We like to release small updates regularly as this allows us to get requested features out to you quickly!
| Lefty Support! |
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- Left-handed players rejoice! We’ve added support for creating left-handed fretboards (click the image to see how)
- You can set fretboards to be left-handed and enter notes that way, or if you’ve some right-handed diagrams already you can just select the “Left-handed” checkbox in the inspector and the fretboard and notes will flip over - easy!
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| Fretboard Edges and Rounded Fretwire Ends |
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- Not keen on the way the fretboard ends right at the top and bottom strings? Not quite like a real fretboard, is it?!
- We’ve added options in the Inspector that allow you to extend the fretboard edge beyond the strings, and also to have rounded fretwire ends (click the image to see where to find these options)
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| Control over Fret Number Positioning |
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- We’ve added more control over where fret numbers are placed (click the image for more info)
- As well as the previous default of being centered in the fret, you can now choose to have the fret numbers shown by the fretwire, or to just have the fret number of the first visible fret shown (which is really useful for chord boxes!)
- There’s also an option to show “fr.” by the number so for example you chord boxes could show “5fr.”
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| More Colour Flexibility |
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- Virtually every colour used on the fretboard can now be customised
- There are 3 sections on the fretboard Inspector page, for fretboard, note and string colours (and remember you can set defaults via the Preferences page) (click the image to see all 3 sections)
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| Wide Nut |
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- If you prefer chunkier nuts... then you can choose to fill the mute/open string area to achieve the same effect. Open string/mute markers will then appear to be on the nut (click the image to see how to do this and how to fill the open string markers also)
- And you can change the nut colour too if you like!
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| Fretboard Bugfixes |
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- We've made a fix for an error that could occur when trying to edit the fretboard title
- We've improved the algorithm for maintaining the fretboard size when fretboard adornments change, e.g. when deleting a line of text from the fretboard title
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| Custom Note Marker Labels |
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- You can now enter your own text onto notes (click the image to see how)
- You must set the note label style to “Custom” & use “Set custom label..” on the note context menu to enter the custom text, which is limited to two characters
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| Two-colour Note Markers |
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- Want to show common tones of different chords on one fretboard? Trying to highlight common scale tones?
- The “Left/right colours” option of the note marker Inspector page now lets you do just this! (click the image to see how)
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| Different Coloured Root Notes |
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- You can now override the root note highlight colour, allowing you to show them in different colours on the same fretboard.
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| Open String Marker Colour |
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- Open string markers will now behave themselves when you choose a custom colour... they'll no longer ignore you and stay black!
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| Set Fingerings Using Mouse |
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- Got your hands full balancing your guitar whilst using the computer?!
- If your other hand is already on the mouse then use the note marker right-click context menu to set fingerings instead of typing them in (click the image to see the menu)
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| Default Font Preferences |
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- We’ve added a new “Fonts” Preferences page where you can control the default font for text boxes and fretboard titles
- (click the image to see the Preferences page)
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| Text Visibility Indicator |
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- The “not all text visible” indicator no longer gets shown when printed or exported
- If you’re not sure what that is, it’s the plus sign that shows up at the bottom right hand corner of a text box when the box is too small for the text!
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| Printer Settings |
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- Printer settings are now remembered during the session
- So if you want to print out some pages where you’ve flipped the page size so they’re landscaped, well you no longer have to change the print dialog to landscape each time you print!
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| Ink Saver Print Mode |
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- A new “Ink Saver Mode” has been added to the Print Preferences page (click the image to see where to enable this)
- When this option is selected fretboard backgrounds will not be painted when printed - so you don’t have to set your default fretboard background to white to save on ink!
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| Resizable Inspector |
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- If your computer is setup with a non-standard theme/font then you might’ve found all the Inspector widgets wouldn’t fit in the constrained window size
- Well, for those of you who came up against this, we’ve removed the restriction and you can now resize the Inspector if you need to
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| Bugfixes |
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- We've made a fix such that if the thumbnail database cannot be created/started then Neck Diagrams will revert to creating them on the fly, as it used to do, rather than this causing errors at startup
- Added a fix for an intermittent error when deleting a page from the Diagram Gallery which is still open in an editor window
- Mac: fix for backup failure due to “Resource is out of sync with filesystem” error message
- Mac [Tiger only]: trying to move a page within its folder correctly shows a warning message but would incorrectly delete the file
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| Image Element |
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- Added a warning message when image file is too large to load, instead of generating an error
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| Connections |
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- A number of fixes have been made regarding connections, notably around copying/pasting objects with connections
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| Scale Generator |
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- fix for error that could occur when new generated notes does not contain a root note
- Italian: made a fix for an error that could occur due to a bad message format
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| Templates |
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- fixed an issue where deleting a custom user template could cause an error
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| Open exported .fbd files directly |
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- Neck Diagrams now supports opening .fbd document files directly by double-clicking on them!
- If Neck Diagrams isn’t running it will be started; you’ll then be able to choose whether you want to import the file into the Diagram Library or if you just want to edit it directly from its current location
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| Toolbox Improvements |
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- The toolbox has been revamped with new icons and keyboard shortcuts
- You can right-click on it and choose single column or two column mode, plus small or large icons
- The shortcut keys appear on each tool items tooltip and are also listed in full in the Help docs, under Neck Diagrams > Reference > Keyboard Shortcuts > Diagram Editor
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| Page Size Option on New Page Wizard |
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- There's now a page size option on the New Page wizard
- The templates supplied will scale the fretboards to fit the page size selected
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| String Improvements |
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- Thick strings now paint a right up to the very edge of the fretboard wires and nut. It had been noted that there was a miniscule gap of a pixel or so!
- String placement has also been corrected for instruments with LOTS of strings, like the 10 string Chapman Sticks...
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| German and Italian Translations |
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- The user interface, Welcome pages and Help documentation have been translated into German and Italian.
- You can change the language via the Preferences > Language page - Neck Diagrams will need to restart.
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| Font Bugfix |
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- Improvements have been made to the way fonts are handled (allocated & disposed)
- This bugfix cures spurious errors you might have seen when changing font options
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| Musical Symbol Font on Windows |
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- Musical symbols support has been added to the Windows version, matching the Mac version.
- This “small” change turned out to be a huge effort!!
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| Diamond Shapes |
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- New diamond shaped note makers have been added to the toolbox
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| Note Markers By Fret Wires |
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- There’s a new "Place note markers by fret wires" option on the fretboard Inspector page
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| Updating Roots Across Multiple Fretboards |
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- The root note can now be set for multiple fretboards at once
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| Bugfixes |
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- Bugfix to maintain enharmonic overrides when copying/cloning a fretboard
- Bugfix addressing the inability to clone note markers when the page was scrolled away from the top left corner
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| Drag Export Moving |
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- Dragging a file out of the Diagram Gallery moves the file to the target location but previously the Diagram Gallery didn’t update, and still showed the file even though it is longer there and cannot be opened.
- This has been fixed - the file thumbnail is removed when it is moved. Make sure you hold down CTRL (Win) or ALT (Mac) to do a copy if that’s what you actually want! A warning notification has been added if you start to move a file out of the Diagram Gallery - this can be turned off in the Preferences.
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| File Rename |
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- A Rename option has been added to the File and context menus in the Diagram Gallery. You can still rename things by clicking the name of a selected item in the left-hand file list, but the new menu options make it less cryptic!
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| Tuning Details |
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- Instrument tunings are shown directly in the Instrument Library. And the instrument images are tidier now - no unwanted outlines!
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| Open G Tuning Fix |
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- Open G has been corrected... the strings were back to front. D’Oh.
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| User Defined Custom Interval Maps |
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- You can now enter your own user-defined custom interval maps
- Check out the new Scale Generator page in the Help documentation for further details
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| Clear Fretboard Before New Notes Added |
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- An option has been added allowing you to ‘remove any existing note markers from fretboard’
- You’ll notice now that if you use this option, if you Undo your scale generation you’ll see an additional step is required to also undo the clear to revert the fretboard to how it was before the scale generation.
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| Triads and Arpeggios |
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- Added major, minor, dimished and augmented triads. Also added min7b5, maj7+5 and min/maj7 arpeggios
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| Symmetrical Scales |
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- Corrected Whole/Half and Half/Whole scales - they’re Diminished, of course!, not Augmented
- Added the Augmented scale
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| Bebop Scales |
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- Added masses of Bebop scales, and all their modes...
