CHANGES IN SIBELIUS ACCESS 1 - RELEASE CANDIDATE 1

This lists the changes, fixes and new features in release candidate 1.

Laptops are now fully supported, however you will need to switch to the Access Laptop command set in the Sibelius preferences dialog.

The plug-in keystroke

The keystroke which triggers the plug-in when navigating in the score has been changed to Alt + Control + Shift + 0. This keystroke should be recognized by any system, regardless of keyboard layouts and input languages. The keystroke can also now be set through the JAWS keyboard manager. This means that the keystroke can be set in both Sibelius and JAWS to ensure that both applications are using the same physical keystroke. This should only be necessary if users are experiencing real difficulties with the plug-in not being triggered.

Zooming

The keystrokes for zooming to 65% and 400% have been changed to avoid the clash with Alt+Equals.

When entering a text field to edit text, the zoom level is spoken but no warnings are given about which zoom levels are best for text editing. This is because it has been impossible to determine an ideal zoom level which always works. However, 65% will normally allow JAWS to detect the text with reasonable accuracy.

Score navigation

Selecting

Non-continuous staves can now be selected through a plug-in that presents the user with a list of staves in the score. Staves can then be included or excluded from the selection by pressing the change button.

A dialog has been added which lists all of the items in a selection. Using this on large passage selections is not recommended but it is a useful way of determining what has been selected after using a filter.

The following keystrokes can now be used to make selections:

The following additional fixes have been made to the selection features:

Information keystrokes

The information keystrokes have been greatly improved. It has been necessary to change some keystrokes in order to make room for others and to accommodate future developments. These new features are described fully in other documentation.

Score info and system layout

The score summary has now been broken into two separate components. Score info lists all the score info, bar count, names of staves, key signatures, special bar lines, etc. The System Layout option presents the summary of pages, systems and bars in an html document on its own.

In beta 1, several steps were taken by JAWS to prepare the score for the system summary, however these steps are prone to difficulties and they now need to be made manually. Instructions are given at the top of the document containing the summary.

Inputting

The message spoken after pressing N to start note input has been tidied up. The message gives the rhythmic position of the first note to be entered and the current keypad layout together with a list of all the highlighted keypad buttons. Pressing N while note input is on will return Sibelius to edit mode and this is announced.

Period on the main keyboard can be used to start inputting appoggiaturas and Slash can be used to start inputting acciaccaturas. The messages spoken are identical to the note input message except that it also specifies the type of note to be input.

Pressing Shift+F to add an F to a chord now speaks properly.

Pressing Shift+H to add diminuendo hairpins works properly.

Tuplets are now described when they are created with Ctrl+3, Ctrl+4, etc.

Score announcements

Tuplets are now described properly when tabbing onto them.

Nearby items which follow the selected note or rest are now described with there rhythmic position.

The verbosity dialog has been heavily revised to make it easier to use and a separate dialog has been added to change the filtered text style.

Editing text items

The zoom level is spoken automatically when entering the edit field for text items. This is done to warn users that the zoom level may be incorrect.

The font, text size, bold, italic and underline controls in the properties window can now be accessed while editing text. (See properties window below).)

Tool windows

The functions which monitor and control the tool windows have been heavily revised. The changes are as follows:

New features have been added which allow users to interact with the tool windows directly. The specifics of each window can be found elsewhere, but the following general keystrokes apply to all tool windows:

Users now have the option of changing keystrokes which open and close tool windows. It is not recommended that you do this unless you encounter problems which cannot be resolved in any other way. The keystrokes will need to be changed in both the Sibelius preferences dialog and in the JAWS keyboard manager.

Properties window

Every control in the properties window can now be accessed by using standard navigation keystrokes.

Parts window

All of the controls in the parts window can now be navigated to using standard keystrokes.

Playback

The fastest tempo and slowest tempo keystrokes have been reversed so that they conform to the same pattern used by increase tempo and decrease tempo. The new keystrokes are as follows:

Mixer

Functions have been added to detect whether the mixer is fully expanded to show the maximum number of strips.

Individual keystrokes have been given to hide or show each type of strip and the functions which perform these actions have been made more reliable.

The movements of the mouse pointer when entering mixer mode have been made more streamline. This has also removed unnecessary chatter from JAWS.

Moving between strips is now far more reliable and done by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Down or Ctrl+Alt+Up.

The volume, muted and soloed status of the strip is now announced automatically when moving to a new strip.

Moving the volume slider on a new strip now works properly. In beta 1 the slider was first set to the value of the slider on the previous strip.

Users are asked to scroll the mixer up or down by using a keystroke. This was previously done automatically but was causing problems. (Note: proper sizing of the mixer should minimize the need for this.)

Dialogs

Page changes in the new score dialog are more reliable.

The letters that represent note lengths are now spoken when using the number keys to input note lengths in the new score, time signature, find and flexi-time dialogs.

The lists of lines are now spoken in the find and filter dialogs and the extra lines in the middle of the list have been accounted for.

Standard keyboard navigation has been fixed or added to the following dialogs: