Release notes for Mozart 2005

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.7

October 2006

• Continued problems with chord symbols pasting into notation in the wrong key have been addressed.
• A bug in the chromakey module has been fixed so that rests are now black.
• The pop-ups in the help system may encounter problems on machines running Internet Explorer 7,  for which a beta release is now available.  This version includes a fix devised by Jeroen Neve ? for which he has my eternal thanks.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.6

August 2006

• Thanks to Alastair Macleod for pointing out that chord shapes with a capo do not play back correctly.  This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Ian Lacy for managing to get some peculiar stems in a piano part with a clef change on one stave withing a beamed group spanning both staves, and to Jeroen Neve for also constructing a simple example which does it.   This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Gunnar Nordström for pointing out that the File/Duplicate command does not pick up the music font face correctly for those using athe alternative "NorMusic" jazz font. This too is now fixed.
• Thanks to Michael Bednarek for finding some accidentals which should be optional but of which Mozart was preventing deletion.   This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Cedric Brown for pointing out that copying from a chord symbol stave wiyth a capo, and pasting on a normal stave ends up in the wrong key!   This is now fixed.
• Cedric's bug alert also exposed a problem just entering chords on a chord symbol stave with a capo - if the "Apply" button was used instead of "OK".  This too is now fixed.   Thanks Cedric.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding a situation in which merging two notes loses the tail of another.  This is now fixed.
• The "Entering dotted notes" topic in the help system now references the NoteTripleDot command.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.5

July 2006 (not issued)

• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding a circumstance under which editing a time signature could cause misalignment of bar lines.  This is now fixed.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.4

May 2006

• Thanks to Michael Bednarek for noticing that the commands which pull things left and right (with Alt+arrow) do not note that the file has been edited, and therefore you are not necessarily prompted to save when you close the window.  This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Roy Best for pointing out that hyphens between lyric syllables are not always ideally spaced when the syllables are close together. This is now improved.
• Thanks to Lindsay Lorden for pointing out the empty lyric syllables sometimes fiercely retain their hyphenated "continuation status" despite considerable efforts to tell them not to.  This is now fixed.  If you come across any old syllables consisting only of "-" then it should now be easy to delete.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for noticing that inserting a whole-bar-repeat in an incomplete final bar can still cause problems.  This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Raymond Robijns for supplying an example where Mozart had problems repitching the last note of a multiplet on a stave with multiple strands.   This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Raymond for supplying a simple example where adding an 8va section caused neighbouring 8va's to be lost.  This is now fixed too.
• Turning a note into an arbitrary multiplet wit Alt+7 now adds the current default styling (square/round bracket etc) as Alt+3 always did for triplets.   Thanks again to Raymond for noticing that it wasn't doing this.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for highlighting continued problems with inserting a beat at the start of a bar  which is the entire duration of the bar.  Further improvements have now been made, and this should now work.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.3

March 2006

• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for exposing a problem when entering notes containing only a non-note-item exactly *at* the following bar-line.   This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Jeroen for crashing Mozart by trying to enter a whole-bar-repeat sign in an incomplete bar at the end.  This now no longer happens.
• One or two examples have been found by Bengt Johnsson where the play-back cursor jumps around.  This could sometimes happen in pieces with a chord symbol stave.  It is now fixed.
• Thanks to Dave ("husky12us") for exposing a problem inserting a current tempo symbol immediately aftar n-bars rest.  This is now fixed.
• Sometimes inserting a beat, caused ghosts to tun into rests after the insertion point.   Thanks to Raymond Robijns for noticing this.  It is now fixed.
• If a repeat chord symbol ( / ) was hidden, (as can be set in Global Preferences) then replacing it with another chord name was sometimes leaving the new chord hidden.   Thanks to J.S.Pooh  and Raymond Robijns for bringing this up.  It is now fixed.
• Thanks also to J.S.P. for isolating a problem when one changes the lyric font size while the caret is on a lyric line.   The caret is now moved onto the stave whenever the Layout Editor is invoked, avoiding the problem.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for noticing that multiplet digite were being drawn on a tablature stave when rhythm is switched off.  This was confusing, and so they are not drawn any longer in that circumstance.
• Mozart 2005 no longer automatically sets itself to be the default application for opening .mz files.   Previously it did, as it asserted priority over the viewer.  However Jeroen Neve has rightly pointed out that this is not a desirable feature if one is running different versions of Mozart side by side.
• Thanks to Michael Bednarek for noticing that the "Insert beat" command failed if the length of the beat being inserted stretched from the insertion point exactly to the end of the bar.   This is now fixed.
• The chord shape constructor no longer uses German notation, unless you have selected it!
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for pointing out inconsistent behaviour on changing stave types when a block is selected.  This is now fixed.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.2

