670: Changes and improvements in Sibelius 7.0.1

Sibelius 7.0.1 is no longer the latest version of Sibelius 7. Read the list of changes and improvements in Sibelius 7.0.2.

Look and feel

• Checkboxes and radio buttons can now wrap onto multiple lines if necessary, allowing dialog layouts to be narrower in non-English language versions of Sibelius without text becoming truncated.
• Multi-page dialogs with list boxes for lists of pages (e.g. Preferences, Engraving Rules) now default their size according to the size of the largest page.
• Right-click (Windows) and Alt+click (Mac) to zoom out when View > Zoom > Zoom is active now works correctly once more
• Improvements to the handling of native message boxes on Mac OS X, including making them respond correctly to Command-Y/Command-N and Return/Esc for Yes/No
• Message boxes can no longer end up behind the window or dialog to which they belong (Mac only)
• The controls for choosing note values (e.g. in Home > Select > Advanced) now show the correct note values both in the edit control part and the drop-down menu of the control
• The proxy icon in the window title bar no longer disappears when you leave full screen mode (Mac only)
• Combo boxes now open to the correct height, so no longer forcing them to scroll unnecessarily (Mac only).
• The pinned Inspector no longer incorrectly steals the focus when a dialog is closed (Mac only)
• It is no longer possible for the buttons on the Transport window to remain stuck down if double-clicked during playback
• Commands are now correctly passed through to Sibelius when a floating window (e.g. the Keypad) has focus (Windows only)
• The keyboard voicing control is now sized correctly in the Edit Chord Symbols and Edit Chord Symbol Voicing dialogs
• When quitting Sibelius with a previous version of a score visible in a tab, the position of the score window is now saved correctly.
• Tool window states are now correctly saved when closing several document windows at once (e.g. when quitting).
• Position and visibility of undocked floating windows are now correctly restored when re-opening a saved document.
• Clicking on another document window now correctly activates it if the ribbon had the focus in the previous window.
• Floating tool window positions are now correctly restored when re-opening a saved score, if Open maximized is chosen on the Files page of Preferences.
• Opening a new tab in a second window of a score that has docked tool windows no longer causes its tool windows to disappear

Ribbon

• The text labels in the Line, Symbol and Text Style in-ribbon galleries have been centered, and light gray gridlines added.
• You can now confirm your choice in the File > Export pages where there are lists of options (e.g. PDF, MusicXML, Previous Version) by double-clicking the list item.
• The status bar on the ribbon now shows Create Note/Rest rather than Edit Note when the note input caret is visible
• Custom line styles can now be created correctly from the Notation > Lines > Line gallery after switching to a user-defined keyboard shortcut set
• Using “find in ribbon” to find items within gallery menus (e.g. plug-ins) has been improved
• “Find in ribbon” can now find disabled commands.
• Controls in collapsed groups that are displayed using “find in ribbon” no longer subsequently display incorrectly when invoked using the mouse.
• “Find in ribbon” no longer obscures tabs in the ribbon tab bar when the window is narrow
• Highlighting a ribbon control using “find in ribbon” now correctly divests focus to the score if invoked via its key tip.
• The key tip for “find in ribbon” no longer appears when the control is hidden.
• Checkmarks in the View > Window > Switch Window menu now correctly display when windows are minimized to the Dock and then restored (Mac only)
• Checkboxes and radio buttons in a collapsed ribbon group now correctly clear their clicked state, so they no longer remain a darker color once they’ve been used within a session (Mac only).

Quick Start

• Scores are now listed in reverse chronological order (i.e. most recently opened score first) on the Recent tab of Quick Start
• The appearance of long path names on the Recent page of Quick Start has been improved
• If there is no network connection, Sibelius now shows the Quick Start dialog immediately, rather than waiting for the connection to the Sibelius blog RSS feed to time out
• Floating tool windows now correctly disappear when a score window loses focus and the Quick Start gains focus (Mac only)
• The Quick Start window no longer increases in size every time Sibelius is restarted, if it was the last open window when quitting (Windows only).

Note input

• Undoing note input with a sticky line active now correctly retracts the line as well
• “Sticky” input of lines now works correctly when using Note Input > Note Input > Re-input Pitches
• Sticky lines now extend correctly when creating a tied note across the barline by inputting a note too long for the end of the previous bar.
• Using Pitch before duration note input now works correctly on unpitched percussion staves.
• The wrong note is no longer sometimes input when using Use QWERTY keyboard and Use piano arrangement (on the Note Input page of Preferences) to input notes in Specify pitch before duration step-time input
• Choosing a bar rest from the Keypad with nothing selected in the score no longer incorrectly moves the view back to the first page
• Note Input > Transformations plug-ins now work correctly in non-English language versions of Sibelius
• Running the Explode or Reduce plug-ins on a system passage selection no longer causes the plug-in to bail out with an error
• The correct shortcuts for toggling sticky tuplets (Shift+Alt+K), reinput pitches (Shift+Alt+N) and the Inspector (Ctrl+Shift+I) have been set in the default keyboard shortcut sets for non-English languages
• Hitting N to start note input in a score with no instruments no longer causes a crash.

Text and lyrics

• The Edit All Fonts dialog can now be accessed by clicking the dialog launcher button in the Text > Format group on the ribbon
• Lyric and chord symbol input now correctly advances to the next note or the next beat as appropriate in all circumstances
• Entering lyrics in the last bar of the score no longer fails to close the text editor correctly, disabling some functions thereafter
• Using Ctrl+Alt+Space in the middle of a piece of text to reset the style now correctly persists after saving the score and reloading it.
• Using Alt+click to copy an open text editor now works correctly
• Switching to another tab in the window now closes the text editor, if it is open
• When using a non-English version of Sibelius, the Regular weight no longer appears twice in the list of font styles in Text > Format (Mac only)
• When creating a new text style copying the values from an existing text style, the original text style now appears in the Based on drop-down at the top of Edit Text Style, allowing you to inherit the settings from that text style if you wish
• It is no longer possible to attempt to set Line spacing for a character style
• The display in the font family and font style combo boxes in Text > Format when the selected text object contains multiple fonts and/or styles has been improved
• Making part of an instrument name superscript no longer results in the remainder of the instrument name being made superscript when you leave the text editor
• The Missing Fonts dialog can now appear when opening a Sibelius 7 score rather than just scores from earlier versions, because it is beneficial to handle the different ways in which OpenType font families, e.g. Myriad Pro, are named on Windows and Mac
• Fonts that provide two bold weights (e.g. Bold and Semibold) now always display the correct weight when chosen from the font style combo box in Text > Format, rather than always using (say) Semibold, regardless of whether Bold or Semibold is actually chosen. (Mac only)
• If you change the font style (e.g. Light or Bold) as well as the font family for a missing font in the Missing Fonts dialog, any existing changes to or from bold/italic/bold italic will be removed from the text in the score, to ensure that the newly-chosen style is correctly substituted in all cases.
• Changing the point size of e.g. one word in the middle of a text object now correctly restores the original font size properly, so subsequently editing the font size of text style correctly resizes the text following the font change
• The shortcut for the bold italic z in the Expression word menu has been changed to Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z (Shift-Opt-Command-Z on Mac) to avoid clashing with other shortcuts.
• Editing text that has a character style with no font name set no longer removes the character style change.
• When View > Invisibles > Handles is switched on, text frames no longer draw around hidden system text even if Hidden Objects is switched off.
• Word menus now correctly allow enough space for accented capital letters (Mac only).
• Underlining part of a text object now works correctly once more.
• You can now correctly open the Inspector from the text editor by typing Ctrl+Shift+I (Windows only).
• When editing text, typing shortcuts that aren’t defined for the word menu in question no longer has bad effects.
• The Words list is no longer truncated on the Word Menus page of Preferences.
• Strings that contain more than one font no longer always show Times New Roman in the Text tab of the ribbon.
• The Style combo box no longer incorrectly shows Regular when the text object uses another style.
• Reset Design no longer incorrectly removes the reset for a character style.
• Resetting the character style in an instrument name no longer incorrectly removes the restoration of the text style’s default font after the music text characters in other parts in which the text object appears.
• Closing a score while the text editor is open and editing a chord symbol no longer causes a crash.
• Deleting all the text in the editor when there’s a style change at the start no longer causes the editor display to differ from the text when the editor is dismissed.
• It's now possible to delete a style change at the start of a new piece of text, just as it is for an existing piece of text.
• The supplied house styles now have hierarchical text styles set up correctly.

Playback

• The limiter setting for Sibelius Player has been improved, making full orchestral scores sound far less compressed.
• While Sibelius is loading sounds in the Sibelius Player, it now shows a progress indicator in the form of a percentage at the right-hand end of the status bar, just to the left of the buttons used to switch between document views. Once sounds are loaded, the progress indicator disappears.
• While Sibelius is loading sounds in the Sibelius Player, Sibelius itself no longer appears to periodically hang for a moment, making the application more responsive while loading sounds.
• Sibelius will no longer incorrectly start playback before all the samples have finished loading (Sibelius Player only)
• The Loading Sounds progress dialog no longer opens on top of every other window belonging to any application, and it now has a Cancel button, allowing you to dismiss the progress dialog. Cancelling the Loading Sounds progress dialog cancels playback only, allowing sound loading to carry on in the background
• Changing the settings for the click track in the Mixer now invalidates the playback routing right away, to ensure that the click track plays back using the new sounds the next time you play back
• Removing an articulation from a note no longer causes the playback of subsequent sound ID changes to be wrong until you close and re-open the score
• Staves using variant sounds (e.g. violins 2 rather than violins 1) now correctly trigger articulations and playing techniques belonging to the variant sound, rather than falling back incorrectly on techniques belonging to the non-variant sound
• Sibelius no longer crashes when playing back after having changes playback configuration (Mac only)
• Deleting the last user-defined playback configuration will no longer disable the playback devices that were used in that configuration until you restart Sibelius
• The Mixer now shows the first four characters of instrument names written in East Asian characters, rather than only the first character.
• The meters in staff strips on the Mixer now show the velocity of each note, scaled according to the volume fader’s position, to more accurately show the effective volume
• Clicking the ASIO Setup button in Audio Engine Options now correctly launches the ASIO control panel (Windows only)
• Sibelius no longer hangs or crashes on start-up if Use virtual instruments and effects is switched off in Audio Engine Options
• A problem that could cause Sibelius to crash when trying to parse regular expressions used for repeats playback has been fixed

Printing

• Using key tips to access the combo boxes on the File > Print page of Backstage no longer causes the page to close immediately
• Changes made via the Printer properties link in File > Print no longer update the default system-wide printer settings (Windows only)
• Changes made via the Page Setup link in File > Print or via the Page Setup buttons in Document Setup and Multiple Part Appearance are now correctly remembered on subsequent visits to File > Print
• Sibelius no longer crashes when you print a range of pages having first scrolled through the pages in the print preview (Windows only)
• Choosing Normal from the combo box controlling the type of print job now resets the orientation and manual duplexing combo boxes back to their most basic settings
• The Copies spin control in File > Print now updates correctly to show the number of copies chosen for the selected part in the table at the top of the Print page
• Switching on Print View menu options now correctly includes handles and text frames on the print-out if they are visible
• If you choose File > Print in the Finder with a Sibelius file selected, Sibelius now opens and prints the file (Mac only)
• Parts now print in score order
• A problem whereby some weights of some font families would appear wrong in the print preview has been fixed (Mac only)
• Ties and slurs no longer print as a thin line, rather than the correct tapered line, at some combinations of staff size and page size
• The positioning of the zoom slider below the print preview has been improved
• Printing multiple copies no longer always prints collated, despite choosing to print uncollated (Mac only).
• Manual duplexing no longer chooses the incorrect page size if you set the page size from the Page Setup dialog (Mac only).

Keyboard shortcuts

• The , key on the numeric keypad now works correctly to add e.g. rhythm dots to notes on European keyboards
• Edit > Special Characters has been removed in the non-English versions of Sibelius because its keyboard shortcut conflicted with the Tempo text shortcut (Mac only).

Exporting audio

• You can now choose between exporting audio at different bit depths (16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit) in File > Export > Audio
• Cancelling the loading of sounds during audio export now works correctly
• The Exporting Audio progress dialog no longer appears in front of all other windows, including those belonging to other applications
• Exporting audio files no longer renders Sibelius unresponsive after the export has completed (Mac only)

Exporting graphics

• The Graphic selection radio button is now chosen by default when you choose File > Export > Graphics with a graphic selection in the score
• Noteheads, clefs and other symbols are now exported correctly in SVG files
• Changing the target folder for graphics export in File > Export > Graphics now correctly checks whether any existing files will be overwritten before you click Export
• The checkboxes on File > Export > Graphics are now updated correctly when the choice of export format is changed
• Further improvement to the display of the exported resolution of bitmap graphics on the File > Export > Graphics page
• Choosing File > Export > Graphics when you have made a graphics selection in Panorama no longer crashes Sibelius
• The Anti-aliased option in File > Export > Graphics now works correctly for bitmap graphics formats

Exporting MusicXML

• Sibelius now always encodes the voice and staff correctly for lyrics in exported MusicXML files
• Sibelius now exports Expression text objects that mix various fonts using separate word elements within a single direction element in MusicXML files, improving their appearance when imported into Finale
• Cross-staff beaming now exports rhythms at the start of bars correctly in MusicXML files

