2003-08-27 Mikhail Yakshin <greycat@users.sourceforge.net> * Release 0.4.9 * First release in a very long time. Lots of work-in-progress features, could be buggy somewhere, could lacks obvious features, etc, etc. However, it's a major step to 0.5 since year-ago 0.4.1. Lots of new and unique great features. * Official port to KDE3. Now KGuitar requires KDE 3.x and Qt 3.x to build and run. Also we've transitioned to newer build tools - automake 1.7, autoconf 2.5, gcc 3.2. * Introduced basic KDE help center documentation. Needs much more work, any volunteers are certainly welcome. However, current documentation covers as much as possible from old simple README file. * More usability features. Now, KGuitar has Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl-Plus shortcuts to zoom in and zoom out horizontal scale of tabulatures. More generic navigation keys working: Home and End go to the start and the end of current bar respectively, Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End go to the start & end of current track. * Melody editor - a brand new tool to help entering tabulature with mouse. Somewhat loosely resembles Cakewalk's tab staff fretboard, but much more useful & flexible. Editor looks like fretboard where you can set fingers with mouse, add power chords or enter solos really fast by just clicking necessary block patterns on the fret in order. Fully customizable, now supports several inlay types. Work in progress, so more to come. * Rhythm constructor - it's a tool that helps you find and understand the given rhythm. You just tap the necessary rhythmic pattern using your mouse or keyboard button, wizard records all delays between taps in real time and then uses sophisticated algorithm to help you determine that's the right tempo to that beat and what note durations should you use. If you want, you can apply resulting beats to your tabulature columns - a great way to add rhythmic information to ASCII tabs without such info! * Support for native Qt tabulature printing - pretty complete, with effects and, what's more important, with additional fonts it can output standard notescore notation from tabulatures. Support for key signatures is a bit simplified, work-in-progress. * More complete MIDI playback feature - now with monitoring of what's played, however, slightly buggy. For best results, try playing from the very beginning of the song. * More complete MusicXML support. * Guitar Pro 3 import support from Sylvian & Thiery Vignaud(s). Doesn't work it all cases, but can handle relatively simple gp3 files well. * Lots of refactoring in internal APIs, classes, etc, including more versatile options interface. * Numerous fixes for screen glitches, anti-aliasing, chord constructor, track pane almost completely rewritten to be more robust, etc. 2002-07-13 Mikhail Yakshin <greycat@users.sourceforge.net> * Release 0.4.1 * Fixed lots of TSE3 issues. Now KGuitar requires TSE3 0.2.x (0.2.3 or later recommended) to work and its MIDI capabilties are solely based on TSE3. All the stuff that works with MIDI (MIDI export, MIDI song playback, chord player, etc) were unified under the control of single TSE3 library and nothing else. Should work with most if not all available Unix MIDI interfaces: both older and newer ALSA, OSS, aRts, etc. * Added configuration options for TSE3 playing and exporting of TSE3MDL file format. MIDI export is rewritten using TSE3 functions - now it should be more flexible. * Basic MusicXML support. MusicXML is leading interchange format for exchanging musical data between various applications. For more info, see www.recordare.com. * Native tabulature printing with Qt/KDE interfaces with effect support, multi-track & multi-page printing. * New tabulature effects and features: slide, triplets, let ring. * Added basic and pretty faulty, but somewhat working for simple files Guitar Pro 2 import support. Any assistance with hacking on more features of this format is welcome. * Slight sorting of chords in chord constructor: better chords are on top. * Lots of bug fixes, more ideological tweaking. 2001-12-10 Mikhail Yakshin <greycat@users.sourceforge.net> * Release 0.4 * Major change in whole application song handling ideology, now it's much straighter. MIDI output reworked to follow new model. * Implemented multitracking support -- with all the necessary things list separate track listing panel, inserting/removing unlimited amount of tracks, separate track navigation panel, etc, etc. * Implemented basically functional drum track mode. * Added special feature for automatic bass line generation from rhythm track. * Added editing options: cut, copy & paste, undo/redo. Selections are possible with Shift + arrow keys. * New strumming pattern rule --- much more flexible now, allowing chords or parts of chords rhythms. * Much more accurate and less flicker-prone tabulature redrawing code --- now repaints only things that are needed to be repainted. Many more convenience options, like fast navigation via track navigation panel and ensuring that cursor is always visible. * Lots of various bugfixes, especially with chord constructor and track integrity. 2001-09-22 Alexander Brand <alinx@users.sourceforge.net> * Release 0.3-pre * Changed automake/autoconf stuff to KDE2 standard one in admin directory. * Ported to KParts as browser extension. The KGuitar tab view is now a KPart. KG-files can viewed with Konqueror like PDF-Files. * MIDI playback support (required libkmid to compile - it's available in kdelibs-sound package). Basic MIDI playback implemented in chord constructor and tabulature view. It's a new unstable feature and feedback about it (how it works on different systems/soundcards) is highly appreciated. * Added option in configure script: MIDI playback for tabs can be enabled with './configure --with-midisupport' * Added MIDI options. * New strumming shemes are added. * Moved file export/import to file save/open. * Added drum track mode template - basically function-less, but it's a template for further track modes coming in future. * Up-to-date translation