December 2005

• Thanks to Raymond Robijns for pointing out that an untrilled note tied to a trilled one at the same pitch can go wrong on playback - incorrectly generating a MIDI note-on message on the second one but (correctly) no note-off message at the end of the first.   This is now fixed.
• Thanks to David Neal and Jeroen Neve for showing that changing a transposing instrument does not correctly reset note stem lengths when they move in pitch.  This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Nigel Sharpe for noticing that a non-diatonic note at the start of a bar can sometimes overlook its compulsory accidental visibility if it is tied back to a grace note.  This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Nigel for finding other new ways of introducing ties so that the computation of accidental visibility was bypassed.  It is bypassed no longer.
• Thanks to Walter Ramsey for asking questions leading to the discovery that the command NoteSubstaff was missing from the index of commands by function.  It is now in the the same group as NotePitch.
• Following discussion on the mailing list about problems with the caret forgetting which pitch it was at, Jeroen Neve posted an exemplary bug report, which allowed it to be trapped very quickly.  The problem only occurred with clef changes which are not coincident with bar lines: Mozart was overlooking them sometimes.  This problem is now fixed.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding a case where pasting two bars at the end of a piece omitted a bar line.   This is now fixed.  [The fix was in quite a low level routine and may also have cured some less acute, seemingly unrelated problems.]
• Thanks to Nigel Parsons who discovered the accidentals do not always align correctly when inserting space before a chord which is close to the end of a hairpin.  This is now fixed.
• When deleting notes from a chord at the end of a multiplet the caret was finding itself on the bracket at the end, rather than on a remaining note in the chord.  Thanks to Richard Walker for pointing th8is out.  It is now fixed.
• Additional keyboard shortcuts may now be assigned to the NoteEnter and RestEnter.  Thanks to Nigel Parsons for pointing out that earlier attempts to make this happen had failed.   (Note that while this allows additional shortcuts, the SpaceBar is considered fundamental to Mozart 's interface and is not reassignable.)
• Entering a whole bar rest now leaves the caret in the following bar in all circumstances.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.1

September 2005

• The decisions about whether to show 4/4 or C (or 2/2 vs cut common) in a new piece has changed. Previously it has used the setting in the template file when starting a new piece with a template, and the setting in View/GlobalPreferences[Music] when starting a new piece without one. This has caused confusion. Now it uses the setting in View/GlobalPreferences in all cases.
   
• In an exemplary bug report on the mailing list, Greg Dunn has pointed out that chords with explicit bass notes cannot be tied. The report has facilitated a very quick resolution and it is implemented in this service pack.
   
• If a chord contains an interval of a second, a note will be flipped around the stem. If that note had a leger line and the chord was offset from its standard position, then it was not being drawn in the correct place. Thanks to Lindsay Lorden for finding this and Jeroen Neve for confirming it. It is now fixed.
   
• Thanks to Paulo Delmastro for noticing that the maximum allowed title, header and footer spaces are more limited than in earlier versions. This is now corrected.
   
• Thanks to Nigel Sharpe for pointing out that reiteration marks under stacked semibreves are not always drawn in the right place. This is now fixed. (NB reiterations mark under/over semibreves are positioned by maintaining a fiction that there's a stem through which they are drawn. Therefore "inverting the stem" toggles the reiteration marks from above to below to above the note.)
   
