| Terry Wilson | Glitch Report |
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| Slightly OT, but I was surprised that this forum does not require registration. I would prefer this to having my email address fly around in the clear all the time.
Anyway, Songview has been deployed live at Morning Star Ministries in Calgary for quite some time now, and last week, was re-deployed completely from scratch because of a succession glitch (i.e.: I could not acquire the previous projector operator's library file) and after it was found to run better than OpenSong.
My ultimate wish for a piece of software like this is a manually operable visual instrument for the lyrics that allows visual cues and karaoke. To this end, I came up with the concept of the Worship Markup Language (WorML) which would have been implemented as an extended version of either HTML or XML. That was back in 1998 and the only work I've done on it since is to tap on the pew in front of me (or even the empty air) during worship pretending to operate the system. I do this even when operating Songview or other software (I've used Powerpoint, Impress, Mediashout, OpenSong, and whatever came with the Corel OfficeSuite 8 in 1996. I did not "go live" with Impress or Corel. I have also, in a sense, gone live with Sony Vegas 8 and Window Live MovieMaker (Win7 Starter), used on Youtube videos on "featherwinglove", my channel for Featherwing Love Project.)
I'll try to put my glitch list for Songview 4.317 in order of importance:
1. Word spacing: There is no option to change word spacing, and the words tend to bunch up, especially in the bold typeface required to show up well on our projector (I also use white-on-black outline so that text remains readable on any background, especially nature pictures with lots of variation.) I'm currently working around this problem by typing two spaces between each word like this.
2. Songview is not operable on a single output or without a pointing device: About the only way to fix this is live shortcut keys. I tried a few, but apparently only 'A' (alert), 'B' (blank; superfluous even if you're operating single output without a switcher), 'P' (background only; I don't see the logic of either the selected letter or putting the key positions so far apart), Esc (exit display mode), and the arrow keys (which force you to skip through unused slides if the one you need to navigate to isn't adjacent, a very common situation with any modern music.) Incidentally, WorML would operate on numeric keypad with '0' for rhythm highlight, Enter for syllable advance, '.' for knocking out the word highlight, '+' and '-' for line navigation, '1' to '9' for slide navigation, '/' switches to set list navigation. I hadn't decided on anything for '*'.
3. Alt-tab out of the application view while live in single-output mode causes the mouse pointer to disappear over the interface, and the output view is not restored. I discovered this while switching between Songview and my browser while typing this report (I currently do not have a second output plugged in.)
4. Hit "Setup" in Display mode and "Edit" key fades. It is a strange behaviour. I recommend three view buttons for Edit, Display, and Setup, or better yet, none at all and implement backgrounds, text editing, search, set list, song list, and tool bars as widgets. That might be a bit of a pain for immediate implementation though.
5. Setup view puts the background selection widget along the right hand side, while Edit view puts it along the bottom. Consistency between interface modes is highly recommended; I have no preference between the two, just a preference that it be in the same place for both interface modes.
6. The behaviour of the Show "menu" is very strange. When I see a word on the menu bar, I expect it to be a menu, not a button.
7. Edit menu in strange location. Traditionally, the Edit menu is the second menu in GUI applications.
8. No Format menu. Under the Song menu, options for Background Colour, Text Colour, Font, Line Spacing, and Slide would be in a Format menu to be consistent with the traditions of existing software. The Format menu is also the third menu in GUI software tradition.
9. In GUI applications, menu options which open dialogue boxes are traditionally given ellipses to indicate this. For example, "Background Color..." and "Text Color...", and "Open..." under the File menu. This is also the tradition for dialogue buttons (i.e.: "Output File..." in the Export Songs dialogue.)
10. The View menu is traditionally the fourth menu in GUI applications, and is used for selecting view modes and widgets. Songview can be made consistent with most applications by moving and renaming the Mode menu.
11. The Edit menu has font styles. It is strange to have these in a menu at all since they are typically handled through the Format->Font dialogue and the tool bar.
