Exporting Pro Publisher Released 20th May 2022

Bugfixes

• Fixed an export bug where left-handed, horizontal fretboards would have heavy gauge strings missing on the export output.

General Released 29th April 2022

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where documents with certain custom note size settings would fail to open.
• Fixed an issue where having duplicate data folders listed in the configuration could prevent the application from starting.

General Released 13th April 2022

Improvements

• Welcome page shown on first run redesigned and simplified (menu Help > Welcome).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where fret numbers and/or legend text would not update when changing a fretboard’s number of frets.
• Fixed an issue where some vertical fretboards were not painted correctly, slightly stretched and truncated.
• Fixed a bug where under certain conditions, custom sized notes would disappear when the fretboard is resized or rotated.
• Fixed an error that could occur when undoing a Scale Generator operation when a fretboard title is in edit mode.

General Released 18th March 2022

Translations

• 2 new translations have been added:
  • Japanese – ようこそ!
  • Brazilian Portuguese – Bem-vindo!
• All images in the Help docs (menu Help > Help Contents) have been updated for all languages – previously the English images were shown.

Performance

Improvements

• There’s a number of performance enhancements in this release:
  • improvements when lots of documents are open
  • text editing performance enhancements, particularly on MacOS
  • speed of adding notes to fretboards enhanced, particularly on MacOS
  • improved responsiveness of Inspector, particularly on MacOS

Document Editing

Bugfixes

• When duplicating a page, the editor area no longer scrolls to the top of the document but now shows the newly added page.
• Fixed a bug that could occur when resizing an image object that has no image set, to be very small.
• When copying a shape or polyline from a large page to a smaller one, we now ensure it can’t get pasted off the page.

Fretboard Editing

Improvements

• X and O added as fingering options, so can now have e.g. T X 1 2 3 O in the legend. Read more in this forum post:
  • X, O, and T symbols in the Legend Label Row
• The 3 character limit for custom labels has been increased to 7 characters.
  • This allows entering of two enharmonics together, e.g. ‘F#/Gb’.
  • The caveat is that you’ll need to use the ‘Adjust font size’ option to make the text fit – it’s not yet automatic.
  • Read more on the forum:
    • Showing 2 enharmonics together
• Enhanced the note marker selection menu options to work not only for single fretboards but across multiple selected fretboards. You can now..
  • select the same note on different fretboards
  • select the same interval on different fretboards, even if different underlying notes
  • select notes on matching strings across different fretboards

Bugfixes

• Fret marker dots/ovals are now correctly centred and not offset when a fretboard has an odd number of strings.
• The fretboard ‘Use custom size’ checkbox setting is now correctly saved & restored.
• Fixed a number of scenarios that could cause a fretboard to shift/resize unexpectedly, e.g. when moving a note marker to an edge string on a fretboard using a custom note marker size setting
• Disallowed the creation of connections to the fretboard header or footer text.
• Prevented an error occurring when right-clicking over a fretboard header or footer to use the Arrange options.
• Fixed a problem where a copied fretboard could have its state corrupted, triggering a chain of errors.
• Fixed a bug that could get triggered when dragging a fretboard from over the title after having right-clicked and dismissed the context menu popup.
• Fixed a bug where relative (% based) custom sized note markers were not getting resized when the fretboard is resized.
• Fixed a bug where fingerings would show in the legend for notes 1 fret beyond the last visible fret on the fretboard.

Enharmonics

• Setting/changing a root note no longer resets any existing enharmonic settings for the fretboard.
• Fixed an error that could occur when using Solfège note naming with Si for the B note and changing the note enharmonic in the Inspector.

Inspector

Improvements

• Improved responsiveness of the Inspector, particularly on MacOS.
• Added ability to use TAB key to move between Size & Position fields.

Bugfixes

• The X,Y position field values were not getting updated when an object moved.
• [Windows] — Fixed a bug where you couldn’t repeatedly press the up/down cursor keys in a spinner field (e.g. font size) as it would lose keyboard focus after the first press.
• [Windows] — Fixed an issue where when clicking on a note marker style drop-down list entry, the option behind the list (e.g. ‘Draw outline around note’) would also get selected.

Instruments

Improvements

• Improved the validation & enforcement of the maximum number of frets a fretboard can have (36).
• Improved how bad octave information is handled, specifically where fretboards are created are created with a very large number of frets.

Bugfixes

• Corrected the Portuguese Lisbon tuning, moving the strings up an octave, so now D3 up to B4.

Scale Generator

Improvements

• The position option ‘Between frets’ now allows you to specify the creation of notes up to the 36th fret.
• The entries for the Ionian and Aeolian modes are now named ‘Ionian (Major scale)’ and ‘Aeolian (Natural minor)’, making them easier to find by their more common names!

