Dtab V1.03 WIP

[kevin]

   Dtab V1.03b - Work In Progress

      Unfortunately a problem has been discovered with PlayBack in the initial V1.03 upgrade.   The issue occurs when a CHOKE # character is on the crash line, but only in the user version, not in the dev version.   Dtab supports the # character, but it can't play it back at this time due to a limitation of MIDI.  It might be possible to hack a work around, but that's something for later.

      Anyway, I'll try and get this fixed and a re-built installer undated tonight..    



 Dtab V1.03B Released

     The new package is built, added a few more tweaks to the drum tab importer also..  

      Dtab V1.03b Release Announcement



And Now for something completely different

[kevin]

   Dtab V1.03c - Work In Progress

        It's been a while since issuing the V1.03b upgrade, and since there's a few issues found since then,  this upgrade will look at addressing them.   

 

   Download
       

DTAB V1.03C Beta 1 (login required)

[kevin]

  Dtab - Thinking Out Loud

       Fixed a few little issues with V1.03b so far...    It's amazing to me,  that almost 13 years after the initial release, we're here continuing to improve DTAB software.   Every time i go back and look at updating it, that short wish list in my mind  soon becomes a hefty novel.   Would love to address the applications styling among other things, It's never been much of a looker, but I don't think there's much i can do about it in the short term.     I'd rather use the limited time that available to improve the functionality of the software.   

       Dtab was built from the creation stand point, where the user just tapped the rhythm into the keyboard,  but today the usage seems to be mainly to get some  audible indication of what a particular drum tab sounds like.    The tab importer is fairly good with a number of hand written tabbing conventions, but there's still a few that it's completely unaware of.   The issues that come to mind, would be drum tabs that short cut stuff or make assumptions from the reader.   Generally these occur in the structure of the track, things like repeat statements stuck on the end of the staff lines, or hand written notes to player like  play chorus twice, then post chorus 3 times or something.   They're possible to parse some of these, but there's always going to be some tracks that need human interaction to lay out the structure correctly.

       When adding the scripting engine during that last update,  one of the ideas thrown around was building pre or post processing functions for the Tab importer using scripts.  It'd just be like applying the processing effect when using a video editing software or something.   So TAB includes a list of standard scripts, where the user could select what script and the order they're implemented together.     The instruction set of the scripting engine could include some purpose specific functions to help out of course, but any real customization could be done through code.     It's not the only way, but it'd be more flexible than trying to internally support every possible circumstance..

       Another thing on my mind would be moving to a tabbed interface (not now, but in the near future).   Some years ago, we tried a mutli document interface.. While it's nice (I think there's some prototypes still available on the boards),  I didn't really like it.   There's good and bad in everything..  After some fooling around with tabbed interfaces, I feel it'd fit better with how DTAB works.  Interestingly internally DTAB has supported multi song (in memory) for a number of years.  There's just5 been mechanism swap or change..       

       Anyway, what i'm looking to do it clean up V1.03B  a little more and release V1.03C pretty soon.  Beyond that we'll have look at tackling some of the bigger ideas.   

[kevin]

 Dtab V1.03c -Beta 3  - Line Repeats

      Been picking through the tab importer this afternoon,  the importer is built from a series of passes over a drum tab document.   Most of the grunt work is done in the second pass,  where a lot of the structure is picked up.   It's interesting the parallels between writing the compiler parser (like in PLayBASIC) and drum tab parser of all things.  Where there's an order of operations the parser follows.    Changes to the order can and have unforeseen effects, where songs that would import correctly previously, would cease to work at all.

   Today, I've been looking to include support for 'entire row repeats' into the parser.   Looked at this last time, but the implementation hit a logical snag..  Had lot of time to think about alternative methods since then.  The original solution would break when bars within the row had repeats in them also,  it was trying to do everything in the one pass.  To get around this has meant adding another pre-parse over the staff lines.   Gets rid of the logical confusion in the parser, for now at least.  

      Anyway, so long story short, the importer can now parse rows where a repeat line the following it (like bellow).    It only supports a few multiplier character variations at this time, such as x or X and * for the repeat multiplier.    It also expects the multiplier to be on the same line.  Will add support for multi line later on tonight/tomorrow.  

     The following represents 18bars.  

Code Select Expand



                   |--- repeat x2 --|            
C  |----------------|----------------|----------------|----------------|
HH |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| repeat * 2
SN |----------------|------------o---|----------------|----------------|  
BD |o---o---o---o---|o---o---o-o-o---|o---o---o---o---|o---o---o---o---|





Download


   Download  DTAB V1.03 Beta 3 (login required)

[kevin]

 Dtab V1.03c -Beta 5  - Line Repeats

   This will basically be the release version,  includes a bunch of little fixes, such as an issue with update notification frequency being a bit too frequent some times,  other changes come in the form of adding support for row repeat multipliers in different formats plus expanding the standard Dtab Staff remapping.  

   Some example bars,

Code Select Expand


                   |--- repeat x2 --|            
C  |----------------|----------------|----------------|----------------|
HH |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| repeat * 2
SN |----------------|------------o---|----------------|----------------|  
BD |o---o---o---o---|o---o---o-o-o---|o---o---o---o---|o---o---o---o---|


C |----------------|----------------|----------------|----------------|
H |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxx---|  repeat
S |----o-------o---|----o-------o---|----o-------o---|----o-------o-oo|   *2
B |o-------o-------|o-------o-------|o-------o-------|o-------o-------|


C |----------------|----------------|----------------|----------------|
H |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxx---|  play
S |----o-------o---|----o-------o---|----o-------o---|----o-------o-oo|   2x
B |o-------o-------|o-------o-------|o-------o-------|o-------o-------|






Download

  Download  DTAB V1.03 Beta 5 (login required)