Hi Ian,

From a quick read of your post I too would go for option 3. Don't know if it is possible to turn Composers bars off altogether - and somehow insert the bar lines as a "text or graphic".

I have put together several (large) post regarding barring and ended up not posting any because the problem in the real-world-music is very complex (and my descriptions not good enough to post). The problem of getting the barring right is particularly tough when recording in real-time. NC does a great job (better than any s/ware I have used) to cope with this and is very good on midi imports. However, get some bars wrong and well, personally I end up redoing the whole recording rather that trying to fix the bar positions.

I feel intuitively there is somehow a better way than the traditional to help with all this - like maybe a "less intelligent" approach. Like eg turning all bars off: record a session: draw the bars in manually (as a
graphic): Turn “intelligence” back on in a special mode that would allow dragging -some- bars to different position. Very often it is obvious to the composer where the bar line(s) should be, but the slightest change affects all the rest (as it's bound to)! I think it probably needs a two stage solution. Bars off, adjust bar n and bar m, bars on: repeat.

Even though it would be a labour intensive task to do a whole piece like this, I am sure that it would be quicker and less frustrating in the long run.

Sorry can't help directly and have gone off-topic.

regards to all

-John