Bugfixes

• When using the Solfège note naming system, the Scale Generator was not recognising the ‘Si’ note and blocking use of the Scale Generator with this root.

Exporting Pro Publisher

Improvements

• Publisher When exporting multiple selected objects, filenames are now numbered in the order the items were selected.

Bugfixes

• Export option "Folder structure" now correctly replicates the folder structure of the exported file(s) relative to their data folder, when saving to the export destination.

Text Editing

Improvements

• Made optimisations to prevent excessively large .fbd files.
• [PERFORMANCE] — As previously mentioned, text editing speed has been improved, particularly on MacOS.
• [ND1 compatibility] — Fixed a bug where documents created with the old ND1 could sometimes have unwanted extra blank space between the title text and open string area, squashing the actual fretboard.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a number of technical issues that could cause errors whilst editing text.
• Fixed a regression where applying styles to text sometimes wouldn’t work, e.g. you can again now set the bold style and text typed in from that point will be in bold.
• Fixed an issue where extra unwanted space could appear for multi-line fretboard title text, above the last line of text.

Automatic Backups

Improvements

• Automatic backup errors are now more user friendly:
• If there’s a problem creating a backup you’ll no longer get the default error dialog but a less obtrusive notification in the bottom right corner of the application window
• Clicking the notification will take you to the Automatic Backup preferences page which will show details of the problems
• More detail about this and how to resolve such issues, which are usually caused by configuration issues e.g. of Data Folders, can be found here:
• Resolving auto-backup problems

File Handling / Diagram Gallery

Improvements

• Support filenames with forward-slash (/) or backslash (\) in name.
• [Windows] — Provide better feedback when disallowed characters are entered in a filename via file tree list.
• [MacOS] — Improved the way certain special folders are handled since Catalina (10.15)
  • If you’re using the default location for your documents (the NeckDiagrams folder inside your Documents folder) then you need to tell the system to grant access to your Documents folder.
  • If you didn’t do this when initially prompted you’ll now get a warning message each time you start ND.
  • More info can be found on our website here:
  • Granting Access to Folders on Mac
• Drive roots (e.g. on Windows C:\, D:\) are not allowed to be configured as data folders, this is now better enforced.
• The ‘merge documents’ wizard now adds the ‘.fbd’ file extension if you don’t provide it in the new file name.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where saving a document with a filename that looks like file extension (e.g. "file.2") doesn’t then get the expected ".fbd" file extension added and is not shown in the Diagram Gallery view.
• Disallowed selection of a folder without write permission as initial data folder.
• Disallowed changing a filename to empty string via the file tree list.
• [Windows] — Prevented error messages when using the Documents folder itself as a data folder
• Prevented permissions issues in a subfolder from breaking Diagram Gallery synchronisation for the whole data folder.
• Fixed an error that could occur when double-clicking a file in the file tree list.
  • If the file had space at the end of the name, that could trigger an error message saying the file could not be found.
• Fixed a bug that prevented very old ND1 documents (created pre-2011) from opening, due to file format changes since then.

Other Changes

Improvements

• When the application is started and the view switcher buttons, in the top right, are showing text but the window isn’t quite wide enough, then the text is hidden so the buttons take up less space. Otherwise the buttons would shift onto another row and the toolbar area would take up double the height.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause the Trial period to end prematurely under certain circumstances.
• Improved database recovery handling to cover more further possible situations.
• Improved handling of decimal values in the Preferences window, where the system decimal format for the current locale would normally use a “,” decimal separator but the user has changed it to “.”.

General Released 18th February 2021

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug when selecting the initial data (document) folder — if you typed in a path where intermediate folders didn’t exist then ND would show an error. It now creates any necessary intermediate folders for you.
• Fixed a bug that caused the 'Trial Expired' message to be shown much too soon!

Document Editing

Improvements

• You can now change connection properties in the Inspector when more than one connection is selected.

Fretboard Editing

Improvements

• [Windows] — Improved layouts of the Interval Colour Set selection dialog and the Transpose dialog
  • all options are now clearly visible when the Windows display scaling is 150% or higher.

Text Editing

Bugfixes

• Fixed an error that could occur when changing the superscript or subscript style of some text.
• Fixed a bug which wasn’t toggling the opposite superscript or subscripts style button when being applied via keyboard shortcuts.

Exporting Pro

Bugfixes

• Fixed an error message that could be shown when changing size options for formats where supported but wasn’t getting cleared when switching to another format that doesn’t support it, e.g. PDF.

Diagram Gallery

Bugfixes

• Fixed an error that could get shown when clicking the folder expand/collapse triangle toggle icon, or when dragging a folder onto itself.

General Released 15th January 2021

Big Sur

• [Mac] — This release adds support for MacOS 11 Big Sur, as well as continuing to support previous versions from 10.15 Catalina back to 10.10 Yosemite (and all in between).