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| Filtering & Layout |
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- With all these new scales & arpeggios, you'll need an easier way to find things so we added a filter text field - e.g. just enter 'mix' to find anything with those letters in the name such as Mixolydian, Mixodorian, etc
- The wizard layout has also been improved so that the contents scale appropriately when resizing the window. The size of the window is remembered between uses, so the next time you open it it’ll be the same size you set left it as last time
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| Bugfixes |
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- Barres sometimes showing as straight line connections on reopening a file - not anymore!
- Custom templates no longer lose their connections
- Copy/cloning of objects with connections now also copy the connections
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| Editor Bugfixes |
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- Fix for the text visibility indicator, which sometimes would not get hidden when all text was actually visible
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- Fix for when editing a fretboards title and adding a long line of text that wraps (i.e. not manually adding a line break) - this used to cause the fretboard to shrink, however now it correctly makes the title text grow to accommodate the text
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- Bugfix for error that occurred when pressing delete with the page selected. You can’t delete pages, at least not until we add support for multi-page documents...
- Bugfix for error that can occur when undoing a change to an image element
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Template Bugfixes |
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- Custom templates no longer use the default page size setting you have set in the preferences, but keep the page size of the original that the template was created from
- Images that had been scaled in custom templates would revert back to their original size (i.e. the unscaled image size). Fixed! The images now maintaine their correct scaled size
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Export Bugfixes |
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- Exported PDFs used to actually have incorrect physical page dimensions - now fixed
- Bugfix for error that could occur on exporting a new unsaved page
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A couple of bufixes here and a tweak.
| Fix for Mac Print-via-Preview Workaround |
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- The Mac printing workaround (Print via Preview), which unfortunately got broken in 1.6.1, has been now fixed
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| String Gauge Value Preserved When Cloning a Fretboard |
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- Added a fix to ensure the string gauge setting also gets copied when you clone a fretboard (copy/paste or CTRL+drag, Alt/Option+drag on Mac)
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| Tiny Fretwires for Tiny Fretboards! |
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- We've implemented a customer request for small fretboards to have thinner fretwires
- This adjustment is done automatically by Neck Diagrams, based on the size of the fretboard (click image to see an example)
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We have a few bufixes here and a couple of new items.
| Bug fix for potential diagram page corruption |
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- If you've ever had the misfortune to find that your page thumbnail appears blank in the Diagram Gallery and it won't open in the Editor then you'll be pleased to hear this won't happen again!
- The problem could occur if exiting Neck Diagrams with unsaved editor changes and choosing 'Yes' to save them, then the file(s) saved might have become corrupted - not anymore!
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| Fix in Error Report Submission |
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- Error Reports could fail to be submitted under certain circumstances, prompting you to copy & paste the report into an email and sending manually
- As long as you're connected to the Internet this shouldn't happen anymore!
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| Diagram Gallery Thumbnail Tooltip Error |
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- A fix has been added to prevent an error occurring if clicking on a thumbnail's filename tooltip
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| Hide Filenames in Gallery View Left-hand Pane |
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- A new menu item has been added to the Diagram Gallery, under View > Hide Files in Projects List
- This menu will make the left hand pane show only Projects and Folders, which is especially useful if you have lots of diagram pages!
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| Option for Small Mute/Open String Markers |
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- An option has been added to the fretboard Inspector page allowing for smaller mute and open string markers to be shown, if you find the existing ones too chunky
- Also the mute 'x' marker has been fixed so it never appears a little off which it occasionally did before
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This turned out to be quite a large release, so we've grouped items to make it easier to see the changes.
Some of the images below can be clicked for more info
| Non-English Language Support |
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- Neck Diagrams now copes correctly with multi-byte/unicode characters
- Previous versions did not save certain characters correctly, such as accents or musical symbols - you might've seen "?" characters when you saved/reopened pages
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| Show String Tunings |
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- Show string tunings at the click of a button!
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| Additional Fretboard Legend Row |
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- We've added an option to show another legend row for fretboards
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| Multi-line Fretboard Titles |
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- Neck Diagrams now supports multi-line fretboard titles
- Simply press ENTER to add a new line and CTRL+ENTER when done
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| Add Images To Your Pages! |
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- Got a logo you want to add to your pages? Now you can!
