695: Changes and improvements in Sibelius 7.1.2

Platform support

• Sibelius 7.1.2 now runs on Windows XP SP3 (32-bit only). Windows XP is unable to fully support all of Sibelius 7’s features, so you will not experience DirectWrite text measurement and drawing or multi-core CPU support for playback, and the Quick Access Toolbar will appear between the document title bar and the ribbon tabs, rather than embedded in the title bar. You are also recommended not to use the full Sibelius 7 Sounds library on a 32-bit system, though Sibelius 7.1.2 is Large Address Aware (LAA) and can use up to 3GB RAM if available.

Performance

• Sibelius’s redraw speed has been improved substantially. When working at a low zoom level or on a large display, so a lot of music is in view, redraw time is on average around three times as fast as in Sibelius 7.1.
• Note input and editing in normal (page) view is now up to twice as fast as in Sibelius 7.1, and input and editing in Panorama is now up to 40% faster than in Sibelius 7.1. This optimization has been achieved by improved caching of text objects.
• Inputting and editing text is now considerably faster than in Sibelius 7.1 (Mac only).
• The speed at which Sibelius opens new windows has been improved by around 40%. This is particularly noticeable when extracting parts and choosing to open the parts in new windows as they are extracted.

Stability

• Sibelius no longer crashes when you type : (the shortcut to turn an existing note into a grace note) in a score containing no staves.
• Sibelius no longer crashes if you type a key on the numeric keypad when the Quick Start window has the focus.
• Sibelius no longer crashes if you quit the application while it is still generating thumbnails for the New Score and Recent pages of the Quick Start window.
• Sibelius no longer crashes if you click on the score to clear the selection immediately after running the Export Selection as Audio plug-in.
• Under some circumstances, Sibelius could crash when generating the thumbnail images for the New Score and Recent pages of the Quick Start window. This has now been fixed.
• The Quick Look and Spotlight importers supplied with Sibelius have been improved and no longer crash on many scores.

Look and feel

• It is now possible to close the last tab in the last document window and leave the empty window behind, so that Sibelius does not either return to the Quick Start window (if Show Quick Start again after closing last score is switched on) or exit Sibelius completely (on Windows). You can close the last tab by clicking the close button on the tab itself, or choosing File > Close, or using the shortcut Ctrl+W or Command-W. Once you have the empty window visible, you can choose File > Recent to open a recent score, or File > Open to open any other score. Note that, on Windows, unless you have set the Quick Start window to reappear after the last score is closed, once you close this last empty window, Sibelius will quit (just as other ribbon-based SDI applications, such as Microsoft Word, do).
• Document tabs (e.g. containing the full score or a dynamic part) can now be moved to a new window by tearing them off the existing window: simply click on a tab and drag it off the window in any direction: when you see a Sibelius icon appear under a grabber hand mouse cursor, you can release the mouse button to create a new window with the contents of that tab.
• Document tabs can be re-ordered by clicking and dragging them left and right in the tab bar. The order of tabs is remembered when you re-open the score.
• Sibelius now respects the locale settings on your computer for the display and entry of floating-point numeric values, i.e. numbers expressed to one or more decimal places. Sibelius now expects you to use the appropriate decimal mark for your locale, e.g. , in most European languages, in numeric controls in dialogs throughout the program.
• Dialogs throughout Sibelius now once again include mnemonics, i.e. Alt+letter shortcuts that allow you to select specific controls via the keyboard (Windows only).

Quick Start

• Scores that were last opened more than a month ago now correctly appear in the Older category on the Recent page of Quick Start.
• The ranges of times and dates used to populate the Today, Yesterday, This Week, This Month etc. categories are now updated every hour, so if you leave Sibelius running overnight, scores on the Recent page of Quick Start should appear in the appropriate category.
• Items in the system menu bar that do not work when the Quick Start window is the foreground window have been disabled (Mac only).
• The search box in the top right-hand corner of the Recent and New Score pages of the Quick Start window can now correctly handle multiple word search terms.
• Checking or unchecking Show Quick Start again after closing last score on the Other page of Preferences now correctly updates the corresponding checkbox in the Quick Start window itself, and vice versa.
• Creating a new score via the New Score page of the Quick Start with a pick-up bar or metronome mark will no longer cause the next score you create via the Quick Start to also have a pick-up bar or metronome mark, even if none is chosen.

