PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows PG Music comes so close to the printing function, then does not complete it

I borrowed the thread title from a new forum poster, Greg Tango. It sums up my feelings about Biab's print function nicely.

Myself and others have been talking about this for years. I'm going to be the squeaky wheel about this just like Pipeline was for the VST. If PGM can create a brand new VST then they can fix all these print issues as well.

1. Clean up and combine elements of the Notation Options window, the Print options window and the Lead Sheet Options window. They still after all these years confuse the heck out of me and I can just imagine others without my experience. Here's some examples.

You want to print a chart. Say you're in the Leadsheet window. That's a logical place to be for an experienced player used to reading charts. Also known as what? Leadsheets! Of course somebody might look there. There's an option box there so you make some changes. Does that affect printing? NO! Is there at least a popup saying if you want to print this you're in the wrong Options window? NO. Next point.

At first glance why does Notation Options change the printing but Leadsheet options doesn't? Does Notation Options indicate anywhere that these changes flow to Print? NO!. You finally figure that out, make some changes. Next point.

Now you go to Print Options and check Preview Graphics. If the preview shows the chords too close to the melody notes on the staff below you have to exit the Preview and you're back to Print options. Anything there about changing the chord spacing? NO! Why not? You're in Print Options, jeesh. You have to open Notation Options and reset the chord spacing there. Is this obvious anywhere? NO! You just have to grok it yourself or somebody explains it to you. You figure that out and reopen Print Options and see if that did it. If you don't like it then you have to do that routine again. Now, another thing...

In the Preview Graphics window that shows what the actual chart looks like, there is an OPT button in the top menu bar. You're not happy and need to make more changes. Does that OPT button go back to Print Options? NO! It opens a small pixel size window! What kind of logic is that? Next.

Every time you close/reopen the Print Options it doesn't remember what you did such as do you want to print the first chorus, last chorus or whole song. That goes away every time. Another bug that's been there as long as I can remember.

2. How 1st/2nd endings are displayed. You can change the chord spacing but can't do anything about those endings spacing. They're way too close to the staff and if there's a chord there it's impossible to read.

The problem with 1st/2nd endings could be fixed if the print function allowed individual spacing between the staves. As it is now, the whole song has to be equal spacing. The only control we have is how many staves on a page. If stave 4 is the one with the repeat endings, just allow us to put more space between staves 3 and 4 to allow the 1st ending number and the line that goes over it to be say twice as large and allow room for a chord to be placed above it. The rest of the stave spacing could stay the same if a user wanted.

There's a similar issue with the spacing between the song title and the top of the page as well as spacing between the song title and the first Stave. Many times I only need a few single line spaces somewhere to make one stave that carried over to page 2 fit on page 1. I don't want to be forced to create an equally spaced stave for that.

3. You have font size in Leadsheet Options and Notation options as percentages. Print Options has it as a default of 24. Why percentages in two of these and a simple number in one?

4. I can understand the Leetsheet is for folks who want to follow along on the screen while the song is playing so they may want a different font size or spacing from what is needed to print. Ok, when you open Leadsheet Options have it clearly say this is display only, not for printing. Notation Options would be the same. Notation Options should be for how the Notation looks when you're either looking at Notation or editing/creating Notation. Nothing to do with printing.

I just reviewed again the Print help window. No mention of these endings or codas. They are talked about extensively in the Notation Help window. When you click on the Print Preview link it does show an example of a chart. Old Folks At Home. A dead simple song with triad chords and nothing else. Yes, a song like that displays great because there's nothing beyond the most basic things in it! Try creating an example song with more complex chords like a Ebm 6/9 where the extensions are displayed vertically in parentheses that takes up more vertical space with 1st/2nd endings and a coda and show everybody what that looks like. Trust me, users won't like it.

The VST is being praised because it attracts a more professional level of user who may not have considered Biab in the past. Well, what kinds of songs will that level of user create? Old Folks At Home? C'mon guys use Biab's own song creation functions to come up with something complex and cool, and use that to demonstrate the print functions.

After it's been corrected and actually made useful of course.

Many users don't want to buy a dedicated, expensive and very complex notation program just to produce good charts for band use. They're not writing full musical scores. Biab is almost there guys, fix it and it will turn into a great feature.

Bob