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Latest News
15 Mar 2010: KGuitar is not dead |
After mistaking KGuitar for a dead and abandoned project, I (Ryan)
have decided to take the role of Unofficial PR Manager. KGuitar
is currently still at an alpha level of development but has been
ported to KDE4.
I'll get more detailed news up as soon as I figure out what else
been going on for the last two years and also put up a more recent
tarball.
27 Jan 2008: Guitar Pro 3 import |
A few words on what's going on in Subversion. Guitar Pro import is
coming smoothly, this time Guitar Pro 3. Old GP3 code was throughly
replaced with the same unified Guitar Pro loader that was released
with 0.5.1. Adding other versions of format is always a bit tricky,
so, to make sure we won't break anything in GP4 and to ease
development/reversing, test units were added into repository. Sadly, I
can't publish real-world GP3/GP4 files, as they're copyrighted, but at
least trivial test examples would be stored there.
16 Jan 2008: Release 0.5.1 |
After a long period of silence, I'm pleased to announce KGuitar 0.5.1 - a major bugfix release that covers most of issues for the last few years :)
- Compatiblity fixes: added support for autoconf 2.61, automake
1.10, gcc 4.2. Removed last bits of qt2->qt3 transition
deprecations. Internal structures refactoring.
- Added zoom level (Ctrl Minus, Ctrl Plus), introducing multiple
bars per row, automatically tuning to available window width;
- Finally introduced new exception-based framework for converters
load/save. Makes converters much more bullet-proof and easier to
write and debug.
- Guitar Pro import undergone major rewrite. Now it properly loads
all gp4 files I have. Guitar Pro v3 and v5 formats are coming
next. Anyway, Guitar Pro loader is now much more helpful about
what errors it gets and less crash-prone. It detects and helps
debug problems it encounters.
- Lots of displaying, mouse and keyboard control, printing fixes
and prettifying. Track pane now has a header and it's synchronized
with track list. Melody editor now has trapezoid and shark fin
inlays.
- New QMap-based API for song metainformation - stores not a fixed
number of fields, but key=value pairs.
- Misc things: project transitioned to Subversion.
As always, comments and especially bug reports are welcome. Also keep in mind that KGuitar is now registered at Ohloh, so, take a look there too :)
14 Jan 2008: Progress report |
Things roll out somewhat smoothly. There's already new, much more
bullet-proof version of converter runner now, based on exceptions. It
allows new Guitar Pro loader work much cleaner: it includes now lots
of runtime checks and it's much less prone to crash whole application
in case of unsupported file. On the contrary, it's now a tool for
format exploration and debugging: it will find the out-of-sync place
in file with substage and structure precision, allowing to find an
incomplatibility and fix it quickly.
In other news, KDE4 is out there and I've stared a KDE4 port of
KGuitar - I guess that'll make it to 0.6.
It's more like "we're still alive" style of post. Although, to be
honest, nothing much happened in last 1.5 years, things are somewhat
rolling. Our latest additions:
- CVS repository transitioned to SVN
- Some cleanup and compatibility fixes (new autoconf, automake, gcc)
- Removed last bits of legacy Qt code
I guess a new release would come shortly (0.5.1) as mostly bugfix
release, but maybe there would be some minor feature additions.
31 Mar 2005: Icons and RPMs |
In the heat of release, I completely forgot to mention what really
deserved to be mentioned. Everaldo
created a really nice icon for KGuitar in his famous Crystal style. Here
it is in the full galore, now proudly supplied with the latest release
and used on the homepage:
Also, due to popular demand, RPMs for KGuitar 0.5 are here. They're
built for ALT Linux distribution,
but they shall run fine on most modern systems. You can get them at the
download page.
Well, after waiting for so long, I'm pleased to announce KGuitar release
0.5 at last. It's a fruit of long labours, and has some really
interesting potential. List of news is really long:
- Also a huge milestone release in a very long time. Lots of internal
refactoring, fixes after big changes in 0.4.9 and even bigger changes
by itself.
- Build system is refreshed (updated from current KDE SDK), obsolete
things removed, should compile smoothly on most boxes. TeTeX
support is not installed by default.
- Huge refactoring work inside KGuitar: greatly improved internal
architecture, modularized all import / export procedures, improved
options handling.
- More KDE3 standartization: better and cleaner shell / KPart
separation, standartized UI, actions, KDE-based dialogs with standard
features and cleaner API, better support for BiDi interfaces,
numerous layout fixes in lots of windows.
- Pretty full-featured Guitar Pro 4 import support. Imports smoothly
most of the files I've tested it on, had some known problems with
percussion tracks, but generally comprehends almost all difficulties
in GP4 files and gracefully ignores them. More testing and patches are
welcome!
- Improved song / track printing / display - now all tabulature /
notestaff rendering is maintained in single class and both
displaying and printing use the same codebase. It made possible
displaying note scores on screen while editing tabs - however, it
requires Feta fonts installed, as previously for printing. Check
out the documentation for instructions.
- Chord dialog - added chord finder: you can enter pure text name
of chord in top chord name string, push one button and you'll get
chord diagrams, fingerings and other info instantly. Chord finder
also supplies a "Quick insert by name" button that makes entering
something like "Am / C / F / E" chord rhythm a breeze.
- Melody editor - got lots of improvements: added scales & modes
showing on fretboard, added more inlay/graphics options, working action
/ advance functions that act as stated in options page.
- Song properties - added simple tempo support in song properties
dialog - that "initial tempo" was in file format for ages, but,
finally, it's user-editable.
- MIDI playback improvements - much better monitoring due to absolute
time values in MIDI events, fixed stuck notes after song stop,
lost patch/bank presets, etc. Added panic (shut down all notes)
after stop and tempo track support.
- Multiple usability fixes: more column duration actions, keyboard
combos to move cursor by 1 bar (currently bound to Ctrl+Left /
Ctrl+Right), chord dialog - better tab ordering, default pushbutton,
accelerators for non-default functions (Ctrl+Enter and
Shift+Enter).
- Lots of other fixes: gcc3.4 compatibility, MusicXML DTD 0.7a
support, proper status bar handling, proper updates when pasting /
select all / delete track, fixed compile errors without TSE3, selection
of negative track bug, lots of display problems with TrackPrint usage,
mouse select handling bug, multiple memory leaks and segfaults.
Comments are really welcome on this one. There are some known bugs,
but, generally, this release should be pretty stable and usable. More
screenshots and other stuff will follow.
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