Printing

• New Full score and Parts checkboxes have been added at the top of the File > Print page, to make it easier to choose whether to print either the full score or the parts, or both together.
• The list of parts at the top of File > Print now shrinks vertically if there are fewer than 10 parts in the score, to minimize the amount of space the list takes up.
• The handling of page ranges has been improved, including the ability to specify a range of pages as e.g. 10-1, which will now print those pages in reverse order. Furthermore, comma-separated ranges of pages can now be printed collated if desired (previously they were always printed uncollated, even if the option to print collated was chosen).
• When using PDF > Save as PostScript in the native Mac Print dialog, the resulting PostScript file is now PS Level 3 and hence correctly sets the page size (instead of always assuming Letter size).
• When using PDF > Save as PDF in the native Mac Print dialog, the resulting PDF is no longer offset horizontally and vertically.

Articulations

• A problem whereby articulations that had been flipped in scores saved in Sibelius 5 or earlier would appear unflipped when opening them in Sibelius 6 or later has been fixed.
• Under some circumstances, the presence of an articulation under a slur no longer causes the slur to flip when using the Position slurs on mixed stem notes above the notes option.

Note input

• New Left arrow in note input hides caret and selects previous note option on the Note Input page of Preferences, switched on by default. Switch this option off to restore the behavior of the left arrow key during note input from Sibelius 6 and earlier, namely that the note input caret should be hidden, but the selected note should not change.
• When the Specify pitch before duration option is chosen on the Note Input page of Preferences is chosen, playing the MIDI keyboard with nothing selected no longer causes the note input caret to appear incorrectly.
• It is no longer possible to switch QWERTY mode on or off when the Keyboard window is visible.
• Using MIDI thru to audition sounds using a MIDI keyboard (i.e. with no selection in the score) no longer causes redundant program and bank change messages to be sent before each note is echoed back.
• Using MIDI thru no longer causes an extra bar to be created at the end of the score if the final bar of the score contains notes.
• When entering music in guitar tab in the last bar of the score, new bars are no longer created before the current final bar rather than after the final bar.

Playback

• New Release device when Sibelius is in the background option in the Audio Engine Options dialog (accessed via Playback Devices, which is opened using the dialog launcher button in the Play > Setup group on the ribbon). When this option is switched on, Sibelius will release the audio device when the application is minimized or another application is brought into focus, unless Sibelius is playing back at the time. Additionally, Sibelius now correctly suspends the audio interface when your computer goes to sleep, and resumes it when your computer wakes up (Windows only).
• The appearance of the progress indicator in the status bar that appears while Sibelius Player is loading sounds has been improved.
• The Re-use already loaded sounds option on the Playback page of Preferences now works correctly, minimizing the amount of time taken to load and re-load sounds when switching between open scores.
• Support for WASAPI audio interfaces has been improved, which improves compatibility with soundcards from manufacturers including RME and Creative Labs (Windows only).
• Adjusting the tempo slider in the Transport window no longer causes VST synchronization information to drift away from the current playback tempo.
• Playback is now steadier when using a large buffer size (in Audio Engine Options) and adjusting tempo with the tempo slider in the Transport window (Windows only).
• Running Sibelius for the first time on a clean system now correctly scans and loads VST virtual instruments and effects (Mac only).
• When using a manual sound set that defines unpitched percussion patches, Sibelius now correctly prioritizes the drum maps in the sound set used by the manual sound set, and will allocate the channel in the manual sound set to staves in the score correctly.
• The start-up sound now plays correctly once more, if enabled (Windows only).
• Audio Units that use Cocoa windows no longer sometimes display in windows that are too small for their user interfaces (Mac only).
• A repeat bar that contains a sound ID change caused by a notehead (e.g. a cross notehead) no longer has the sound ID change applied again on each repeat (e.g. causing the volume of cross noteheads to be reduced in each repeat).
• When using a repeat bar to repeat e.g. a sequence of staccato notes, Sibelius will now correctly use a staccato sound if one is available, and not both play the staccato sound and also reduce the duration of the notes (i.e. what it would do if no staccato sound were available).
• Further improvements to the playback of variant sounds when using e.g. staccato on two identical instruments where variant sounds are available.
• Grace notes now play back correctly in repeat bars once more.

ReWire

• Sibelius can now connect to 64-bit ReWire hosts, e.g. Cubase 6.5, Sonar X1 Extended, etc.

Text

• It is now possible to specify the default horizontal alignment of a text style independently of the default horizontal alignment of the text object itself, e.g. to create a right-aligned text object within which the text itself is center-aligned by default. The new option is found on the Horizontal Posn tab of the Edit Text Style dialog.
• Any font substitutions you specify in the Missing Fonts dialog will now be remembered and automatically chosen for you the next time the Missing Fonts dialog appears, so it is only necessary to set up a given substitution once. If you subsequently choose not to show the Missing Fonts dialog again, your saved substitutions are applied automatically.
• Changing the size of part of a text object that contains changes of character style (e.g. use of the music text font) no longer causes the font to be reset incorrectly.
• Hitting Return in a text object and then hitting Backspace to remove the new line no longer requires two hits of Backspace.
• If the Tablature letters or Tablature numbers text styles are set to use an extended style (e.g. Condensed, Semibold), the tab letters and numbers now draw in the correct style (Mac only).
• Sibelius can once more correctly synthesize italic, bold or bold italic versions of fonts that do not provide real italic, bold or bold italic styles (e.g. Inkpen2 Script, or Tahoma on Mac). Such text also no longer sometimes appears double italicized in exported PDF files.
• Glyphs stretched by way of character scaling now export to PDF correctly stretched.
• Using the Backspace key to delete a range of text that extends from the start of the text object now works correctly.
• Right-to-left text (e.g. Hebrew) no longer prints reversed (Windows only).
• Selecting some text and then dragging it with the mouse, or pasting text into an existing text object, no longer incorrectly changes the alignment of the text.
• The text editor now resizes correctly when editing right-aligned text.
• When editing text, the text editor now once more correctly opens at the Magnetic Layout position of the text object, not its original position.
• Changes made to the font substitutions on the Font Equivalents page of Preferences now once more take effect as soon as the Preferences dialog is confirmed, rather than requiring you to restart Sibelius.

Music fonts

• It is once again possible to use third-party fonts, e.g. Jazz, Maestro, etc., with Sibelius.

Parts

• A bug whereby the margins in parts could change incorrectly when opening scores created in Sibelius 4 in later versions of Sibelius has been fixed.

MusicXML export

• Sibelius now exports MusicXML 3.0 files, and supports the new features for describing instrument sounds, virtual instruments, and changes in playing technique.
• Atonal/open key key signatures are no longer incorrectly exported as C major key signatures in MusicXML files.
• Whole notes (semibreves) and longer notes that don’t have stems no longer incorrectly export stem direction in MusicXML files.
• Repeat barlines now correctly export the bar-style element for a more complete description of their appearance.
• Transposing instruments are now always exported at written pitch rather than sounding pitch.
• The voice numbers used in multi-staff parts are now unique, thus fixing problems whereby voice numbers could clash in passages using cross-staff beaming.
• Beam groups and tremolos are now more accurately exported in MusicXML files.
• Tied notes that cross barlines are now exported correctly in MusicXML files.
• System objects (e.g. rehearsal marks, tempo text, etc.) now export at all the selected system object positions, rather than only above the top staff.
• The vertical placement of tuplet brackets is now more accurately described in exported MusicXML files.
• The position of text in exported MusicXML files is no longer incorrectly specified according to the left-hand edge of the page.
• Sibelius now validates against the MusicXML 3.0 schema (Windows) and DTDs (Mac).
• Metronome marks are no longer incorrectly exported as two pieces of text.
• Stem lengths are now exported in MusicXML files.
• Additive time signatures (e.g. 3+2+2/8) are now exported correctly in MusicXML files.
• If a score uses huge or large time signatures, these are now exported in MusicXML files (though the exact staves above or on which the time signatures appear are not exported).
• Special barlines that occur in the middle of a bar (e.g. repeat barlines) are now correctly exported in MusicXML files.

