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Chris,
Thanks for posting those. We'll correct those manual issues (in the PDF.)



Good to hear that it was useful. While they're updating the PDF's there's some more issues with PDFs that might be worth looking at too. The summary PDF's in the Style Demo sub-folders aren't all accurate either. Some match the contents of their respective folders (e.g. #60 Style Demos, etc) but others appear to have been compiled by somebody who was not entirely sober at the time.... The PDFs contain files that aren't in the folder and the folders contain files that aren't described in the PDF. These have proved to be very useful PDFs, so it would help if they were accurate.

For instance:

"Here is Styles Set #00 with 35 great “various” styles for Band-in-a-Box." From the PDF. It then goes on to list 30, not 35. They don't match the folder which has 50, but which don't include all of the 30 described.

One of the standard dilemmas with any software is that the more options and variations you're given the better it is - once you know how it all works. But the more possibilities you get then the harder it is to work through all the unfamiliar stuff as a new user. So it's not automatically intuitive to know precisely how terms like "Styles" "Combos" "Sets" "Genres" etc are meant in the context of BiaB, especially as some can be approached via several different paths and variations. You can't beat working through and experiencing it all, but accurate guidance is a huge help. The style file names can look pretty cryptic, so finding those PDFs was a welcome discovery. They give a plain English description of what the style is about, in a useful list fashion. A combined collation of them all would be extremely useful too - 77 PDFs are a lot to work through individually. Is there already such a list somewhere?

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>>> When I rebuild the styles list (at the style picker window) after an install a box pops up that reports 8,015 styles, which is 4 times the number that actually show up on the style picker list. When I select “All Styles” it displays a list of just over 1800 styles. However, there are many more files than that in the “Band-in-a-Box/Styles” sub-folder? Finder reports the number as 2,389 - different again. Why the variation in numbers? Shouldn't they all show when “All” is selected, or what….?

The 8,015 refers to style entries, and the same style is listed under multiple cateogies (under "All", "Jazz" "Balads" etc.)



So that means that it's counting some style several times, because they're listed under more than one heading? OK. But why do only 1800 show up under "All" - not the 2389 in the style folder? Shouldn't "All" mean what it says? To give an example:

In the style folder there are 8 files called _JAZMED2.STY through to _JAZMED9.STY and one called _JAZMEDL.STY All are presumably jazz medleys, which sounds interesting. However when I double clicked on _JAZMED4.STY it re-opened BiaB with the style picker open. No matter where I looked on the list there was no file of that name listed. However when I double clicked on _JAZMEDL.STY it opened BiaB and started playing with the right style file, which is what you might expect. The _JAZMEDL.STY file IS listed in the style picker, which is also what you'd expect.

Clicking on _JAZMED6.STY also re-opened the BiaB window and DID begin playing with the selected style (very nice too.... ). However, if I then tried to find it in the style picker it's NOT there either. If the counts of 1800 and 2,389 are roughly right then it looks as if there are over 500 files that appear in the Style folder that don't make it into the Style Picker - some of which are still potentially 'live' and some of which may be either defunct or else need to be used in some other way?? There do seem to be a fair number of loose ends in BiaB. Not crucial so far, but still confusing and rather time wasting.

[EDIT:Further experimenting seems to show that the results are relatively random. If I double clicked on the style file with BiaB not already running then it sometimes launched the program and sometimes crashed. If BiaB was running then it sometimes pulled up the style picker window and waited, but more often just ran the selected style, even though it wasn't listed in the Style Picker. So I haven't found a consistent pattern. ]



Any chance of a reply on the TAB issue please?

Are the Mac reference to TAB that I quoted from the manual, and the Mac sales info page on the pgmusic website just errors? Maybe cut and pasted from somewhere else without correction, or...?

Thanks,

Chris

Last edited by hakea; 06/09/11 06:14 PM.