New Translations

• È pronto! — ¡Está listo!
  • Italian and Spanish language support has landed!

Improvements

• Cross-platform document consistency
  • ND .fbd documents created on one platform are now near-identical when opened on another, i.e. Mac ⭢ Window and vice versa.
• Database files that contain certain user data (e.g. custom scales, document templates..) are backed up during application shutdown. If a database file gets corrupted for some reason, then the application will attempt to use the backup otherwise a new database file will be created.
• The error report popup has been redesigned.

Bugfixes

• Preferences
  • Fixed a bug with decimal value fields (e.g. for line thickness) that would prevent a new value being accepted due to different decimal separator expectations when not using an English locale (e.g. 2,5 vs 2.5).
  • Font names in drop-down lists on Preference pages are now sorted in alphabetical order.
• [Windows] — Fixed an issue where ND2 wouldn’t start correctly if the Windows user profile has no APPDATA environment variable defined.
• Audio — arpeggiation
  • We’ve made the apreggio audio more even. Previously, the first note was too long and the last too short.

Document Editing

Page-relative distribution

• There’s a new switch available on the editor toolbar — "Relative to page"
  • 
  • The switch controls the behaviour of the 2 toolbar buttons to the left of the switch; ‘Distribute Horizontally’ & ‘Distribute Vertically’.
  • When in the ON position, i.e. switch to the right, objects will be positioned relative to the edges of the page they’re on:
    • e.g. if a single object is selected and the "Distribute Horizontally" button if pressed, the object will be placed in the middle of the page, with equal space to the left & right.
    • If this is repeated with 2 objects selected, there will be equal space to the left, in the middle and to the right of the 2 objects, etc for other numbers of objects.
  • When in the OFF positon, i.e. switch to the left, the horiztonal & vertical distribution buttons behave as they used to:
    • the selected objects are distributed evenly between the left/right-most or highest/lowest objects, i.e. the objects at the ends stay where they are.

Improvements

• The currently selected page is now indicated in the document editor area using a blue outline. This is particularly helpful if the document Outline view is closed!
• Outline view
  • Added the ability to change settings for multiple pages at a time when selected in the Outline view.
  • Page range selection can now be done in the Outline view using SHIFT + UP/DOWN cursor keys
• [Mac] — Context menus
  • Previously, on Macs, you had to left-click select an object to make sure the right-click context menu had the correct options showing – this is now resolved.
  • The context menu now shows the correct items for the object at the pointer location immediatelty on right-clicking.
• The Toggle Inspector toolbar button now acts globally across all editors rather than per-editor; i.e. if you want to hide the Insepctor you don’t have to repeat that for each document you’re editing.
• Images would get deselected when moved – this no longer happens, they stay selected after being repositioned.
• Improved the way object locations are calculated when pasted objects would be partially or wholly outside the page boundary.
• Document zoom
  • There are now no white line artefacts around pages when the zoom level is less than 100%.
  • The maximum document zoom level has been increased from 300% to 500%.

Bugfixes

• Alignment guide lines (menu View > Snap to Geometry) now also show when moving an object that is on top of another.
• When doing File > Save As.. the file path shown in the tooltip when hovering the mouse over the filename tab was not getting updated – this is now fixed.
• [Windows] — Fixed the appearance of the page thumbnails in the Outline view on Windows, to get rid of the dot artefacts in the thumbnail image corners
• Fixed an error that could occur when opening the Neck Diagram wizard on the very first run whilst ND1 user templates are being copied in the background
• Curved connections could be created between non-note objects, but the connection would not be visible. The requirement that curved connections can only be created for note markers is now better enforced.
• Fixed a bug that caused the page size settings in the Insepctor to disappear after opening and then cancelling the custom page size settings dialog.
• Fixed a bug where the Edit view wouldn’t switch back to the Diagram Gallery automatically when the last document is closed when the Outline view is not showing, leaving an empty white window.

Fretboard Editing

Improvements

• The solid "X" mute marker has been made slightly thinner to be more consistent with the hollow open string circle marker.
• When double-clicking fretboard title or footer text to enter edit mode, the fretboard text styles tab is now automatically selected.
• When setting fingerings, you can press the SPACE key to clear the fingering – we’ve now also added an option to the right-click context menu to do this.
• Legend rows can now display custom labels and right-hand fingering for notes at the nut (open string markers).
• Custom note marker sizing
  • Custom sizes can now be entered as % values, relative to the default size of the notes for the fretboard
    • 
    • So 100% would be same size, less makes them smaller, more makes them larger than the default size.
    • When relative-mode is enabled, you can also enable custom sizing to be on by default by checking the "Use custom size (%)" option
  • We’ve added an option to allow note markers at the nut (e.g. open strings) to have their own independent custom size – Custom size at nut (%)
    • It’s specified also specified as a % of the default size.
    • Defaults can be set on the Fretboard page in Preferences.
    • These defaults are used when opening ND1 documents (which haven’t yet been edited in ND2), making it simpler to replicate the way notes at the nut were smaller in ND1.

