Chat about DTab

[Punkstillrules]

:D Hey man. Do I have to buy the full package?

[kevin]

Well, i've got eat you know:)

Officially Yes. The license currently grants a 30 day evaluation period.  So legally, after that point you'd have to register or stop using it.  This might (more than likely) change in the near future.  But in order to activate all the future features you'll have to register it i'm sorry..

What I want to do is make the program useful enough to the casual user, but really encourage those who use it on a regular basis to order it.

[Punkstillrules]

OK Kool, No Problem. And how much does that cost?

[kevin]

Thanks for posting some tab's keep it up !, it's great to see somebody taking the time... I really do appreciate it..

Currently it's $12.95 for credit cards and $11.00 for paypal orders.   You can order DTAB from it's homepage  www.Dtab.UnderwareDesign.com :)

When the new version finally comes out (if at this rate), the price is bound to jump a few $ also.  This is becoming unavoidable really.. I'll certainly be willing to look into discounts for really avid users though.. but we'll see

[Geese]

In the next version of DTab, I'd like to see the ability to store a little more 'info' about the tab. Right now I can only save my name, email, etc. I'd like to be able to save a small notes section where I can write something about the tab that could be printed or omitted as selected.

My specific reason for this, is that there is currently nowhere in DTab to credit the original transcriber of a song.

[kevin]

Geese:

You've raised a good point and it's something i do feel needs expanding upon also.   Same applies with bar/section comments too.  It needs to be able to handle those times when a longer comment is needed.

I also like the idea of Dtab files keeping a track record of edits.  So when their passed around and maybe changed, the original author and the person making the changes are kept in the tracks history.

[Geese]

Couple more things....

It's never an issue, but Dtab 'crashes' about 90% of the time when I close it down. It never happens when running, only when I shut it down. It doesn't hang the system, it just gets the 'exception error' message in XP when shutting down.

AMD XP 1900+ 1.6ghz
Win XP Professional
512 MB RAM
Hercules MuseXL Sound card

second...I have a registered version of Dtab, so I don't get the 'nag' screen repeatedly, but the nag screen still appears...just in the background. It's a small nitpicky thing, but could you either make the nag screen not appear at all for registered users, or at least make it appear only once at load, and not continue to the main program until 'lets start' is pressed?

[kevin]

Geese,

  Thanks again for bugs reports.  I don't know what the cause of these may well be.  The crashing is perhaps caused from something not being de-allocated correctly under xp-pro.

  The splash screen, now that's very odd.  It simply shouldn't appear for registered users full stop.  Can you email me screen shot of what happens plus copy of the the  "DTABPref_Info.DTP"  file located in the the DTAB folder.

Send it to,  "dtab at underwaredesign.com"  (replace at with @ of course)

[joey_jordison]

Hi i discovered DTab yesterday and it's a really great tool -- but ...

- support for triplets would be very cool
- importing text files
- exporting Sound to Mp3
- ability to add own sounds (for example wav / midi ... )

greetings Joey

[kevin]

- support for triplets would be very cool

yes, depending on what path we take for the next update (yes there will be more updates).  It will have triplets/Sextuplets in some form.. I have a partly working version, that can play back any subdivision,  but the editing/display routines are hopeless, and it doesn't load/save..

Thus I'm tempted to port the entire package to a new dev environment, prolly take a more gfx based approach.  So simply notation/ tab output would be possible.

- importing text files

yeah i'd like this too.

- exporting Sound to Mp3

As far as i know, we can't do that.  As It requires licensing MP3 compression routines.. Which are very expensive..  We could certainly capture it to wave file though..

- ability to add own sounds (for example wav / midi ... )

Yeah that'd be a good feature.

[joey_jordison]

Concerning the Midi to Mp3 converter i already found a method to record the midi output convert it to wav and the to mp3 ;-)

[kevin]

Your missing the point, doing it is not the difficultly, but if we build in an mp3 encoder, we have to license it for commercial use. Which makes implementing it natively economically unviable.  The easy work round would be wrap the functionality through third a 3rd party encoder.   There's bound to be plenty of those around.

[bruarm]

I've been using DTAB for about a week now and I love it.  Keep up the great work!!!!

There's a couple of nit picky little things that I've found.

Firstly, I've done a little programming myself and I noticed the TAB order on the forms jumps all over the place.  It doesn't move from control to control in a logical order.

Secondly, if you start editing a file without having the tabber name and stuff done, when you try to save it, it says you have to update the tabber name.  When you update it, you lose all your work.

Minor stuff, but thanks for listening.

bruarm

[kevin]

Firstly, I've done a little programming myself and I noticed the TAB order on the forms jumps all over the place. It doesn't move from control to control in a logical order.

Yeah, will have to clean those up at some point, although most of the time though, it pushing to the main editor window to trap key events.  

Secondly, if you start editing a file without having the tabber name and stuff done, when you try to save it, it says you have to update the tabber name. When you update it, you lose all your work.

Yes, this occurs because I didn't want people to be able to easily  download a DTB file, change the tabbers name and re-upload it.

[bruarm]

Yes, this occurs because I didn't want people to be able to easily  download a DTB file, change the tabbers name and re-upload it.

Understood.  And once you enter the tabber name once it's not an issue, but I was so gung ho to start using it, then I lost it all.  Good exercise  ;)

bruarm