MusicXML import

• The handling of gaps between staves and systems in imported MusicXML files has been improved: Sibelius will now correctly use the distances specified in the Defaults element at the start of the file if there is no distance specified for a given staff or system.
• Sibelius now attempts to import notes in MusicXML files that do not have the Type element set correctly.
• The handling of system and page breaks in imported MusicXML files has been improved: Sibelius will now force all of the bars between two breaks onto the same system, which ensures the layout is the same as specified in the MusicXML file.
• Sibelius now imports page margins in MusicXML files more accurately, in particular no longer causing the left-hand page margin to often be much larger than specified in the MusicXML file.
• A problem whereby Sibelius could incorrectly insert a system break at the end of the first bar in an imported MusicXML file has been fixed.

Plug-ins

• A problem where by Sibelius was unable to download the list of available plug-ins for the Install Plug-ins dialog has been fixed (Mac only).

ManuScript language

• Plug-ins that operated incorrectly on non-English systems in Sibelius 7.1 now work correctly once more.
• New SoundInfo object, which allows plug-ins to access information about the sound ID (requested and actual), patch name and sound set of a given note at any point in the score.
• New Sibelius.SetFocusToControl() method to explicitly set the focus to a given dialog control.
• New Sibelius.CloseDialog() method to programmatically close a plug-in dialog.
• New Sibelius.ShowTraceWindow() method to show the Plug-in Trace Window and force it in front of other windows.
• New Sibelius.NoteSpacingRule object, corresponding to the values in the Note Spacing Rule dialog, making it possible for plug-ins to adjust note spacing.
• New Sibelius.FontFamilies variable, returning a list of the fonts installed on the system, and Sibelius.IsFontFamilyInstalled() method to check whether a given font is installed.
• List boxes in ManuScript plug-in dialogs can now optionally support multiple selections, returning the selected items as an array of strings.
• The Plug-in Trace Window now has its own button on the Windows taskbar so that you can switch to it by clicking its button on the taskbar. You can also switch to the Plug-in Trace Window on Mac using the Command-~ shortcut to cycle between windows belonging to Sibelius.
• The Plug-in Trace Window now opens towards the top left-hand corner of the screen when it is shown for the first time during a session, and remembers its size and position throughout the session.
• The Plug-in Trace Window now correctly scrolls as new lines are added, so that the most recently-added line is always in view.