for de, fr, it. 2000-11-09 Mikhail Yakshin <yakshin@online.ru> * Release 0.2.9 * Port to KDE2 2000-10-14 Mikhail Yakshin <yakshin@online.ru> * Release 0.2.1 * Lots of work done in separated mini-project (developing ALSA sequencing C++ classes for MIDI playback), though in this branch lots of changes too. * Loading and saving options implemented (at last) * Working MIDI export - lots of work, but it worthed it. Exports in MIDI files, format 0. Honors all track properties and some effects (harmonics). * Renewed resizable chord dialog made with layouts. * Strumming patterns in chord constructor. Now it's possible to insert a chord as an arpegio or picked with pre-defined pattern. Small library of patterns is supplied with this version. * Tabulature printing via MusiXTeX and custom macros. You'll need to export the song via "Export/MusiXTeX tab" and then you get a ready-to-use tex-file. Process it with TeX as usual and print it. * Several new tunings in library, including banjo, mandolin and brahms 8-string guitar. * Fixed several bugs, fixed "mixed" notenames (with proper sharp/flat combinations), etc. 2000-09-08 Mikhail Yakshin <yakshin@online.ru> * Release 0.2 * Second big milestone release. Lots of changes, a month of work. * Total rewrite of internal track structures to use dynamic arrays (QArrays) instead of lists. List stuff was really ugly and hard to use (tabs really require direct access due to its nature). These changes touched almost every piece of code, including saving / loading schemes, tab displaying and more. * Tabulature editor: improved greatly. * It understands now various time signatures and separation of whole music piece in measures. Columns can have various durations, including dotted durations (1.5x the duration, as in classic notescores) and linked durations (to make possible weird durations such as 5/16 or something like that). * Automatical bar arranger that understands splitting notes of bar margins (with linking) and simplifying the tab by joining similiar columns into one. Note duration bars are linked in classic notes manner. * Basic mouse navigation to those who find keyboard navigation hard to use. * Basic effect support, just to demonstrate the technology. Current effects include natural and artificial harmonics and legato. More effects should be added soon. * Toolbar and statusbar made more functional. Statusbar now shows the current bar number and toolbar pretends to have useful buttons. * Various note naming, american (CDEFGAB), european (CDEFGAH) and jazz schemes (CDEFGABH), with various flats & sharps. * I18n suport. This release has ru and fr program message i18n files (po-files). * Chord construction is improved too: chord list comes sorted now (from the simpliest name to the most sophisticated), selecting a chord name there makes all necessary selections, reduced flickering. Many programming optimizations and clarifications mostly invisible to the user. * Tunings: added new tunings, fixed string thickness scale to be more informative. * Lots of bug fixes. 2000-08-08 Mikhail Yakshin <yakshin@glasnet.ru> * Release 0.1 * The first official public version. This one should be announced on Freshmeat and that kind of sites. * New basic tabulature editor. It still lacks some extended features like full support of effects, but the basic functionality is here and ready to use. Right now it's controlled only by keyboard, so take a look at the keyboard controls in the README file. * Chord finder is optimized much more. On my P200 it works as fast as Guitar Pro's one, but our version has much more features. Chord dialog code was cleanded up a little and new chord inversion control was added - be sure to check it out! Bass note control still isn't here, just because I couldn't find anywhere the accurate music theory definition of alternating bass note chords. * Songs could be saved and loaded in KG format (KGuitar native format). This format is pretty extensible and flexible and should be as backward compatible as possible. * Songs have the following properties: title, author name, transcriber name, comments. * Everything's ready for multiple tracks, though in this release I've not made a multitracking yet. You can edit the properties of each track using Edit/Track dialog, including the number and tuning of strings (be sure to check out the cool string thickness icons), number of frets, etc. * Pretty working exporting to ASCII tabs, so you can type in your tabulatures easily in KGuitar and export it to internet text-only form for wide usage. Importing ASCII tabs is on the way. * Exporting MIDI code is there, but it has fatal bugs and thereby disabled. If you want to play with it - enable it in sources, but it's broken. * Small options dialog just to show what degree of customizability we plan to implement in KGuitar. You can choose what symbols to describe dominant 7th chords you like the most and what symbols should be used for note alteration. * Lots of bugfixes, check the CVS logs if you care. 2000-07-15 Mikhail Yakshin <yakshin@glasnet.ru> * Release 0.0.2 * A working release, could be helpful for somebody. Includes a pretty good chord dialog, with both chord finder and chord analyzer almost totally rewritten. * Chord finder now works *much* faster due to precalculation. Interface allows to find most chords (like major/minor, 7th, sus2, sus4, 9, 11, etc). Filter found chord, based on its complexity on 3 basises: usual chords, rare chords and all chords. Also, takes care about showing only root forms (tonic note is bass note). * Chord analyzer now works totally different, it tries to disassemble a chord from a tonic note to steps, and then assembles step record again into readable chord form, thus detecing very weird (but sometimes useful chord forms, such as Em6/9sus4 or C7add11 (no3)). Compared to Guitar Pro chord analyzer that works on similiar concepts, this chord analyzer detects more chord forms (but currently lacks changed bass note detection, like Dm/E). 2000-07-08 Mikhail Yakshin <yakshin@glasnet.ru> * Release 0.0.1 * Initial release
