Release notes for Mozart 15

Mozart 15 version 15.0.15

September 2022

• Thanks to Claude Tallet for pointing out problems merging strands fron different staves onto one. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2208-INSTTEST]
• Thanks to Clive Longhurst for discovering problems with a 2nd time bar just before a music break. This too is now fixed. [MZ15-2208-2NDTIMEBAR]
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding that deleting 'extra' bar lines had become catastrophic. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2208-DELBAR]
• Thanks to Michael Iscenko for finding a discrepancy in play-back timing for some combinations of a turn followed by a grace note. This is now fixed, but to get the desired sound on playback with some combinations of ornaments it may be better to write the turn out in full. [MZ15-2208-ORNAMENTS]
• Thanks again to Michael for finding examples of where phrase marks are invalidated by editing but not restored for redrawing (leaving a flattish appearance). And for continuing to find them until we had one I could reproduce! This affected other parts on the same stave when adjusting the pitch of a note. It is now fixed. [MZ15-2209-PHRASE]

Mozart 15 version 15.0.14

July 2022

• Merci à Joseph de Charentenay qui a révélé une confusion totale dans l'utilisation du mot "label" dans le système d'aide.
  To attempt to resolve the confusion, the help system now refers explicitly to "stave-labels" and "strand-labels" (hyphenated to clarify the concept) and to the "overall label" on a piece.
• Thanks to Richard Radosh for pointing out that a tenuto mark can appear slightly too close to the note when using the Mozart Jazz Font. The font has been updated to fix this.
• Thanks to Rodney Young for finding that Mozart did not recognise MusicXML files with the extension .musicxml - this extension is now recognised by Mozart. [MZ15-2206-XML]
  (Somewhere in the recent development of MusicXML there has been a recommendaton to use the extension .musicxml to distinguish MusicXML files from other xml files. Here at Mozart we're not so sure that this is a good idea. The advantages are clear but it makes it harder for generic XML editors to recognise them as XML, and Music software will have to go on recognising .xml files anyway, in case they contain MusicXML. In Mozart's case it would be very difficult at this stage to update Mozart 11,12,13,14 all to recognise the .musicxml extension, and so if you want to use MusicXML to convey files from Mozart 15 to earlier versions, you'd have to save them with the .xml extension, and so Mozart's export will continue to do this.)
• Thanks to Nigel Parsons for pointing out that the commands for entering Notes and Rests don't appear on the list whose keyboard shortcuts can be set. This has now been fixed (and the lists rationalised somewhat).
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding that entering a 1st time bar when there is already one in an earlier repeated section could cause problems. It doesn't any longer. [MZ15-2207-1STTIMEBAR]
• Thanks to Michael Iscenko for discovering that extendedtuplets containing notes of different lengths did not always play back witing the exact time allowed. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2207-MIDITUPLET]
• Thanks to Keith Long for providing an example of a problem resulting from being unable to delete miscellaneous items which may have become attached to the end-of-tune marker. It is now arranged that you can delete such items. [MZ15-2207-BARSUNWANTED]

Mozart 15 version 15.0.13

May 2022

• Thanks to Thomas Baugh for pointing out that you could not enter a two-bar repeat if there was already another one in a parallel part. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2203-RPT2]
• Thanks to Cindy Pedder for pointing out thet tying into the first note of a 2nd time bar didn't always work. The problem arose when the tie needed to bypass an end-of-line bar-line within a phrase mark. It is now fixed. [MZ15-2205-TIE]
• Thanks to Bob Hannum for pointing out that entering or editing a lyric syllable makes the ends of nearby phrase marks go to their default positions. It shouldn't and it is now fixed.
  Side effect: other operations which have the potential to alter note spacing may be similarly 'improved'. [MZ15-2205-PHRASE]
• Thanks also to Bob for finding that adding a stave to an existing score didn't always choose the desired clef. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2205-NEWSTAVE]
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding a disaster when trying to insert an extra barline through the middle of a tuplet. Mozart now refuses politely. [MZ15-2205-TUPLET]
• Thanks to Pat Giles for pointing out some lack of clarity in the tuplet dialogue, as to whether or not a given tuplet is allowed to replace a dotted note. It may now be a little clearer. [MZ15-2205-TUPLETDLG]