Bugfixes

• Custom note marker sizing
  • Fixed a bug where the custom note marker size set on a fretboard wasn’t getting applied after reopening a document.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause note markers to become invisible when enabling Use custom size, due to the custom size getting set to zero. The min/max values are now better enforced.
  • Unchecking the Use custom size option now preserves the user-entered value in the text box, rather than resetting it to show the defalt value.
  • The custom size has a min & max value range, however resizing a fretboard wouldn’t then check the current values were still in the new valid range. This would lead for example to small fretboards with enormous note markers. The min & max values are now better enforced.
• Fixed an issue where changing fretboard title/footer text font size could cause the fretboard area to change size.
• Fixed a bug where selecting the "Fill" option for the nut wouldn’t paint the fill correctly for left-handed fretboards.
• Fixed a bug with the Latin interval naming convention which caused problems when changing the interval enharmonic for a note.
• Fretboard wood texture backgrounds
  • The wood backgrounds are now rotated 90 degrees when on horizontal fretboards, so that the wood grain is in the correct direction.
  • The Transparent background option on hollow capo/barres had no effect on fretboards with wood backgrounds. It now does the same as for single background colour fretboards, so that when enabled, the strings can be seen through the capo/barre.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the legend to not refresh on vertical fretboards when zoomed out such that the whole page is visible in the editor.
• [Windows] — Note marker labels were getting mis-aligned on Windows when the display/font scaling was set to anything other than 100% or 200%.
• Fixed an issue where barre connections would disappear after rotating a fretboard (switching orientation between horizontal & vertical) but would then reappear after the file was saved.
• Fixed an error that could occur when dragging a connection (not an endpoint anchor) which connects notes on 2 different fretboards.
• Entering fingerings on AZERTY keyboards
  • This wasn’t possible previously, only via the right-click context menu. We’ve now fixed this.
• Made a fix to ensure snap-to guide lines consistently appear when trying to place an object at the edge of a fretboard.

Text Editing

Input Method Editor

• We’ve added IME support for languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Bugfixes

• We’ve made a number of general text editing and selection fixes.
• We’ve fixed a problem where characters could sometimes overlap/get superimposed on one another.
• Pasting formatted rich text no longer adds extra line breaks/new lines.

Scale Generator Pro Publisher

Improvements

• When entering a custom interval map the Scale Generator tells you if what you’ve entered matches an existing entry
  • It will now also select this entry in the list so you don’t have to hunt for it yourself.

Exporting Pro Publisher

Improvements

• JPEG Exporter
  • We’ve added a ‘Quality’ slider to the export dialog which is enabled for the JPEG exporter.
  • It allows adjustment of the quality of the output – higher quality results in larger files, lowering the quality reduces the output file size.
• We’ve sped up exports that could take a very long time in certain circumstances, caused by a bug in a 3rd party library.
• The Export toolbar button is now available in the Edit view, as well as in the Diagram Gallery view.
• We’ve made a layout adjustment so the application name shown in the option "Open with default system application" doesn’t get truncated if the name is long.
• Publisher The SVG exporter now supports the Transparent background option.
• Publisher [Windows] — Clicking the watermark transparency slider on Windows would make it jump between 0% and 100% only so we’ve made it easily adjustable in 10% steps without having to drag the slider directly.

Bugfixes

• Exporting to PDF with high resolution images
  • Previous releases had a problem where high resolution images included in diagrams would lose quality when resized to be smaller than their original size.
  • This is now resolved!
• Non-ASCII characters
  • We’ve fixed a bug affecting the SVG & PDF exporters which caused Unicode characters to be replaced with "?".
  • This affected e.g. musical symbol characters (apart from the ND built-in macros), non-Latin characters such as Russian, Japanese, etc.
• Publisher Watermarking
  • Improved the postioning of rotated watermarks.
  • We fixed a bug where watermarks were not being applied to EPS or SVG exports.
• Publisher Exporting a selection of multiple items together
  • Un-checking the option "Export each selected object to own file" now correctly produces a single file with the union of the selected items.
• EPS Exports
  • We fixed a bug which was causing images and wood fretboard backgrounds not to be included in the exported EPS file.
  • We’ve also fixed a bug where text boxes always had a background painted even if the fill option was disabled.
• The last used size is now stored after an export and automatically set in the dialog the next time it’s opened.
• Fixed an error that could occur when exporting to 600DPI JPEG format.