• Mozart 2005 (v.8.1) saves files with format 29 if the font is the standard one and with format 30 if it is the NorMusic jazz font. This is to prevent Mozart 2005 (v.8.0) from trying to open files with the 3rd party font. (The upgrade to 8.1 is a free service pack, and so these *are* accessible.) Thanks to Danny Newman for detecting some spurious warnings about overriding old formats. These should no longer occur.
   
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for pointing out that when a starting tempo is entered wit the caret on a chord symbol stave, it is not always shown. This was because it was being drawn too low on the stave and could be rectified by pulling it upwards, but it is now given a more appropriate position automatically.
  

Mozart 2005 Version 8.1.0

July 2005

IMPORTANT: this service pack will try to install an updated version of the Mozart musical symbols font file mozart8_.ttf into your system fonts folder.   In order to succeed it must first uninstall the old one.   If  the font is in use (or if  the Windows Operating System thinks it is), this will fail.  But the rest of the Service Pack installation will succeed.

To check (optionally) for success: go to ControlPanel/Fonts and double click on the font mozart8.  The information which appears should indicate that this is version 2 of the font created in July 2005.

Symptoms of failure: the dots on repeat barlines ||:  :|| will appear as ugly squares denoting a missing symbol in the font.

Corrective action: you will find a copy of the new version of the font mozart8_.ttf  in the documents subfolder of your Mozart program folder - typically "c:\program files\Mozart 2005\Documents"

Go to the  ControlPanel/Fonts folder and delete the Mozart 8 font.  If Windows prevents you from doing this, reboot your computer and try again.   Then copy the new version of the font file Mozart 8_.ttf  from the above location into the  ControlPanel/Fonts folder.  Mozart 2005 will then find it when it runs.

Also new in this service pack:

• Thanks to Michael Bednarek for reporting problems when a key and time signature change are placed exactly at a Coda symbol.    This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Michael for finding an example where the paste operation failed.  It turned out that there are likely to be problems when the pasted chunk contains tempo changes in the middle of bars.  This is now fixed.  [The tempo change are omitted from the pasting.]
• Thanks to Anthony Wieser for pointing out that the viewer was still sometimes mistaking which version of Mozart had written a file.  This is now fixed, and the View/TuneProperties command now gives a little more information.
• Thanks also to Anthony for finding a file which just didn't print from the Mozart viewer.  This is now fixed too.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for locating problems with separating strands and editing an anacrusis while the caret is on a lyric line.  These are now fixed.
• Thanks to Mike Hurrell for pointing out a couple of typos in the help system, which have now be corrected.
• Mozart 2005 (8.1.0) has been extended to allow use of  compatible 3rd party music fonts.  A jazz font will be available for sale shortly - please keep an eye on the "news" page of https://www.mozart.co.uk for information on this.   Once a compatible 3rd party font is installed, it will automatically appear as an option in the drop down list of fonts in the layout editor.
• The standard Mozart symbol font file used by this version has been updated to mozart8_.ttf (version 2).  If there are problems, then  a copy of mozart8_.ttf may be downloaded from www.mozart.co.uk.
• For some time now we have had occasional reports of Mozart crashing when notes are entered on lines and spaces of a percussion stave for which no instrument is defined.  We have never been able to duplicate this.  Jeroen Neve has made the hugely significant observation that there is no crash if the midi echoing is switched off.   This pinpoints it very nicely as a sound card driver problem, and code has now been edited in an attempt to by-pass it.   We still haven't duplicated the problem but, with luck, this may stabilise it for those who have encountered it.   Thanks Jeroen.
• Michael Bednarek, normally very much at home in the Mozart help system, had great difficulty finding out about raising and lowering 1st and 2nd time bars, and open and closed ends thereof.  On inspection it transpired that this information was buried fairly deeply with no obvious path to get to it.  Cross referencing and indexing has therefore now been improved.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.0.6

May 2005

• Thanks to Lindsay Lorden for sending in a file demonstrating the fact that Mozart has severe problems when a line contains less than one whole bar.  Part bars on lines was made possible in Mozart 2005 but lines containing less than a whole bar triggered a bug.  This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Mr R. Earl for reporting that the caret is sent to the start when using the command to separate strands onto different staves.  It also happened when recombining.  Both have now been fixed.
• It has also been reported that saving or copying a window image, does not accurately crop the resulting image to the visible part of the window.  A partial improvement has been made for saving EMF files, but this is still under investigation.
• There have been intermittent reports of crashing if the play-back command is issued rapidly and repeatedly.  Thanks to Mike Hurrell for providing a timely reminder.  The problem was almost certainly to do with launching the playback thread and terminating it before it was fully initialised.  A mechanism has been introduced to prevent this, but its success will only be judged after some time as the problem was intermittent and effectively irreproducible.
• David Jordan has found some unpleasant behaviour which can occur when a multiple-bars-rest symbol is immediately followed by a time signature change.  On investigation it transpired that this could affect a number of commands in this circumstance.  But it is now fixed.  Thank you David.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding some weird behaviour when introducing a time signature change at the last bar line when there was just one note after it.   It is now fixed.
• Jeroen has also pointed out that the caret mode (on clusters or single items as toggled with F8) does not correctly return to the previous state on Undo.  This is now corrected.
• Thanks again to Jeroen for pointing out that the File/Import/OpenClipboard command was not always providing a perfect replica of the clipboard contents when transposing instruments are involved.  This is now fixed too.
• Thanks also to Jeroen for finding another unusual beast in the Mozart jungle.  If the caret mode is in cluster mode and you try to delete a collection of bar, time change and key change,  not only does it fail (you are supposed to delete time and key changes one at a time)  but it may also delete a note which was innocently minding its own business a little way back.   This behaviour has now been curbed.
• Thanks yet again to Jeroen for noticing that if you try to delete the time signature at a music break where the time signature doesn't actually change, you can get undesirable results.  This has now been fixed.  You can't delete it but it goes away when you remove the music break.
• Jeroen has also noticed that changing the time signature of a passage which goes through a music break with no time signature change can lead to undesirable result.  This too is fixed and the passage on which the time change operates is now delimited by the music break.
• And somehow Jeroen has also found (for which thanks again) circumstances in which a clef change at the end of a line can result in some odd stems being drawn beyond the end of the line.  This was a very subtle one but it too is now cured.
• We have discovered a circumstance in which a small memory leak could occur, leading to a slow gradual unnecessary increase in the computer memory used by Mozart which is only released on exiting Mozart .  This is now fixed.
• Mozart commences play-back by sending a MIDI "System Reset" message to the synthesiser. This removes any undesirable effects left over from what it might have been doing before.  But one user has pointed out that if you are using and external MIDI synth, you do *not* always want this to happen.  He has a point, and so we have now introduced a check box on the GlobalPreferences/PlayBack dialogue so that you can choose whether or not a System Reset is sent.  The recommendation is that if you are playing back on a sound card., leave it checked.  Otherwise choose which you want according to what you're doing with the connected device.
• Thanks to Michael Bednarek for noticing that when the caret attempts to move onto a hidden stave, it is forced to appear, even in the Mozart viewer.  This is now changed for the viewer, but unchanged in Mozart itself.
• Changing a music break into a line break, now no longer leaves a time signature behind.  Thanks to Jeroen again for finding this one.
• It is now harder to remove dots form a repeat bar inside a 1st and 2nd time bar.
• The font size on the layout editor is now shown to one decimal place as previously 12.6 points and 11.4 points were both showing as 12.
• A small error in the page layout was occurring on changing the music font size on the printer.  Thanks to Jeroen for doing this repeatedly up and down and up and down and proving that the error was cumulative and would lead eventually to disaster.  This is now fixed and disaster averted. 

Mozart 2005 Version 8.0.5

March 2005

• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for noticing that the shift+spacebar command operating on a chord containing notes flipped around the stem can leave the resultant rest apparently offset from its desired position. This is now fixed.
• Richard Walker has noticed that the bar numbering dialogue is not working entirely harmoniously: the number every n bars selector and the radio button which invokes it were not initialising consistently. This is now fixed.
• Zlatoje Pjacic has reminded me that he and others would like a "half German" notation for chord symbols where B becomes H but Bb stays as Bb. This is introduced as a small extra feature in this Service Pack.
• Thanks to David Jordan for reporting that strand labels are getting reset when a file is loaded. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Peter Moss, Bob Culverston, and Kate Swanson, for sending an example which defeated Mozart 2005's layout editor. The algorithm which resizes the music font on the printer was becoming unstable when the font was very small and the right margin very wide. This is now fixed.
• An interface improvement: the spin button on the Layout Editor tool now increments by a larger amount if the Ctrl button on the keyboard is held down while it is operated.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.0.3

February 2005

The following problems, reported with Mozart 2005, are fixed in Service Pack Mz2005 SP 0.3

• Thanks to John Mowad for the reminder that shift+click ought to establish a selection from the caret to the point where one clicks. This now happens.
• Thanks also to John for finding a bug in the stem drawing on tablature staves in cases where more than one string is played at once. The error is small on the screen but can be enormously magnified on the printer. It is now fixed.
• Marie K has discovered a particular case where Mozart 's new accidental alignment in different strands is not working properly, and this has been further elucidated by Michael Bednarek. Thanks Marie and Michael; this is now fixed.
• Some of the topics in the help "index by category" were truncated. This is now fixed.
• Mozart has not been importing multiple-bars rest from NIFF files correctly. Thanks to John Morgan for sending an example. This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Bill Patterson for sending a couple of NIFF files which defeated Mozart . These now import happily too.
• Jeroen Neve has reported some strange scrolling behaviour which manifests itself when one has a very magnified view and attempts to delete an undeletable bar-line. This was harmless but annoying and has now been curbed.
• Nigel Sharpe has found a peculiar circumstance (notes pseudo-tied at an octave) where Mozart was not implementing the correct repeated accidental rule. This is now fixed. Thanks, Nigel.
• Accidentals were also not correctly reverting after a note tied across a bar-line. This too is now fixed.
• A completely unrelated bug (as it turned out) was reported by Gunnar Nordström in which it was not possible in some circumstances to remove all the unnecessary visible accidentals from a selected block. This was failing internally also resulting in unwanted accidentals in some places. Thanks to Gunnar's examples, this has now been fixed.
• David Neal and Bengt Johnsson have found strange things happening with bar numbers in the neighbourhood of multiple bars rest. On investigation a few odd things were happening, depending on circumstances. Thanks to David and Bengt these are now fixed.
• There have been some residual problems with PageSetup (in particular changing between landscape and portrait modes) following the fix in the previous service pack. Once again thanks especially to Joseph de Charentenay for his assistance. After particular difficulty tracking this down, it was eventually found to apply only to devices with oblong pixels. And, oddly perhaps, printers whose pixels are none square when defined by Windows 98 drivers often turn out to be square when defined by Windows XP drivers. In fact no-one running XP has reported the problem. This was proving slow to analyse but eventually we discovered that Windows XP has drivers for the ancient Epson FX80 printer with 120x144 dpi oblong pixels and debugging was significantly accelerated. Thanks to Chris Marriott for suggesting this printer for debugging: I never dreamed there would be any left by the time XP was released! The problem is now fixed (hopefully definitively).
• Thanks to Gerard Vogels for noticing that time signature changes at the end of lines were being placed off the right-hand-side of the stave, and sending an excellent illustration. This is now fixed too. (This should be caught when loading music files in which it happened, but in case it isn't, just insert space until the bar moves to a new line, and then delete the space again, and it will be reformatted correctly!)
• Thanks to Fred Bridges for sending a NIFF file which did not import correctly. The problem was that it had key changes at the start of systems, which were not advertised at the end of the previous system. Mozart 's NIFF import module is now more tolerant of this lax syntax (not Fred's fault!) and will now import this NIFF file (and probably a lot of others with which it may have has difficulty before).
• Thanks to Fred, and also to Graham Jones, author of SharpEye, we have also been able to improve the import of NIFF files time signature changes at the end of stave lines.
• Bill Patterson has noticed that stave labels have been moving into the stave. They have now been nailed to the page (again).
• Jerry Leighton (probably among others) has been getting frustrated by the break symbol (//) getting forced (horizontally) up against notes wen pasting or duplicating parts and has asked (very nicely) if anything can be done about this. It does seem reasonable that the break should be compulsorily allowed some space to itself, and so it has now been prevented from getting too close to the notes and rests which it must lie between.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for pointing out that introducing extra bar lines could also create a myriad of courtesy accidentals. This bug appears to have crept in in v 8.0.1 but is now fixed.
• Thanks to Szab? ?rp?d Zolt?n for finding one or two typos in the help system, which have now been corrected.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.0.2