Mozart 15 version 15.0.12

February 2022

• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding that time signatures were not always successfully removed when deleting a music break at a position with no actual time signature change. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2201-TCH]
• Thanks also to Jeroen for noticing that the default spacing between a minim and an end-of-repeat barline was sometimes (eg in 2/4 time) too small. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2201-BAREDIT]
• Thanks again to Jeroen for finding specific circumstances in which Mozart could underestimate the space available for an accidental and therefore squash it up to the note too much. [MZ15-2201-ACCIDENTAL]
• Thanks once more to Jeroen for finding an infelicity in operations following the creation of a multi-bar rest in pieces with more than one stave. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2201-MULTIBAR]
• When entering a "redirection" forces an old one to move, the old one was not being completely erased. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2201-REDIRECT]
• Thanks to Richard Mills for pointing out that the "change tempo" command did not respect the choice of whether it should be visible or hidden. It does now. [MZ15-2201-TEMPO]
• Thanks also to Richard for pointing out that the 'pause' button on the paly-back tool didn't work in the Mozart Reader. This is now fixed.
• The content of the properties dialogue box has been fixed for properties of MIDI controls.
• Thanks to Clive Longhurst for finding that text and dynamics attached to bar lines did not paste into the new chunk after being copied. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2202-INSBAR]
• In an enhancement to the user interface, the properties comand (Alt+Enter) used on a multi-bar rest now brings up the multibar rest styling dialogue box. [MZ15-2202-MBR]
• Joining beams past a bar line was possible if the Join command (J) was used with the caret exactly on the bar line, but failed when the caret was in the space either side of the bar line. This long-standing infelicity is now fixed. [MZ15-2202-TJOIN]
• The music was not always being correctly formatted after introducing a time signature (numerator) change. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2202-TIMESIG]

Mozart 15 version 15.0.11

6 January 2022

• Thanks to Glynn Bragg and Thomas Baugh for finding that switch instruments at the start of a part, didn't always fix up the clef correctly. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-TRANS2]
• Thanks to Ken Schweim and Richard Mills for pointing out that a repeat bar ||: right at the start of the piece is difficult to remove. This is now corected and both 'delete' and pressing : after the bar line will remove it. [MZ15-2111-RPTSTART]
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding an example where deleting a bar-truncation object resulted in misaligned parts. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-TRUNC]
• Thanks also to Jeroen for pointing out that an unwanted conductor stave could appear unexpectedly when executing an Undo command. This is now fixed too. [MZ15-2112-CONDUCTOR]
• Thanks again to Jeroen for pointing out a spurious error message when you replace an instrument by the same one! You no longer get the message - but nothing happens! [MZ15-2112-INSTCHANGE]
• Thanks again to Andy Jerison for pointing out the the Ctrl+F5 universal fix-up command loses strand labels, when it doesn't really have to. This is now fixed. Sorry it has taken so long Andy! [MZ15-2112-PARTLABELS]
• Thanks to Lindsay Lorden for highlighting some problems reading .mz files written by Mozart 7 (or 8 or earlier). A conductor stave no longer appears by default. The lyric lines are also now correctly spaced. [MZ15-2201-FIO]

Mozart 15 version 15.0.10

17 November 2021

• Thanks to Ken Schweim and Mitch Park for finding that after Service Pack 15.0.9, Mozart will not read some old .mz files. This has now been corrected.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.9

16 November 2021

• Thanks to David Devoy for finding a problem exporting a concert pitch score MusicXML. MusicXML cannot be exported when the file is shown at Concert Pitch, and the warning to that effect was not appearing. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2110-OPCODE]*
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding a very intermittent bug which caused a crash during the auto-save operation, and for putting in a lot of effort helping to locate it. We nailed it eventually. [MZ15-2110-FILESAVE]
• Thanks also to Jeroen for highlighting a problem whereby the caret got 'stuck' after deleting an extra bar line. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-DEL]
• Thanks again to Jeroen for finding problems with text between systems when staves are deleted. This too is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-SYSTEMSPACER]
• Thanks yet again to Jeroen for finding files where the View/Properties command failed badly. This also is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-PROPS]
• Thanks to Michael Iscenko for reporting the loss of default beaming pattern when editing. Although I hadn't reproduced the problem, I found a suspicious chunk of code, which is now updated. So hopefully the problem is now fixed. [MZ15-2110-BEAMPATTERN]
• Thanks to Ken Schweim for exposing problems in showing bar numbers on scores where the chord line goes underneath the music. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2110-BARNUMBERING]
• Thanks to Leward Fluty and Max Timmermans for finding that resetting an instrument with the Stave command did not correctly set the clef. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-CLEF]
• Thanks to Rodney Young for finding a bug in the export of whole bar rests to MusicXml. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-XML]
• Thanks to Cedric Brownlaw for finding MusicXML example where the system spacing was incorrectly calculated. This is now fixed. [MZ15-2111-XML2]
• There has been some confusion in the labelling of the Full version and the Evaluation Copy. This is now resolved. [MZ15-2111-AB]