Diagram Gallery

New Example Documents

• We’ve added 2 new example documents
  • Many thanks to Mark at mastertheguitar.co.uk ( YouTube ) for letting us share these with everyone! Here’s what they look like:
  • 
  • If you don’t see them in your Diagram Gallery Example Diagrams folder then you’ll need to click on menu Help ⭢ Restore Example Diagrams..

Improvements

• The New Folder.. menu was only enabled if a file/folder was already selected – you can now right-click on a blank area of the thumbnail pane (on the right-hand side) and access the menu without having a prior selection.
• The New Document wizard dialog will now show a tooltip when the mouse is hovered over a user template that has a long name that’s been shortened to fit (some of the text in the middle replaced with "…").
• You can now select and delete multiple user templates at a time from the New Document wizard dialog
  • hold down the SHIFT key whilst selecting items and then right-click to access the Delete.. menu option.
• Documents are now opened in the same order as they were selected.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which prevented cut/copy/paste in the text box while directly editing the filename in the Diagram Gallery left-hand file/folder pane. (When a file is selected, single-clicking it activates the inline name editor)
• [Windows] — The bottom of the ‘breadcrumb’ navigation bar at the top of the Diagram Gallery right-hand pane was getting truncated when the Windows display/font scaling was set to anything other than 100% or 200%.

Printing

Watermarking when printing Publisher

• The export watermarking capability can now be used when printing.
• Publisher users will see a prompt dialog asking whether to add a watermark to the print output.
• There’s an option of the prompt dialog to not ask every time — this can be re-enabled in the Prefrences ⭢ Printing settings.

Bugfixes

• [Windows] — Fixed a bug where barre connections were not printing in the correct location when the Windows display/font scaling was set to anything other than 100%.

Exporting

Improvements

• Pro Publisher The export window now shows a progress indicator as pages are being exported.
• Publisher Exporting the selected object wasn’t allowed when that happened to be a note marker – we now assume you want to export the fretboard so you won’t have to change the selection first.

Bugfixes

• Pro Publisher Fixes a problem with the JPEG exporter, which now works fine again.

Fretboard Editing

Bugfixes

• Fixes an issue that would cause vertical fretboards to not paint the last fretwire when the title has more than a single line of text.
• Fixes an issue with positioning of footer text on vertical fretboards, which could have the wrong indentation after resizing.

Printing

Bugfixes

• Fixes a problem that would affect horizontal fretboards when printing with the Ink Saver Mode preference enabled.

General

Improvements

• We’ve changed the registration window, simplifying the process
  • the first step that asks you what type of license you have is gone; the application can do that!
  • if you’re registering an upgrade from ND1 you can enter either ND1 or ND2 upgrade license first, it’ll tell you which to enter next

General

Mac / Catalina

• [Mac only] Neck Diagrams 2 is now notarised to satisfy Gatekeeper requirements on Catalina! No extra steps required to allow ND to run on Catalina.

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed an issue that affected the ability to open files for some users.

Improvements

• 2.1.3 includes a tweak to the error reporter so that we can get all the information needed to identify and fix bugs quicker!

General

Mac / Catalina

• [Mac only] Neck Diagrams 2 is now notarised to satisfy Gatekeeper requirements on Catalina! No extra steps required to allow ND to run on Catalina.

Improvements

• The editor zoom level can now be controlled via trackpad.
• The Inspector now updates faster when an image is selected on a page.
• When using the right-click Show text option on the view switching buttons (top right), they now have white text on blue, more readable than the old black-on-blue!
• [Windows only] When upgrading an existing installation on Windows, the old version needs to be removed first:
  • we’ve improved the confirmation message to make it clearer that only application files will be removed, and not any user documents or settings.

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed a bug where if you deleted an object (not a note) with a connection to another, then the connection would get left "floating" around. Now it’s also deleted.
• The application would not start correctly on computers where the locale was set to es_419, more common in Latin American countries
  • The cause of the problem was a database library bug for which we’ve implemented a workaround
• Fixed a bug that would cause a startup error if a document had been selected in the Diagram Gallery and the parent data folder was renamed/removed on the file system whilst ND was not running.
• [Mac only] On Mojave and Catalina the Edit view button in the top right was not showing as greyed out when no document was open.

Copy / paste

Improvements

• We’ve improved how pasting items to a different page works:
  • copy/pasting an object on the same page applies an offset so the copy doesn’t appear on top of the original
  • this is no longer done when pasting to a new page – so the copy is placed at the same location as the original

Bugfixes

• When doing a right-click paste the new object is placed at the click location – we fixed a bug where copying multiple items together would place the pasted copies on top of each other:
  • instead, they’re pasted relative to the right-click location
  • use the Edit > Paste menu or paste keyboard shortcut if you want to preserve the original location!
• [Mac only] When right-clicking to paste onto a page, the mouse location wouldn’t be used unless the target page was first selected (left-clicked) – fixed!
• [Mac only] We fixed a bug where pasting via the Outline view on Mac (when more than one document is open) could cause the pasted item to appear in the wrong document.

