Assigning the Same Channel to More Than One Track" above.

This is normally done by editing tracks from the Track Edit Palette.


PRINTING PROBLEMS
=================
There can sometimes be problems printing to HP Deskjet printers
if you are using Cirrus Logic variable resolution screen drivers.
The problem is exhibited as a failure to print the heads and
tails of notes and various other parts of your score at some
stave size settings. It this problem occurs, the solution is to
run the Windows Setup program from DOS (outside of Windows) and
choose a different screen driver. Usually VGA or SVGA is fine.


TOOL BAR PROBLEMS
=================
At 640x480 display resolution, the two rightmost buttons on the
toolbar will not be visible. These two buttons adjust the width
setting for your composition. If you are running at this
resolution, adjust the width settings from the Layout dialog box
in the View menu instead of using these buttons.


RECORDING
=========
A new switch has been added to give greater control of the record
functions The switch allows the user to control whether data is
processed while recording or after recording has finished.
Previously data was always processed while recording. This could
cause problems on slower systems or more complicated
compositions. By enabling the switch, most data will be buffered
while recording, and processed when the stop button is pressed.
This should free up the computer to better handle recording. The
switch is set by entering a line into the MW2.INI file. In the
section headed [Record], add or change the line

SpeedRecord=1

to use the new recording method or

SpeedRecord=0

to use the old method.


CLIPBOARD
=========
Improvements have been made to the copy to clipboard routines. It
is no longer necessary to specify a scale in the ini file. Data
will be produced into other applications at the same size it is
in Music Works.

The current page can be copied to the clipboard to be pasted into
other applications. Select the page to copy and choose Copy Page
from the Edit menu or type Control B to copy the page. In your
other application choose Paste to retrieve the picture from the
clipboard. The entire page will be inserted. There are many
settings that can be altered for sizing of images. Refer to the
MetaFile section of the Ini file.

To ensure that the image does not need to be scaled in the other
application, set the page size in Music Works to be the same as
the page size WITHIN the margins of the receiving application.
Set the margins in Music Works all to zero. The image will
exactly fill the page in the other application.

To copy a single line of music, set the vertical page size in
Music Works to display a single line of music (eg 180). The
single line of music displayed will be copied to the other
application.


GRACE NOTES
===========
Grace notes are now supported.

These notes are drawn at half the normal size and are often used
to show short notes that may be played before the beat or on the
beat. In almost all ways a grace note can be used and edited in
exactly the same way as a normal note. One exception is that a
grace note cannot be beamed to a normal note. Grace notes can be
beamed and tied to normal notes, and grace notes can be beamed to
other grace notes. A note is set to be a grace note from the Edit
Note dialog box which has a Grace Note check box. To better
support grace notes a few extra options have been added to the
Edit Note dialog box. These options allow a note to be shifted
from its correct position on the score, and played at a different
time to that indicated on the score. There is also an option to
adjust the played length of a note. They are explained in the on
line help. These options can be applied to all notes.

To support these extra options, the Music Works files format has
changed. This version of Music Works will read files from all
previous versions of the program, however previous versions of
Music Works will not read files written by this version. If you
wish to transfer files to other people, ensure that they also
have this release of Music Works.

There are several ways of placing grace notes. A method we have
found to be satisfactory is as follows.

Place the grace note at the beat of the normal note following the
grace note before the normal note is placed. Edit the grace note
by double clicking on it, select the Grace Note check box to
change it to a grace note and adjust the position offset (usually
with a negative value to shift it to the left - possible 2.5 to
5.0). Also adjust the play offset to make the grace note play
early. This is specified in clock ticks (default of 240 to beat
or crotchet). This might be a value of -60 or so. You may want
the note to play shorter than the displayed value by adjusting
the length offset once again in clock ticks. This may be a value
of -30 or so. Select OK and the note will be redrawn. Add any
following grace notes in the same way and beam them together if
required. Place the normal note the same way. You may need to
adjust the play offset to cause the note to be played off the
beat. You may also need to adjust the length offset to compensate
for the note starting early or late.

Note that you need to use the Edit Note dialog box for these edit
operations rather than the Edit Selected Notes dialog box. When
editing Selected Notes it is possible to change notes from normal
notes to grace notes and vice versa however it is not possible to
move notes or adjust the play offset.

Note also that a note must not be beamed to allow it to be
changed to or from a grace note. To change beamed notes, first
remove the beam, then change the notes then add a new beam.

Refer also to online help for use of grace notes.


DRAGGING NOTES WITH THE MOUSE
=============================
When dragging notes with the mouse all notes will be placed on
the same stave at the completion of the operation. Notes on
separate staves should be dragged separately. As an alternate
method, select the notes to be moved and use Tools|Edit Selected
Notes. Turn on the Beat field and enter a relative beat (eg +1 in
the Bar edit box) and turn on the Note Value field and enter a
relative pitch (eg +2 in the Pitch field and 0 in the Octave
field). This would move the selected notes forward 1 bar and up 2
semitones.


WINDOWS 95 and WINDOWS NT
=========================
Music Works has not yet been written as a Windows 95 or NT
program. It has been tested on both systems extensively, and runs
well. If you install Windows 95 or NT onto your computer, you
will need to re-install Music Works to ensure that it will run
correctly. If the program is not re-installed, it may crash while
starting up or display incorrectly. Music Works may also crash
while starting if the MW2.INI file is missing, or moved.

A Windows 95/NT version is currently being written.


CORELDRAW 3.0
=============
When exporting to CorelDraw 3.0 using the clipboard, some symbols
will not be imported by CorelDraw. This is a limitation of
CorelDraw. MusicWorks symbols are actually characters of a
special font. The symbols defined as characters beyond the normal
range (ie greater than character 127) are not imported by
CorelDraw 3.0. These symbols are imported correctly by most other
applications.


OPL3 SOUND CARDS WITH SOFTSYNTH
===============================
There is a problem with the OPL3 Soft Synth driver that causes
screen refresh problems while music is being played back. We are
not aware of a replacement driver at the time of writing. The
solution is to disable the Track Player function from the
Preferences dialog box, or to change to the card's FM driver.


Ornaments Drawing Incorrectly
=============================
We have had reported to us that on some machines the ornaments
can draw incorrectly when there is a mixture of ornaments and
text and symbols drawn on screen at the same time. If you have
this problem, add the following line to your ini file and restart
Music Works.

In the
[Display]
section, add

UseMetaOutputForScreen=1


EXPIRED EVALUATION VERSION
==========================
If you have previously installed an evaluation version of Music
Works you may find that you cannot run this evaluation version.
The program will report that it has expired. If you would like to
evaluate the new version, please contact Middle Earth Software
Systems at:

  [e-mail]

  or PO Box 449, Wynnum, Brisbane, Qld 4178, Australia

for a patch to reinitialise your evaluation software.

-- End