* New policy: "bug-fix codes", which have long been used in comments in the code itself, are are now to be included in this log, in order to correlate it with the source code when necessary.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.8

22 September 2021

• Thanks to Tony Caporn for reporting a problem with Mozart failing to open a file. It turned out that Mozart was not happy with a symbol it didn't recognise. Irrespective of how that got there, Mozart is now more tolerant of this situation.
• Thanks to Chris Beeson for pointing out that adding a 2nd time bar bracket to a final bar restyles it to a single bar. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Richard Mills for pointing out that making an end-of-2nd-time-bar into a start-of-repeat didn't always work, depending on the method used. This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Richard for finding that one couldn't directly add a second time bar ending on a start of repeat. This too is now fixed.
• Thanks again to Richard for helping to pinpoint one cause of a bug which left duplicate font syles in the piece. This occurred when adding text boxes attached to system spacers, and is now fixed.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for pointing out that, in the Grace Note Properties dialogue box, the option to play on or before the beat should not be disabled for a single acciaccatura. This is now corrected.
• Thanks to Hugo Hölscher for finding that the option of starting with a rehearsal mark other than 'A' didn't work. It does now.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.7

15 July 2021

• Thanks to Richard Mills for finding that stem lengths were not always treated correctly when a note was replaced by a rest. This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Richard for finding that the layout editor was replacing some stave dimensions in the dialogue by random numbers. (But fortunately the drawing code was using the correct values!) This is now fixed too.
• Thanks to Leward Fluty for finding that resetting an instrument to one with a different transposition, transposed the part correctly but did not reformat any phrase marks. This also is now fixed.
• Thanks to Bob Hannum for finding that combining staves causes clefs in other parts to revert to default clefs for their instruments. This now no longer happens.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.6

8 May 2021

• Thanks to Carl Egetter for finding an infelicity in the dialogue page which lets you select a MIDI voice. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Andy Jerison for pointing out a couple of rough edges in the Global Settings dialogue page. These have now been sanded down.
• Thanks also to Andy for proving that an orphaned end-of-2nd-time-bar was just about impossible to remove. It is now a little easier.
• And in the process, thanks again to Andy for helping to find ways to copy passages so that they contain orphaned bar-bracket-ends. Hopefully this is now impossible; it's definitely much harder!
• Thanks to Paul Kajzar or finding examples of Mozart 8 files which Mozart 15 couldn't read. Mozart 9-14 could, and the problem turned out to be an infelicity which had crept into the obscure old-file-reading module of Mozart 15. It is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Paul for finding that ornaments were not being correctly exported to MusicXML. In his case a mordent, but it turned out that others were just as bad or worse. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Richard Mills for exposing a problem with tempo offsets when a file is saved and reopened. This now fixed.
• Thanks to Ray Kohn for reporting a problem with MusicXML not appearing on his Export menu. This is almost certainly due to the MusicXML module not loading correctly on his computer, but it is not clear why that should be. Nevertheless, this service pack contains an updated build of the MusicXML module, in the hope that that will fix it.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding that using the split command on the first or last note of a tuplet, leads to disaster. This is now fixed.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.5