Fretboard Editing

Improvements

• If a root note marker is moved to a position that is still the same note, you’re no longer prompted with a redundant confirmation dialog asking whether you want to update the root note.

Bugfixes

• When selecting "Flip strings on horizontal fretboard", the string at the bottom edge of the fretboard wasn’t right at the bottom edge.
• Moving a large custom sized note marker from the lowest string to the highest on a vertical fretboard would cause the title/footer texts to shift across unexpectedly.
• We’ve fixed a bug that would occur when changing the starting fret value for a group of fretboards that don’t have the same intial value.
• We’ve sorted out some issues with custom sized capo/barres:
  • changing the size of a large custom capo/barre would cause the fretboard to change size
  • large custom sized capo/barres extending off the sides of a fretboard, or at the last fret, could become truncated
• We’ve fixed some situations where large custom sized note markers could get truncated:
  • when at the nut
  • when at the last fret
  • when on the bottom string of horizontal flipped fretboards
• Changing the custom size of a note on the first or last string with Show fretboard edges enabled would cause the size of the extended edge to change – fixed! It’s now constant.

Text Editing

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed a bug where the Home/End keys weren’t working when the zoom was not 100%
• We’ve fixed am error that could be triggered when changing font style attributes.

Exporting

Improvements

• When choosing to have export files opened with the default system application, where multiple files are created they are now opened in the correct order.

Bugfixes

• Pro Publisher We’ve fixed colour accuracy when exporting to PDF.
• Pro Publisher Trying to export multiple documents from the Diagram Gallery was triggering an error popup – fixed!

Instruments / Tunings

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed an error triggered by opening an existing document containing a custom instrument/tuning that the current ND installation hasn’t yet encountered.

Performance

Improvements

• We’ve sped up deleting items
  • deleting lots of notes from a fretboard, or lots of items on a page, used to take much too long. It’s much faster now.
• We’ve sped up switching pages in a document
  • jumping to another page via the Outline view is much snappier now, particularly on Macs.

Fretboard Editing

Bugfixes

• We fixed a bug that would be triggered when changing the type of a note marker.
• We fixed some fretboard interval colour issues :-
  • copying a fretboard and changing its interval colour settings would also change the settings on the original copied fretboard.
  • [Windows only] interval colour settings weren’t getting refreshed correctly when switching from one fretboard to another.

Exporting

Bugfixes

• Pro Publisher Exporting a range of pages would always export all pages instead – fixed!

Registration

Improvements

• We’ve improved the text of some error messages relating to registering with the wrong type of license.

Languages

• We've translated the application into French and German. More languages are coming!

Diagram Gallery

Features

• We've made the Diagram Gallery preserve it's state
  • when you restart ND2, it now remembers which folders where expanded or collapsed, and which folder you were "zoomed into".

Fretboard Editing

Features

• Note marker label font size can now be reduced, as well as increased.
• Moving a barre connection itself now also moves the notes it connects.
• Moving a note at one end of a barre connection now also moves the other connected note.

Improvements

• Barred notes with custom sizes would have different sized barre connections than default-sized notes.
  • barre connections are now all a consistent size across a fretboard, regardless of custom sized notes.

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed a number of issues with custom note sizing :-
  • setting a custom size value or font size adjustment for a fretboard is now preserved – it was previously only applied to existing notes and then lost once new notes were added.
  • having a large note on the string furthest from the fret numbers could cause the fret numbers to move away from the fretboard, or the fretboard itself to move away from the title text.
  • setting a custom size on a note on the first or last strings, or moving this kind of note to these strings, could cause the size of the fretboard to change.
  • resizing a fretboard was not updating the min/max custom size range allowed for existing notes.
• We’ve fixed a number of issues with connections & (arched) barre connections :-
  • resizing or moving fretboards with barres no longer affects the barres – if the change was large enough it could look like they disappered!
  • switching a fretboard to/from being left-handed no longer affects its barres.
  • moving two connected notes between fretboards no longer loses the connection.
  • connections no longer get deselected when moving an endpoint – you can still see the properties in the Inspector without having to re-select the connection.
  • setting a custom size on a barred note no longer causes the shape of the barre to change
  • feedback shown whilst creating curved connections was only showing correctly when the editor zoom level was 100%.
• Small solid triangle and diamond note markers now get filled properly – no more empty bits!
• We’ve fixed a bug that sometimes caused truncated note markers on the highest & lowest strings (at either edge of the fretboard) – no more notes with bits 'shaved' off!
• We’ve fixed a bug where pasting fretboards with all their note markers was getting blocked when selecting and copying fretboards using the 'Marquee' tool.
• We’ve fixed an error that could occur when editing fretboard legends in the Inspector.
• [Windows only] We’ve fixed a bug that could leave the editor in 'enter all matching notes' mode :-
  • holding down the ALT key when creating note markers creates them at all visible positions that match that note.
  • however, when using ALT+TAB on Windows to switch applications, this mode could unexpectedly get enabled.
• Creating connections to a capo/barre would trigger an error
  • this is now fixed, you can create connections between a capo/barre and other objects.
• We’ve fixed some issues when moving notes, where any connection was also selected :-
  • including connections in the selection would block the move to new positions on the same fretboard.
  • trying to move them to a different fretboard triggered an error.
• Switching a note marker between solid or hollow types now updates the label text colour :-
  • we recently added separate colours for hollow & solid note markers.
  • however, when switching the type the label text colour wasn’t getting updated to use the appropriate colour.

