pcartwright wrote:Surfwhammy wrote:While in some respects it might be "nice" if NOTION did all this stuff, in other respects it might not be so "nice" if doing it comes at the conceptual expense of NOTION losing its practical focus and consequently not being able to do something which it needs to be able to do . . .
Rubbish.
Cross staff beaming has nothing to do conceptually with Notion's focus. Of all the notation requests made by the Notion community (some more reasonable than others), cross staff beaming is the most most fundamental to the end user:
1. Cross staff beaming is absolutely necessary for harp and keyboard notation.
2. Students need cross staff beaming for theory and counterpoint study in colleges and universities (all of my theory and counterpoint lessons required the grand staff, and cross staff beaming was regularly needed for three and four voice textures).
3. Composers who wish to provide print copies of scores need cross staff beaming for proper notation.
4. Users who only want the sound of a glissando harp or piano going from bass to treble clef can certainly achieve the same results in other ways, but cross staff beaming would be much simpler and easier to read than the alternatives.
The point is that it is in Notion's interest to include cross staff beaming to
maintain its practical focus.
The first three items in your list are focused exclusively on engraving and advanced printing, and this can be done in Sibelius 7 (Avid) or Finale 2012C (MakeMusic Inc.), which is the primary focus of those applications, hence I view it mostly as a matter of some folks trying to be a bit too frugal with their digital music production software budgets, and for reference there are student editions available with corresponding student pricing and discounts . . .
However, I agree about the fourth item, and it was part of the example I provided, where although it might not have been so obvious, the glissando that started on a dotted half-rest on the treble clef was intended to begin on the third quarter note on the bass clef, except that if you select the glissandi tool and click between the third note on the bass clef and the last quarter note on the treble clef, the glissando is drawn from the dotted half-rest to the last quarter note on the treble clef, which obviously makes no sense and as noted is a bit of a mess, and I consider it to be a "bug", really . . .
And the same thing happens with lyrics and pedal up/down actions, which I also included in the aforementioned example . . .
THOUGHTSAs you might know, I do everything on the soprano treble clef, and here in the sound isolation studio there are 12 notes and approximately 8 or so octaves. Additionally, every diligent effort is made to ensure that each note has exactly one name, where toward this goal I use sharps but typically avoid using flats whenever possible, because allowing nonsense like {A#|B♭} only adds confusion to something which already is complex, and the same rule applies to allowing a virtual festival of key signatures, binary time signatures, modes, and all that stuff, none of which is mathematically elegant . . .
Consider the seven traditional modes for example (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian), where if you play a diatonic scale with only the white keys of a piano starting on Middle C (C4 in scientific pitch notation), then the scale is Ionian, while if you start on D, the scale is Dorian, and so forth and so on . . .
If you actually take the time to research everything with a focus on identifying patterns and so forth, then what you discover is that there are many more scales than modes, even when you allow other flavors of historical modes and newly created modes, which after several months of pondering led me to realize that the important things are
scales rather than modes, hence insofar as I am concerned that part of what one might call "traditional" music theory is just a bunch of nonsense (or "rubbish", if you prefer), and it confuses everything rather than simplifies it conceptually, because by definition it is flawed and it points people in the wrong direction . . .
SUMMARYConsidering your expertise in custom rules and all that stuff, I am a bit surprised that you appear not to be concerned about everything that happens behind the scenes once the "Play" button is pressed and NOTION begins its work as the real-time audio playback dispatcher, manager, and controller . . .
Regarding adding some type of logical cross staff support in a future version or update to NOTION, this will be fine with me, so long as it does
not affect the core performance of NOTION with respect to real-time playback, which includes doing accurate and timely ReWire 2, NTempo, and so forth . . .
I like graphic design and typography, and while these are not among my special skills, I know more about them than most folks, primarily as the consequence of doing GUI software engineering in the Windows universe, but also from working with graphic designers on various entertainment and publishing projects, and there certainly is profound merit to "looking good", but in some instances "looking good" comes at a price, and my primary concern is that cross staff enhancements have what in software engineering is called a "small footprint" . . .
Another way to understand the "behind the scenes" aspect is to use the analogy, metaphor, or simile of "swimming lanes", where the general idea is that the visual aspects of a NOTION score actually are divided into a set of "lanes", which is an excellent way to conceptualize a NOTION score for GUI programming purposes, where there are lanes for lyrics, lanes for note voices, lanes for articulations, lanes for dynamics, lanes for MIDI stuff, and so forth and so on, which makes it more a matter of traffic management, where instead of managing cars, trucks, and bicycles, one is managing "swimmers" in such a way that everything happens smoothly over time without causing "collisions", "bottlenecks", "traffic jams", "slowdowns", and so forth in the various "lanes" . . .
From an entirely different perspective, which makes a bit of sense when you know that my major in college was Psychology before I switched it to Computer Science and Mathematics, there is what I like to call the "Reverse Psychology ~ 'B. F. Skinner' Pigeon" aspect, which in its succinct form is described by the "Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease" rule, except that I make a graciously diligent effort to include a bit of what might be useful information when I "squeak" . . .
Regarding clefs and transpositions, consider what happens where there are a Piano, English Horn, and Clarinet in the house and the goal is to explain to three reasonably bright children how to play Middle C . . .
The child playing Piano plays Middle C (C4); but the child playing Clarinet has to play what on their sheet music is D4; and the child playing English Horn has to play what on their sheet music is G4, and how does that help any of them make sense of music without becoming completely and totally confused for no reason other than the arbitrary promotion of babbling . . .
[
NOTE: The same thing happens on guitar, which is another instrument that some rocket scientist arbitrarily decided should have a transposed clef, with result that most guitar players quite incorrectly think that the C at the third fret of the low-pitch "A" string is Middle C, when it actually is the C below Middle C (a.k.a., "Low C"), while Middle C is the note at the 1st fret of the high-pitch "b" string . . . ]
The only thing that makes me madder is when people have a piano in the house and do not keep it properly tuned when there are children present, which actually applies to every musical instrument, because what happens is that the minds of children become imprinted with out of tune notes, and while some children can deal with it by making intuitive adjustments if they have relative pitch, this is not always the case . . .
Lots of FUN! 
