Hey folks, New build of the Dog for your toyage! Over the past several weeks I have not only been bogged as usual with non-doggiebox work, but I've also re-tooled some of the internal model used for representing beats within bars. As a result there has been some change to the file format (see below) but this will soon give rise to some more useful features like inserting beats, joining bars, pasting things together, etc. A note on plans and version numbering... at the moment this bears a "1.3" label. It may or may not end up being called that in the end; it depends how things go. Many desirable features have been discussed on this list over the past months, and I am going to try to start exploring them in these builds over the next while. So, what's new since 1.2: • Zooming level can now be controlled on a per-bar basis, like in the 1D1 demo build (July). Zoom operations will apply to selected bars, or if none are selected, then all visible bars. Zoom is now also saved to disk. • Icon handling in the drum kit editor has been improved to facilitate operations in the image's native format (e.g. PDF, EPS, PICT), in addition to simple bitmap. (Previously, all images were converted to TIFF during an export, copy or drag'n'drop, which could result in loss of detail -- Carl, this should fix the issues you had described awhile ago.) • Changing the time signature now causes the bar to retain its structure; for example, given a 3|4 bar containing 3 quarter notes, changing to 4|4 will cause the notes to become triplets over 4 beats. • Visual consistency in the pattern editor has been improved (e.g. 12|8 bars now appear like 4|4 bars at the same zoom). • There is a new Preferences option "Create backward-compatible files". If enabled, song files saved with this and later versions will still be openable in Doggiebox 1.1-1.2 (though they will be about twice as large on disk). Otherwise, Doggiebox 1E2 or newer will be required. This is due to extensive re-implementation of the underlying beat/bar timing model that will give rise to more versatile editing operations in the coming builds. • Mac OS 10.3.2 (or later) is now required. -- I am interested to hear how this impacts everyone. My perception is that a minority are using 10.2 now, and dropping support for it will allow me to concentrate on taking advantage of the newest tech. In several months Tiger will be out and it seems 10.3 will reasonably become the "legacy" platform. Also, several memory leaks have been fixed. Grab at <http://www.doggiebox.com/distribution/Doggiebox-1E3.tbz>. Stuffit Expander (or your choice of bzip2/tar utilities) should extract it. Feedback rocks as usual. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca