What's New in Sibelius Speaking 3

There are so many new and improved features that I cannot list them all here. I will list some highlights below excerpted from David Pinto's "What's New" document for Sibelius Speaking 3:

Vastly improved New Score Dialog

After selecting a score from the manuscript list box, you can TAB to other areas of the dialog and select other options that will configure your score the way you want it. In fact you can set up your tempo, Time Signature, Pick up bar, Composer, Title etc. In other words, you can set up all of the basic parameters of your score.

Numerous Handy New Features in the Instruments Dialog

Access to the Sibelius Mixer settings. The Mixer allows you to optimize the playback quality of your score. In the Mixer, you can change the following parameters of any of the staves in the score. The Volume and Pan setting. The Mute and Solo status. The sound that a staff uses for playback. The MIDI Synthesizer that the sound comes from, and the MIDI channel that the sound is assigned to.

STOPPING AT THE CURRENT BAR DURING PLAYBACK

As you know, if you press P, you go into playback. And if you press P while in playback, you pause at the current position. Well folks, now, during pause, if you press TAB, the transport will close, and Sibelius Speaking will focus you in the score at the bar and staff where you stopped. This is a feature that sighted users would love to have. Well now you've got it!

NEW FEATURES FOR THE F5 KEY

In SibSpeaking for Sib 2, you had to press F5, 3 times in order to run the staff layout test. Then you would wait 10 seconds or so, as JAWS ran down every staff in the score. Well now, you press CONTROL F5, and the staff layout test is run immediately, without JAWS having to run down the staves.

The online help has been greatly expanded. The Sibelius Speaking Help Table of Contents accessed with CONTROL F1, used to open JAWS Message Boxes. Now it opens Help documents in WordPad. There are 3 exceptions. They are, Hotkeys, Alternative Hotkeys, and Keypad Assignments. These are list boxes where you'll get a dialog list for that particular category. So, there is no longer any help in message boxes.

As usual, pressing F1 will give you all the information you need about the current item in the score. Pressing F1 when you are not in the score will tell you about the current control you are on, for instance if it's a checkbox, how to check and uncheck it.

Pressing F1 twice, used to bring up Sibelius' own Help program. Now, however, pressing F1 twice will just repeat the last thing that JAWS said. This used to be accomplished by pressing SHIFT+F1.

To bring up Sibelius' own Help program, press F1, 3 times.

Other Cool New Features

When navigating or pressing F1, JAWS will tell you if your on a grace note. This is also true even if you are not in the More Notes Template.

As you know, pressing F2 once plays the notes at the current position. Now, pressing F2 twice, will play approximately 1 bar of music, starting from the beginning of the current bar.

If you have hidden notes, rests or any other items, so that they wont get printed out, then when you navigate in the score, JAWS will tell you when an item is hidden.

When creating a pick up bar, the pickup bar is automatically set to bar 0.

Fixes

The Graphic labelers are much more stable.
Consistent graphic recognition is much more stable.
TABBING into the score after inserting Rehearsal marks, Tempo and Metronome marks returns you to the bar you were initially in.
In the Go To Bar dialog, when pressing SPACE on the OK button, Sibelius Speaking acts correctly to return you to the correct bar and correct staff. It's just like pressing ENTER on the OK button.
Tie on and Tie off were failing to be reported sometimes. This is fixed.
Writing lyrics with F8 has been stabilized.
On some systems, JAWS was too often thinking that the properties panels were not displayed. This has been, fixed.
Fixed Display and Configure prop and keypad for those computers that were failing it.
When creating text or searching for text, sometimes the text would be off screen and JAWS could not speak its contents. This problem has been minimized.

1754 Quarry Lane P.O. Box 927 Valley Forge, PA 19482 P: 610 783-6692 F: 610 783-6732