please help me on user interface design for MidiNotate 20

Mark

I am all in favour of your changes for your new Composer. I have read comments by other participants. I do not like at all the floating tool pallets in Photoshop 7. They always are in the way and need to be shifted frequently. The requirements for a graphical editor also differ very much from the requirements of a notation editor. In contrast to a graphical editor like Photoshop 7, where the order of focus on objects is not set, a notation editor has symbols set in fixed order from left to right of the screen.

My ideal notation editor has all menues and tools at the top of the screen, staff buttons to the left, with pertinent information and results at the bottom of the screen. It would display one group of staffs only with a horizontal scroll bar, that permits scrolling through the whole score and a vertical scroll bar to move through the set of staffs, similar to what is done in midipiano roll editors. For the general looks of my ideal notation editor I would be guided by my favourite sound editor "GoldWave". At the bottom of the screen would be an overview, measure numbers and time. I am largely arranging backing tracks where tempo and time are often preset requirements. A sliding control for setting tempo, positioned at the top of the screen, would be appreciated.

I think that using the keyboard is the most efficient way of using such software, but I still use mostly a pointing device. I use many different programs with each program having mostly its own specific sets of key combinations, most of which I don't remember for long.

One of the current concerns I have with Composer is that during editing, the point of focus jumps around the screen or even off screen. With my above proposal, I imagine that it would be easier to keep the point of focus in exactly the same screen position even though the space taken up by various symbols around the point of focus changes.

This recommendation may be drastic, but you asked for it.

Best wishes for your project,

Herbert Wende