List of proposed future enhancements to SNapp
Below is a relatively prioritized list of planned changes at some time in the future. The difficulty of implementing the code for these ranges from somewhat straightforward to incredibly complicated. Click on the links to see example designs.
Grandstaff display range adjustments. Currently every Grandstaff (i.e., a row on a virtual page of sheet music) is set to a fixed tonal range based on the highest and lowest notes in the entire score. But this leads to some rows displaying a wider range that what actually appears in those rows, so there can be a lot of wasted space (where there are no noteheads). The proposed change would set both Treble and Bass staves of each row individually according to the range of notes just in that row. This generally would not be of much help to most beginners' scores because they have a relatively narrow range. But for more complicated classical music scores with wide ranges, this would help reduces space and page counts.
User preference for fixed staff positions. Currently SNapp expands and contracts staves according the range of the (entire) score. In order to simplify transitions to/from Traditional Notation and WYSIWYP, this preference would set a (minimum) fixed range that approximates the Traditional Notation Treble and Bass staves. They would still expand beyond the fixed range to accommodate the entire range of notes in the score in the same way Traditional Notation expands with ledger lines.
Easier staff octave recognition. Octaves are identified by displaying the octave number (1 to 7) next to the C red line on the staff. With really wide ranging scores, it would help to have a more obvious visual indication of staves without having to examine the octave numbers.
Easier recognition of Grandstaffs on the sheet music page. The beta version of SNapp does not connect the bar lines as does Traditional Notation.
User preference for the display of Traditional Notation duration symbols. This would help students who have learned to play with WYSIWYP and its notetail durations to learn to read Traditional Notation's stem and flag system.
WYSIWYP-Traditional Notation transition. Students who have learned to play using WYSIWYP may decide they want to learn to read Traditional. Having acquired some playing skills, the student can then focus on learning all the complexities of Traditional Notation. To help the student in this challenge, SNapp would implement some User Preferences that would serve as learning tools.
Support for creation and editing of scores. A score editor is a huge implementation and is not likely to happen any time soon. Take a look at MuseScore and you will get the idea of the scope of the functionality of a sheet music editor.
Miscellaneous changes. This is a grab bag of small things that help improve functionality and sheet music appearance.