Contents:
- Control Center
- SipFind
- SipSib
- SipTpose
Dear SIP user,
It's been a while that I published a newsletter but that does not mean that developement
came to a halt. On the contrary. Much time was spent to get the Sibelius converter SipSib
working on Windows2000. Then the Score 'find' program SipFind was formally released as a
free product for licensed SIP users. Also the foundations were laid for a transposition program
and there were many, many program improvements to SipSib.
Control Center
There were some tests on startup of SIP to check that Notepad and Wordpad and some other general
Windows utilities were in place because they are called by SIP.
This would not cause harm to the majority of the users but those having a less than common setup
it would hamper a supple operation. Therefor I have suppressed those tests, leaving the
responsability of a proper integration between SIP and the operating system to the moment of
system installation.
Buttons of the 'file view' panel were removed and replaced by menu selection to have them in the
top left corner of the screen. This turned out to be necessary for those users with two adjacent
screens.
Panels have been made unmovable and unsizable as per request of a user.
SipRenum now allows barnumbers under a staff for those instruments such as piano which
can have the number between the staves. Set the vertical displacement to B.
A debug menu was added. This is for those situations were critical information needs to be
supplied to product support.
SipFind
The product now allows sort per date/time and in addition you can browse to define any group of
directories or drive.
SipSib
So many quality improvements were added to the Sibelius converter and I think those customers
who have gone out of their way to bring in suggestions and of course those dreadful
things called ERRORS.
A major change is the feature of the separate names files for Sibelius EPS files. Especially
when switching between SIP utilities, the second names file makes life a lot easier. Also,
file selection of EPS files is now only in the long filename form - a necessity when those names have
a numeric part and need to be processed in the proper order. This means that the user now MUST
define the DOS compatible name for output (names with tildes are no longer being used).
The number over a whole rest is now properly translated.
The Copyright symbol for Sibelius 1.4 was properly translated but not for Sibelius 2.
This has been fixed.
Six-line TAB had certain conversion restrictions which have been alleviated.
Sibelius does not have one symbol for the combined end-repeat and begin-repeat and by superimposing them
give the correct symbol in Sibelius but this would lead to two adjacent repeats. Now SipSib
will combine the two into one Score symbol (Code14, Par5=5).
One testfile was presented to me which had multiple barlines on top of each other. This must be an
error in Sibelius. SipSib will remove the superfluous barlines and give a message.
Dotted and dashed slurs if adjacent would combine into one in Score. This has been improved.
When a fermata was used in combination with another articulation, the Code1 Par11 got clobbered.
This has been fixed.
A feature was added to control the translation of cross-staff beam. These are now only possible
on staves joined by an accolade. An option controls if they are allowed or not. Since usually
manual intervention is required to draw the proper length of a cross-staff beam an optional
message can be generated to report the location where such beams occur. Set this in the beam tab (6).
Duplets in 3/8 were not yet supported. This is now the case.
Text width computation was improved in cases with the typical Score prefixes such as >>.
The heavy wedge processing was improved.
SipTpose
Although not ready for distribution yet, good progress is being made on the transposition program.
I could use some help in the form of testing material. PLEASE.