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Latest News

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.

That's a pity, but release 0.4.9 got really nasty bug in it. When you try to compile it without TSE3, it fails on application.cpp. There are two solutions: compile it with TSE3 (recommended) or change application.cpp around line 507 to look like the following:

    Options op
#ifdef WITH_TSE3
        (sv->midiScheduler())
#endif
        ;
    op.exec();

Also, you can get the latest version from CVS, where this bug was fixed too, of course.

After a long period of silence, at last KGuitar v0.4.9 is release. You can download it right now. Here's the spotlights:

• 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.

Once again, KGuitar is not dead, it's still alive. No new release yet, but significant work has been done. Major changes:

• Ported to KDE3.
• Printing in classical notation, see new screenshots.
• More sample KG song tabulature files.

KGuitar is not dead, it's pretty active and developing. The proof of this is a new release. Major points of changes:

• 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.
• Basic MusicXML support. MusicXML is leading interchange format for exchanging musical data between various applications. For more info, see Recordare.
• Basic Guitar Pro 2 import support.
• Native tabulature printing with Qt/KDE interfaces with effect support, multi-track & multi-page printing.
• New tabulature effects and features: slide, triplets, let ring.
• Lots of bug fixes, more ideological tweaking.

Thanks to Maksim Nikulin, we've got RedHat 7.1 (and compatible) RPMs. If you had troubles compiling KGuitar 0.4 by yourself, you should definitely try these, available at download.

Yeah, it's here, brand-new, full-featured 0.4 release. Lots of improvements, even more than it was announced. Most interesting parts of ChangeLog:

• 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.
• More less visible updates, bug fixes, optimizations, etc.

You can download it now.

Wow, it was a long time since the last update of the homepage. Last update was about KDE2, and now KDE3 looms in far vicinity. Lots of people may have already decided that KGuitar is dead, but it isn't true. The truth is that work is actively going on, we just don't have time to keep the homepage updated.

We've already released a 0.3-pre version, though it went a bit strange, without official announces in software catalogs and even updates of homepage. Since the end of september, 0.3-pre was there in SF's download section, ready to be tested. The main thing is that it incorporates alinx's version of MIDI output engine and Konqueror KPart support.

As the whole thing with MIDI output became a bit scrambled, but somehow working, we've decided to put development in that area on hold to prevent time loss. Since 0.2, and, not-so-sucessful 0.3 series, the whole core widget system undergone a major rewrite, thus improving architecture of the whole program. Right now the team works on (or already done) following things ([mostly done] and [in progress]):

• A separated working pane that manages various (virtually unlimited) tracks
• Automatic easy bass line generation from a given rhythm track
• Drum track support
• Clipboard operations, cut/copy/paste, undo

So, to be not so "we are alive" kind of news, I've managed to post some new teaser screenshots of what will you'll see in upcoming soon 0.4 release (or may be pre-release).

It came, at last, as we've promised, after the KDE2 stable release, an imminient KDE2 port of KGuitar all you've asked for. See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes.

Lots of changes were made to the GUI, I'll post some new screenshots a bit later. Check it out soon. If they're not there, come back later.

And now proceed to download brand new KDE2 version of KGuitar!

Lots of work done in separate MIDI playback branch, but some work here too. Namely, renewed chord dialog with strumming, MusiXTeX and MIDI export support. Be sure to check it out!

Check the ChangeLog on SourceForge or in the package for complete set of changes.

Also, there are several new songs on samples page.

Once again, Nicolas Vignal made RPM packages for RedHat-like linux systems. Grab them at download page.

After a month of work, the release 0.2 is finally here! Lots of changes, including fully rewritten of internal track structures, improved tabulature editor (bar support), several effects, mouse support, new options, messages i18n and many more useful things and bugfixes.

Look for a whole ChangeLog on SourceForge and be sure to download the new release!

For testing, grab some test songs in the samples section.

We have set a milestone plan to complete. Take a look at it now, if you want to know how long would it take to your most anticipated feature to be coded. Or better, don't wait and join our team!

I'm almost sure that you've noticed the DE translation appeared recently thanks to our german translator Stephan Borchert. Too bad that all people joining the team are too hesitating to write a bit about their work and themselves in the news...

Thanks to our new developer, Harri Haataja, we've got finnish translation of website. May be he would also test KGuitar on more UNIX platforms, such as Sparcs.

As I've promised, after some sort of stable release, KGuitar goes international! Thanks to Wilane Ousmane, we've got a french translation of webpages. The latest version in CVS also uses NLS (National Language System) for localization of program's messages. Russian translation is already done, I hope that french translation would come with the next release version.

Also, the maillists are up! We invite everyone to subscribe to announce and general talks about KGuitar maillists - be the first who knows the latest information! Subscribe here.

We've got the RPM packages for all the RedHat-like Linux system owners who want to install kguitar binaries. Big thanks goes to Nicolas Vignal. They're available from here.

Though it took a bit more that I thought, at last it's here! The new version includes a lot of improvements and the main thing is of course the tab editor. The changes are:

• 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.

Also, the site is updated too. Check out the filled screenshots section, there's also a couple of new sections available.

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