12. Show in the Setup view does not function on single output.
13. The Save button moves a pretty drastic distance between Setup and Edit views. Traditionally, it is found near the Open button, where it should always be (faded if it is unavailable or if no changes have been made since the last save.)
14. I'm surprised to find that there is no way to select and view a single slide in the main pane. It makes it harder to precisely position and size the objects in a song with many slides.
15. I've found that when I don't format everything in a song the same way, styles drift between loads. If I have one line (i.e.: "CHORUS") without bold and the rest of the slide with bold, the plain line turns bold while part of the next line (i.e.: "Oh, Happy Day! Happy Day") or previous line (i.e.: "Jesus is alive / He's Alive!" on the previous slide) becomes plain (I happened to be listening to the Tim Hughes song while typing this part.) I suspect this is partly because of an ODF-like implentation of the song library (ODF (OpenDocument Format) is a file consisting of a content XML file and a format XML file zipped together.) I like ODF, but I've never had this happen before in an ODF application (or anywhere else, for that matter.)
16. Store/Recall work like Save/Open in set list pane. The change in terminology is strange, and I also find it strange that there are no options in the File menu to handle set lists (*.ohl files.)
I hope that helps!
Terry
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| Postsed on 28 March 2012 2:41 | Reply Quote  |
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| Terry Wilson | Re: Glitch Report |
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| I have no idea what happened to my line feeds in this post. I'll try putting two in this reply right about here
as a test. |
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| Postsed on 28 March 2012 2:43 | Reply Quote |
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| Roger | Re: Glitch Report |
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| Line break bug is sorted now.
Problem with BB post script. |
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| Postsed on 31 March 2012 15:17 | Reply Quote |
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| Terry Wilson | Re: Glitch Report |
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| Upgrading to 4.463 has proven generally disastrous, and I am reverting immediately back to 4.319. The bugs that I hate the most are still present, plus the upgrade has erased all background selections in my library file, and refuses to display backgrounds in single output mode (when I am testing without the projector plugged in.) Hopefully after the reversion, my backgrounds will come back.
I couldn't give 4.463 much of a test drive because of this problem, but I did notice that the Edit/Display/Setup mode strangeness is still present. |
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| Postsed on 1 April 2012 7:0 | Reply Quote |
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| Terry Wilson | Re: Glitch Report |
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| Unfortunately, 4.319 has the same problem, which means I'm going live tomorrow with no backgrounds (For some reason, I can't find my 4.317 download file, which is very surprising.)
This one bug is bad enough that I must go shopping for an alternative immediately. If someone can kick me a 4.317 installation file, so I can get back to my last known good configuration so I can stick around please... |
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| Postsed on 1 April 2012 7:15 | Reply Quote |
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| Roger | Re: Glitch Report |
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| I am sorry you are having problems with Songview and hope you get your problems sorted out.
All versions work fine in single monitor mode and selecting backgrounds is not a problem - I have just rechecked the latest version and it is fine. Try the included example file of public domain songs. It might be worth checking whether the previous user relocated the background directory; this is the case if you see no backgrounds on selecting 'Setup'. You can set the directory from the backgrounds button on the general settings tab. Also check the Preferences Display Tab and ensure that the 'Use backgrounds' is checked.
There is nothing unusual about the Setup/Edit/Show behaviour. It is simply to prevent editing during a live show or when the show setup mode is in use.
Changing word spacing is a possibility; the default spacing is used as provided by the font mapper.
In single monitor mode the number keys are used to select a new song. The software was primarily developed for 2 monitors; you would need to set the slides in the correct order for single monitor use. I can consider using Crtl+number to select slides.
Alt tab didn't give me your problems.
The background selctor positioning just makes the best use of the screen space and layout.
I agree the Show on the menu bar is redundant.
I can look at the menu positioning, ellipses etc. However, this is not a word processor and the menus need to be tailored to suit the application.
The style drift has been fixed.
The labelling of the button as Store/Recall was to help point to the 1 and 2 buttons below that store the playlist directly in the registry.
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| Postsed on 1 April 2012 8:40 | Reply Quote |
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