28 March 2021

• Thanks to Leward Fluty for finding that adding an extra stave to a score caused reformatting including setting all stems unnecessarily to their default direction. Mozart is now a little more discerning about what it reformats after the score has been edited.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for noticing that offsetting a note can sometimes cause the caret to become corrupted. This is now fixed.
• Thanks for assorted reports of problems with macros. It looks like this was a bug introduced in a recent service pack, with miscellaneous effects. I think it is fixed now!
• Thanks to Clive Longhurst for showing that a hairpin encompassing a single note, and ending on a bar line caused the note not to play back. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Bob Hehmann for reporting problems with the Layout/BarsPerLine command. After inverstigation, it was difficult to see how it could aver have worked properly on pieces with more than one strand! It is now fixed.
• Thanks to Graham Main for finding, and illustrating, a sequence of operations leading to an illegal delete command. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Andy Jerison for pointing out that the action of the Ctrl key in accelerating the spin button on the ItemOffset dialogue box is 'obscure'. In fact it seems to be completely undocumented! There is now a reminder on the dialogue box itself, and the relevant help topic is completely updated.
• Thanks also to Andy for finding a circumstance in which he couldn't remove a courtesy accidental. This is now fixed.
• Thanks again to Andy for noticing that splitting and combning staves was losing the strand names. This is now corrected.
• And thanks yet again to Andy for finding a small problem with short 8va bracket near the end of a line. This is now fixed too.
• New Functionality: Thanks to Michael Robertson for requesting dulcimer tablature. This is introduced for chromatic dulcimers in this service pack.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.4

10 February 2021

• Thanks to Andy Jerison and Leward Fluty for highlighting a problem with the Enter key on the 'strands' page of the 'score layout' dialogue. This is now fixed. The source of the problem was deep within a 3rd party module used by Mozart to draw buttons showing both an image and text. This module has now been replaced with in-house code in order to forestall similar possible problems with other buttons.
• Thanks to Richard Mills for finding that the bar number misplacement had not been entirely fixed -it was still wrong when a time signature change occured at a line change. There was an associated mis-drawing of a start of repeat bar at that [point too. This is now all fixed.
• Thanks also to Richard for pointing out that when Mozart assigne 'instrument IDs' for the purpose of exporting XML, the values assigned are not always technically legal. This is now fixed.
• And thanks yet again to Richard for finding that Mozart's MusicXML export was not always setting MIDI channels and voices cotrectly. This is now fixed too.
• The default spacing after a time signature change at a start of repeat at a linechange has been improved.
• Thanks to Claude Tallet for observing that hyphens between lyric syllables were absent at the end of a score line. This is now fixed. In the process, the centring of syllables on the notes to which they are attached has also been improved.
• Thanks to Barry Brookes for finding that it is difficult to get an 8va symbol with a very short attached bracket. This is now improved, and the improvement extended to number brackets and hairpins.
• Thanks to Roger Prowse for finding anomalies in the block selectio after bars have been removed. This is now fixed.
• New Functionality: Alt+Shift+LeftArrow, Alt+Shift+RightArrow applied when the highlight is at one end of an extended item (8va bracket, number bracket, hairpin) offsets both ends of the object in parallel.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.3

13 January 2021

• With thanks to Richard Mills: Horizontal offset of bar numbers at the left of the stave, where there is a key or time change. This also fixes misplacement of rehearsal marks and text items at the start of a stave where there is a key or time change.
• With thanks to Bengt Johnsson: Muting notes now also silences accented notes.
• With thanks to Barry Brookes: Mozart was sometimes crashing when importing MusicXML files containing lyrics. This now fixed.
• With thanks to Jeroen Neve: the 'hidden attribute' of extended items (hirpins, brackets, ...) was not always being respected. This is now fixed.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.2

20 December 2020

• In 15.0.0 and 15.0.1 the 'updates' button on the Help tab will tell you when an update is available, but will not download it. You have to go to https://www.mozart.co.uk/support/ to get it. This is fixed here so that in future the updates button should work fully.