Other improvements

• View > Panels > Hide All no longer has any effect on the Inspector.
• Clicking the button part of Home > Editing > Color now correctly shows the color picker if no color has already been chosen.
• The previously missing option Swap 3 and 4 has been added to the Note Input > Voices > Swap menu.
• The default file type in File > Open or via the Open Other button in the Quick Start window is now All music files.
• Changing the numeric values in the table in the Edit Arrange Style dialog (e.g. for Max. voices etc.) now works correctly once more.
• It is once again possible to change the value of Live Playback velocities by clicking and dragging in a sweep beyond the first page of the score.
• It is now possible to resize a Sibelius score window by dragging the bottom left- or right-hand corners once more (Windows only).
• Opening files (e.g. MusicXML files) from paths containing accented characters now works reliably.
• After installing Sibelius 7 for the first time, the operating system will now pick up the new Spotlight importer immediately, rather than continuing to use the Spotlight importer from Sibelius 6 or earlier, if it is installed (Mac only).
• The tool tips for items in the Recent Places list on the File > Recent page no longer show the final folder in the path twice.
• Dots in guitar chord diagrams can now correctly show two characters once more, instead of only one.
• Importing an SVG graphic to the score via Notations > Graphics > Graphic no longer causes Sibelius to crash.
• Hitting the menu key on a Windows keyboard, or typing Shift+F10, to show the context menu now always works reliably (Windows only).
• Tree view controls (e.g. in Home > Instruments > Add or Remove) now show tool tips when appropriate.
• Using the Find box in Home > Instruments > Add or Remove or Change now works correctly when running the Japanese-language version of Sibelius.
• The way in which Sibelius detects the presence of an appropriate PDF reader in order to open its on-screen documentation has been improved. If Sibelius is unable to find a suitable PDF reader using the Windows Registry, it will show the standard Windows dialog for associating PDF files with a program that can open them (Windows only).
• The names of symbol categories in the Edit Symbols dialog (opened via the dialog launcher in the corner of the Notations > Symbols group) are now always shown in full, and not truncated.
• The rightmost column of symbols in the Edit Symbol dialog is no longer partially covered by the scroll bar.
• File > Save As will no longer shown the wrong file extension by default when saving a Sibelius score created by importing e.g. a MIDI file.
• Dashed and dotted slurs are no longer sometimes clipped incorrectly when their shape is adjusted by Magnetic Layout.
• When clicking on the Sibelius application icon on the Dock, the menu that appears now lists the open document windows, and allows you to switch to an open window (Mac only).
• Dotted and dashed slurs are no longer forced to be clipped at the end of the system even when Clip at end of systems is switched off.
• The Command-. (period) shortcut for Cancel buttons in dialogs (an alternative to Esc) now works once more (Mac only).
• Using the Next Part or Previous Part commands when viewing parts belonging to a version now works correctly.
• If the Navigator window was showing when you entered Panorama view, it is now shown correctly again when you leave Panorama.
• When installing or uninstalling Sibelius on Windows, the installer will now warn you if Sibelius is already running and ask you to quit Sibelius before the installer will proceed.
• Using Review > Highlight > Highlight to highlight a passage when using Pitch before duration note input now works correctly.
• Dynamic parts in scores created by importing MIDI, MusicXML or PhotoScore files now respect the Default Page Size options on the Files page of Preferences, so if you have European page sizes chosen, parts will be created on A4; if you have US page sizes chosen, parts will be created on Letter.
• Sibelius no longer incorrectly allows a new document to be opened (e.g. by double-clicking a score in the Finder) if a modal dialog in the application is already open (Mac only).
• Further fixes to keyboard handling for non-English keyboards, e.g. shortcuts that use Ctrl+number on Czech keyboard layouts now work correctly.
• The Input Method Editor is now always correctly closed when leaving the text editor, so keyboard shortcuts for e.g. note input work correctly at all times (Mac only).
• The Ideas panel now correctly retains the selection when switching between the compact and detailed view.
• Under some circumstances, it was possible for captured ideas to be lost when saving the score. This has now been fixed.
• When exporting PDF graphics via File > Export > Graphics with the Use smallest bounding box option switched on, the resulting PDF is no longer slightly clipped.
• Typing a new staff size in the Document Setup dialog and then clicking Cancel without moving the focus to another control no longer results in the staff size changing incorrectly (Mac only).
• Using View > Window > Tile Horizontally or Tile Vertically now correctly switches off full screen mode for affected windows.
• Several new chord types have been added to the default chord library, e.g. 5add9, 5add2, add9add11, add2add4.
• Under some circumstances, Sibelius could crash when opening some PhotoScore .opt files. This no longer occurs.