Preferences

Improvements

• Fretboards have a setting to 'Flip strings on horizontal fretboard', but there was no corresponding preference setting, so we added it to the Fretboard preferences page.

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed a bug where the Frets preferences page would allow you to store an invalid custom fret numbering value, which had undesirable knock on effects later setting fretboards to use the custom.

File Handling

Improvements

• We’ve made a number of improvements regarding Data Folders:
  • ND2 now detects if a data folder is no longer available on the file system
  • if a data folder gets renamed/moved/deleted on the file system it’ll be flagged in the Diagram Gallery
  • files that were in the data folder are no longer shown, so no confusing errors will get thrown up by trying to open files that aren’t actually available anymore
  • you can just right-click the item and select Configure Data Folders.. which will take you direct to Preference > Data Folders
• We’ve changed the way a file left open in the Edit view is handled when ND2 is started but the file is no longer present on the file system
  • a much clearer message is now displayed and the editor tab will then be closed
• We’ve improved handling files saved to Microsoft OneDrive folders
  • OneDrive triggers spurious file modification events which results in ND2 showing 'The file has been modified by another program' warning messages
  • ND2 now filters out these unwanted filesystem notification so you won’t get hassled!
• We’ve improved how we handle problems when creating the initial data folder
  • this would only happen the very first time ND2 is run
  • if the initial data folder can’t be created due to some problem, you’ll get prompted to choose another location in this case

Bugfixes

• Data Folder issues could break the Automatic Backup process in certain circumstances
  • Data Folders that can’t be accessed (e.g. changed on file system but ND config not updated) won't interrupt the backup and it now continues, with no annoying error popups getting shown..
  • having Data Folders with the same name, but in different locations, would also break the backup – we've resolved this by adding an index number where there's a folder name clash
• Fixed an issue when trying to move a Data Folder into it's own sub-folder
  • this would a recursive effect with lots of repeated, nested folders.

Exporting

Features

• Pro Publisher The page order popup dialog has been replaced with an extra wizard page
  • when exporting multiple docs from the Diagram Gallery to a multi-page format, you used to get an extra popup dialog allowing you to confirm page order – this is now part of the export wizard itself
• Publisher We’ve extended the Transparency option so it can be used on whole pages
  • you can now have transparent backgrounds when exporting not only selected items but also for full pages

Improvements

• Pro Publisher We’ve made exporting faster and requires less memory footprint!
  • this is really noticable where fretboards use the wood grain styles and have hollow note markers
  • output file sizes are now smaller in this scenario also

Bugfixes

• Pro Publisher We’ve fixed a bug that caused a grey border on exports of custom sized pages to PNG
• Pro Publisher Exporting to PNG would result in a slightly incorrect background colour
  • the image background was actually getting a 10% transparency
  • bizarrely, this bug has been lurking since we released ND 1.0 ELEVEN years ago, wowzers!
• Pro Publisher We made a fix for a problem that would occur when exporting a document with right-to-left text (e.g. Hebrew) to PDF
• Pro Publisher The 'Create: Folder structure' option was only being enabled when exporting documents with more than page
• Publisher Exporting a single selected item no longer adds '1' to the end of the filename
• Publisher The Transparency option state is now preserved between exports.
• Publisher Watermarks were only applied on single-item exports
  • you can now export with watermarks to multiple-selected objects, or multiple-paged documents.

Text Editing

Features

• There’s now a macro for 'diminished':

  Macro text	Replaced with
  {d}	o (superscript 'o')

• We’ve added support for some document related macros
  • when the macro is typed in it gets replaced with a value as shown here:

    Macro text	Replaced with
    {{file-name}}	the name of the document, without the file extension
    {{file-name-ext}}	the name of the document, including the file extension
    {{page-number}}	the page number
    {{total-pages}}	the total number of pages in the document

• We’ve made it easier to align text..
  • You can set the alignment for a whole block of text without having to go into text-edit-mode
  • This also means you can select multiple text items and set the alignment on all of them in one go
  • Plus, you can do this for fretboards too – however both title and footer text will get aligned
• It’s now clearer when you’re in edit mode – the text area selection outline goes green

Bugfixes

• You can now set the background colour on a single word without the rest of the line getting the same colour
• We’ve changed how edit mode is activated, so it doesn’t go into edit mode when you’re just trying to move a text box around!