December 2004

The following problems, reported with Mozart 2005, are fixed in Service Pack Mz2005 SP 0.2

• The View/KeyboardShortcuts command was failing on some computers.  This is now fixed.
• For various commands (like NoteEnter and RestEnter) with non-editable keyboard shortcuts, it should have been possible to assign additional shortcuts.  It is now.
• The ViewKeyboardShortcuts command was failing on some computer systems.  Thanks to Joseph  de Charentenay for finding this and providing some insight.  It is now fixed.
• The PageSetup command was also failing on some computer systems.  Thanks to Joseph and to Roy Simons for providing information.  This too is now fixed.
• Setting the music font size on the printer has also been causing problems under Windows 98 only. Thanks to Robert Charlesworth and others for pointing this one out.  This too is now fixed.
• Delete and Cut commands were not always removing lyrics from a selected block.  This is also fixed now.
• Inserting clefs at the end of a piece when there is no space between the final barline and the end-of-tune marker was causing sporadic problems. Thanks to jeroen Neve for pointing this out. These have now been fixed as far as we can tell.

Mozart 2005 Version 8.0.1

November 2004

Despite extensive testing, one or two teething troubles have been reported with Mozart 2005 (v 8.0.0), and are fixed in Service Pack Mz2005 SP 0.1

• The introduction to the help system failed to reflect some reorganisation of the contents. Thanks to John McLaughlin for finding this one. It is now tidied up.
• At one point the help system also failed to reflect the change of the default keyboard shortcuts for multiplets from Ctrl+3 etc to Alt+3 etc. Thanks to Fred Bridges for spotting this one which is now fixed.
• The Tab key wasn't working correctly on a Tab stave. Thanks to Colin Fine for finding this one. It is now fixed.
• Thanks to John Morgan, Nick Parsons and Mark Venn for sending NIFF files which caused problems for Mozart 2005. NIFF files were not being imported completely consistently and in this case it had the effect of presenting them in a key one semitone higher than the correct one. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve and Bill Patterson, a rather unpleasant bug in the InsertBeat command has been uncovered . This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Jeroen for noticing that inserting extra bars can remove courtesy accidentals in the neighbourhood, and cause some strange beaming angles. These are fixed now too.
• Mark Venn has pointed out that if the first stave on the first system is hidden, the Undo command always causes it to be shown, even when this is unnecessary and unwanted. Thanks Mark; this is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Mark for noticing that hiding a stave on the penultimate line also hides it on the last one in the case where there is nothing but the end-of-tune marker on the last line. This too is now fixed.
• Short notes followed by a long gliss were sometimes causing an unending note to sound. Thanks to Dan (surname not supplied) for finding this one. It is now silenced.
• Thanks also for Dan for showing that there are problems creating an anacrusis with the new command if one of the parts doesn't contain as many beats as are going to be missed from the first bar. This is now fixed too. [With this on top of all sorts of problems which arose during beta testing, the anacrusis command takes the prize for the thing which looked utterly simple but caused horrendous problems. But it should definitely be all right now!]