Mozart 15 version 15.0.1

19 December 2020

• Thanks to Tony Caporn for reporting a problem with bar-number visibility. It turns out that the bar number was not being shown above the score system when the top staff is a conductor part. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to John Filsak for finding a badly offset arpeggiation symbol. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Jeroen Neve for finding that one way of deleting an arpeggiation symbol caused a crash. This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Jeroen for finding that when copying and pasting a single text item, the wrong text was pasted. This is now fixed. While delving into this we also found problems with text containing an exclamation mark (!). For subtle technical reasons this was not being pasted correctly. This too is now fixed.
• Thanks to Hugo Hölscher for reporting that rehearsal mark sequence was not being updated when a new one was entered via the bar-line properties dialogue box. This is now fixed.
• Thanks to Richard Mills for highlighting problems with editing the duration of an existing caesura. As far as I can tell this was only a problem if the caesura was attached to a bar-line (and not to a note or rest). This is now fixed.
• Thanks also to Richard for showing that start-of-line bar numbers were printed to low down on piano staves. This is also now fixed.
• Thanks to Gunnar Nordstrom for finding that replacing a whole-bar-repeat symbol by the actual contents of the previous bar did not work correctly if the previous bar contained slash notes. This is now fixed.
• An error has become apparent which means that the synthesiser will not have been getting an "all notes off" message at the end of play-back. This doesn't seem to have had any ill effect, but it's fixed now anyway!
• Thanks to Barry Brooks for highlighting the fact that the "Insert start tempo" check box on the new file dialogue didn't work when the 'template' option was used. This is now fixed.

MOZART 15

November 2020

No infelicities found yet, but here's a list of new features

Symbols

• ‘Slash’ note-heads are now available (in two slightly different styles).
• Note heads may now be put in parentheses (in addition to the existing option of putting courtesy accidentals in parentheses).
• The laisser vibrer symbol (a ‘tie to nowhere’) is available.
• An optional continuation symbol is introduced for system breaks occurring in the middle of a bar.
• Optional continuation symbols have been introduced for where the number of staves shown on a system differs from the previous system.
• There is a greater degree of support for Accordion music, including a choice of 32 register (coupler) symbols.
• Note stems may be hidden (for specialist purposes).
• A greater selection of styles is available for 8va and other brackets over/under the music.

Rendering

• Bar numbers may be placed above or below and by the bar-line or centred on the bar.
• The position of individual bar numbers may be fine-tuned to avoid collisions.
• The position of ‘redirections’ (DS, DC, Fine, Coda,…) may be fine-tuned to avoid collisions.
• Rendering of multiple bars rest is improved.
• The background colour (‘paper colour’) for the representation of the music on the screen is now user-definable.
• The caesura (break //) now plays back (with adjustable duration).
• Pieces may now be marked with one of the modes: Major, Minor, Dorian Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Ionian, Aeolian, or Locrian (or left unmarked as before).

Interface improvements

• A new, quicker mechanism, is introduced for entering triplets and other tuplets when typing in music.
• An item (such as text or dynamics), having been entered in one part, may now be copied to all parallel parts, or to a selection of parallel parts, with a single command.
• Individual items (such as text and dynamics) may now be copied and pasted.
• Delete commands specific to items including dynamics and sforzandi have been introduced. These allow one to select a block and remove, for example, all dynamics from it, leaving other items unaffected.
• Automatic beaming of groups of notes (including breaking inner beams) has improved.
• On starting a new piece (by any of the three available methods) you can choose the ‘classic’ or ‘jazz’ music font.
• The procedure for extracting musicians’ parts from a score has been refined and improved.
• All musicians parts may be extracted with a single command.
• Text font styles are now separated into two sets: one for text in the music (expressions, directions,…) and one for on the page (title, headers, footers,..). These scale with the music and the page size respectively.
• Text font styles for the music now include standard (but user-definable) styles for expression markings, instructions, and tempi (as discussed by Elaine Gould in ‘Behind bars’).
• Many operations which previously required one to show the virtual conductor stave, may now be effected transparently, without actually showing it.
• When hidden staves are shown for editing, the screen page image expands to allow this to be done smoothly.
• Export of abc files is improved.
• Mozart now has ‘page layout files (.mzlayout) in addition to score template files (.mzt). Score templates continue to be available for creating a new piece, and contain both score structure and page layout information. Page layout files contain only page layout information, and are used, for example, when extracting parts from a score. A page layout may also be imposed from a .mzlayout file on to an existing piece.
• A page layout may also be imposed from a .mzlayout file on to an existing piece.
• The overview of text boxes has improved.
• There is a new ‘Help’ category tab replacing the drop-down list of help-related topics.
• The mouse-wheel action when the Ctrl key is pressed has been adjusted to conform to its behaviour in Microsoft’s applications.
• A new tablature command is available to move a note from one string to another, automatically adjusting the fret in order to preserve the pitch.