Instrument Library

Improvements

• Ukuleles now have fret markers at frets 5, 7, 10, 12 & 15

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed a bug that could prevent creating custom tunings
  • this was especially the case when the tuning had lots of strings, or lots of sharp/flat notes

Registration

Improvements

• We’ve improved registration/upgrading so that the application doesn’t simply freeze whilst waiting to hear back from the licensing server! You now get some feedback that something is happening.
• We’ve made a change that prevents the registration window becoming extremely wide when pasting in a license code, which could happen under certain circumstances

ND1 Migration

Features

• We’ve added a simple way to import ND1 data from the same computer into your ND2 installation
  • Just select menu Help > Import from ND1.. and a window will open with options enabling you to import any or all of the following:
  • Diagram documents
  • Templates
  • Instruments & tunings
  • Custom scales
  • Preferences

Bugfixes

• We’ve fixed fretboard title alignment for documents originally created with ND1 – when opened in ND2 they were getting left-aligned regardless of whether they were actually centred or right-aligned
• ND1 custom scales weren’t being imported the first time ND2 was run
  • new upgraders won’t have this issue, but anyone already running ND2 can use the new Import from ND1.. feature described above!
• We’ve made a fix that would cause fretboards in documents originally created with ND1 to draw in only half their allocated width when the legend was set to Fingerings but no fingerings were entered
• Fix added for 'Scale registry initialization failed'
  • this could happen on the very first ND2 run, only if you’d never used the Scale Generator in ND1

General Editing

Features

• We’ve adjusted how pasted items are positioned..
  • previously if you copy then immediately pasted the new item(s) would get placed directly on top of the old, making it look like nothing happened! New items are now always offset slightly away from the originals
  • pasting via the mouse right-click context menu will paste the new objects at the mouse location
• Resizing images added to a document now preserves their aspect ratio by default
  • if you want to resize and change the aspect ratio, so it becomes stretched or squashed, just hold down the SHIFT key whilst resizing the image

Improvements

• New connections are now selected when created, so you can see their properties in the Inspector without having to click & select it yourself

Bugfixes

• Standard We’ve fixed a problem where copy/pasting could cause the wrong item to get pasted
• We fixed an issue where connections from ellipse or rounded rectangle shapes were getting drawn short and weren’t connecting up to the main area of the shape
• We’ve fixed an error that would get triggered by dragging a polyline with a circular endpoint outside of the editor area
• There were a few issues when dragging objects between pages..
  • dragging an object across from one page to another would deselect it once placed – this has been fixed so you don’t have to re-select it again to make any property changes to it!
  • if you dragged an object across a page and happened to place it on top of a fretboard or text box then that object being dragged would unexpectedly disappear.. fixed!
  • dragging more than one item between pages would result in only one of them actually getting moved
• The 'Position & Size' Inspector section, common to almost all objects, wasn’t working quite right when trying to adjust values for multiple objects together
• We’ve fixed an error that would occur when using the marquee tool and starting the click-drag selection from not on a page but from the border around it.
• We’ve fixed a bug with moving polylines and other objects together:
  • when the editor zoom level is anything but 100%, moving a polyline along with other objects would result in the polyline getting placed in an unexpected location.
• We’ve fixed an issue triggered by copying an image to the clipboard in an unsupported format
  • this situation wasn’t handled well, causing a string of errors.
  • the unsupported image data is now ignored – if you try and paste it into ND2 it’ll now tell you the format isn’t supported.
• [Windows only] We’ve made a change to prevent the colour picker window appearing with the OK/Cancel buttons off the screen.

General

Features

• You can now switch between the Instrument Library / Diagram Gallery / Edit views using new menus added to the 'Window' menu, or using their keyboard shortcuts
  • remember you can also right-click the view toolbar buttons and select 'Show text' for larger buttons with a text description!
• If you’re on a network that uses a proxy to connect to the internet, you can now configure proxy authentication settings via Preferences > Network Connections
• We’ve added a database recovery feature
  • If any of the application databases become corrupt (e.g. from a power failure or hard shut-down) this will be detected at startup and you’ll be prompted that the application needs to reset the relevant database to recover
• The Export & New Diagram Page wizard windows now open at the last position they were at on screen

Improvements

• We’re preventing info/error messages from stacking up one on top of another
  • If more than one message needs to be shown, in most cases you should now get a single window showing a list of the items, so no need to click OK on a bunch of windows!

Bugfixes

• [MacOS only] We fixed an issue that, under unusual circumstances, could cause ND2 to hang on exit