Ideas

• The performance of loading and indexing ideas has been improved, so Sibelius now starts more quickly, and opening and switching between scores is also faster than before
• A problem whereby corrupted ideas data would prevent Sibelius from saving a score correctly has been fixed
• Sibelius no longer crashes when you capture an imported graphic as an idea and then export the score to a previous version of Sibelius
• Sibelius no longer crashes when adding or deleting ideas from the library

Layout and formatting

• A problem whereby it was not possible to drag staves freely when the Sibelius window was close to a 4:3 aspect ratio has been solved
• Clicking Deselect All in Layout > Hiding Staves > Show Empty Staves now works correctly
• Notes and chords are now respaced to take account of the appearance and disappearance of accidentals when moved up or down chromatically

ManuScript language

• The performance of ManuScript plug-ins has been optimized (Mac only)
• ManuScript plug-in dialogs without a button chosen to explicitly have the focus by default now correctly put the focus on the default button, or failing that the button that closes the dialog returning “true”
• The Missing Fonts dialog no longer appears when opening a score via ManuScript with the “quiet” flag set
• The ManuScript variable Sibelius.OSVersionString now returns “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion” if Sibelius is running on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Sibelius 7 Sounds

The following improvements to Sibelius 7 Sounds require a separate installation, which you can download here.

• The first staccato note after a non-staccato note is no longer too loud in Sibelius 7 Sounds
• The problem whereby some woodwind and brass sounds do not sound when a score is first played back has been fixed
• New Orchestral Snare patch, including hits, rolls, rim shot and side stick hits
• The range of the Crotales/Antique Cymbals patch has been extended downwards by an octave
• The jazz saxophone, trumpet and trombone patches now include a smart knob to control whether the doit or fall should happen at the start of the note or at the end of the note
• The Low EQ smart knob for the piano patch now works correctly
• The range of the F Tuba has been extended to match the range of the B flat Tuba
• The range of the Marimba has been extended downwards by an octave
• The volume of the clarinet patches has been reduced to balance more pleasingly with the other woodwind patches
• The Organ Swell patch now uses channel expression to control dynamic, so it can play continuous changes of dynamics
• The staccato notes for baritone sax have been balanced
• The unmeasured tremolo effect for strings has now been balanced to match the volume of other notes played by strings
• The ranges of the recorder patches have been extended upwards to match the ranges of the default instrument types in Sibelius
• Bassoon, clarinet, flute, oboe and strings patches have been adjusted to ensure the first staccato note sounds correctly
• Additional control for legato has been added for the strings patches by way of new smart knobs in the Mixer
• The panning of the oboe patches has been improved
• Soft notes on the piano no longer sometimes start with an audible click

Other fixes

• Clicking Make Current in Review > Versions > Edit Versions no longer crashes Sibelius if there are unsaved ideas in the current score.
• The score view no longer goes blank during long operations (e.g. running plug-ins, doing Layout > Staff Spacing > Optimize) 
• Sibelius no longer locks an imported MusicXML file until the application quits
• If a score’s name minus its file extension happens to be the same as the name of a folder in the same path, the default filename in Save/Save As is no longer blank (Windows only)
• Notation > Graphics > Graphic now defaults to the user’s default Scores folder rather than the root of the hard disk
• The Dolet 6 for Sibelius plug-in no longer crashes when exporting chord symbols (Mac only)
• Attempting to quit Sibelius while the Try Sibelius dialog is showing no longer causes Sibelius to crash (Mac only)
• Worksheets created with the Show today’s date option switched on now show the date correctly (Mac only)
• Loading an XF format MIDI file no longer makes Sibelius appear to hang
• Quick Look is now working correctly for Sibelius 7 scores (Mac only)
• The arrow buttons on the Keyboard window no longer sometimes remain pressed when clicked
• The first score you open now correctly updates the display on the Axiom Pro keyboard when using HyperControl
• Various problems with HyperControl relating to having several scores open at once have been fixed.
• Changes to the default positions of rests in voice 1 and voice 2 on the Notes and Rests page of Edit Staff Type are now saved correctly
• Imported graphics no longer change color when selected
• Comments now once again show a selection outline when selected.
• Sibelius no longer hangs when a message is sent from the Licence Server if the user doesn’t immediately click OK to confirm receipt of the message.
• The default choice of keyboard language on the Keyboard Shortcuts page of Preferences is now correctly set to the appropriate language automatically.
• Send to Sibelius from PhotoScore no longer causes the Open PhotoScore File dialog to appear repeatedly (Mac only).
• Creating a bracket/brace in a score with only one staff no longer causes a crash.