- Use the Image Tool to add images to your pages
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| Automatic Backups |
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- We've added an automatic backup feature which will create a ZIP archive file of all your Neck Diagrams projects, folders & pages
- You can control where the backups are stored via the Preferences page
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| Mandolin Added To Instrument Library |
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- A mandolin option has been added to the Instrument Library
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| Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Print via Preview Workaround |
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- The Mac printing workaround (automated export to PDF & open in Preview) now works on Tiger (10.4)
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| Mix & Match Note Marker Labels |
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- You can now control the label shown on each individual note marker
- For example, if you only want to show the interval on a specific dot and nothing else, then just turn off the fretboard's "Note marker labels" setting, select your note and choose the label style.
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| Controlling Note Marker Enharmonics |
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- Note name and interval enharmonics, e.g. F♯/G♭ or Δ6, can be specified on the Note Marker Inspector page
- We now always show both the Interval and Note enharmonic options instead of showing only the one the fretboard is set to show
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| Use of Musical Symbol Font For Sharps & Flats |
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- Neck Diagrams now draws musical symbols using a special font on Mac OS X
- However, due to a bug in the underlying Eclipse platform on Windows this is currently only implemented on Mac OS X.
- Fear not Windows users! We'll be upgrading to a newer version of the platform for the next release so this feature will be available then
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| Setting Fingerings Whilst Adding Notes |
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- It's now possible to set fingerings whilst a note creation tool is in use
- Previously you had to return to the selection "arrow" tool before you could type in the fingering; now you can enter them as you go!
- If you have the fretboard set to show fingerings, or a legend showing fingerings then you'll see the fingerings immediatedly
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| Numeric Keypad Support |
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- Fingerings can now also be set using the numeric keypad
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| Open String Markers Now Hollow By Default |
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- Open string markers no longer default to the solid style
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| Layout Improvements |
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- Changes to the layout of some user interface items mean less clicking and scrolling!
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| CAGED Position Scales |
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- The algorithms and logic of the CAGED position scale generator have been improved even further
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| Selecting Allow Open Strings When Position Has No Open String |
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- The Scale Generator would report an error if Allow Open Strings was selected but there we no open strings in the position selected
- This has now been fixed & Allow Open Strings can be used safely even when the position has no open strings!
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| Specifying Fret Ranges Above 12th Fret |
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- You now get the correct results when you add a scale/arpeggio beyond the 12th fret!
- Previously, if you specified a custom range, e.g. 14th to 17th frets, you would actually get notes added between the 2nd and 17th frets
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| Open String Markers Not Added As Solid Dots |
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- The Scale Generator now adds open string note markers (when Allow Open Strings selected) correctly as a hollow circle
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| Scale Generator Now Works In Turkish! |
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- If you're using Turkish as the language on your computer, you'll find that the Scale Generator no longer throws an error
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| Custom Page Size |
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- You can now specify a custom page size
- Just select the "Custom" option in the Page Size section of the Inspector and the Custom Page Size dialog window will appear
- This can also be used in the Preferences window to set a custom page size as your default
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| New Menu: Select All Fretboards |
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- There's a new editor menu, "Select All Fretboard", on the context and main Edit menus
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| Export Directly From The Editor |
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- We've added a File > Export menu to the Editor view, so you can now export the page you're currently working on
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| Curved "Barre"-style Connections |
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- This tool only allows connections between note markers
- However, an error would occur if an attempt was made to connect to any other item - this is now fixed
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| Fix for error opening page which had deleted connections |
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- If you deleted a connection between items on a page then you would've found that the page could no longer be opened once saved
- This is now fixed - any such pages can now be opened, and it's safe to delete connections again!
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| New Text Alignment Options |
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- You can now align text to the right or center, as well as the default left alignment - available on fretboard titles too!
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| Deleting The Margin Value |
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- The error triggered by deleting the margin value has been fixed
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| Using the Font Dialog on Windows |
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- Fixed an error that sometimes occurred (only on Windows) when setting the font via the Font Dialog
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1.8 | 9th December 2010
