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Professional

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The document manager

Subjects covered:

• Configurations
• Customizing the displayed folders
• Files and folders operations
• Adding configurations and areas

Configurations [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

The document manager has been designed to help you create, modify and handle your musical documents within Pizzicato.

It is displayed in the left part of the score view. For the advanced versions of Pizzicato it is also in the conductor view. In both cases, you may choose to display it or to hide it, with the D check box just above it, in the tool bar of the window.

You can resize the part of the window dedicated to the document manager. Just click and move the resize bar that makes the limit between the score and the document manager.

All Pizzicato versions have at least two configurations, displayed at the top of the document manager. Two or more blue buttons are used to switch between configurations. Configuration number one has one default folder, My Scores, which contains the documents you create:

To reach configuration number two, just click on the "2" button:

It contains three folders. In the first one, you will find all examples referred to in the music and Pizzicato course. The Music folder contains a few examples and documents used in the more advanced versions of Pizzicato. The last one, Backups contains all the backup versions of your documents. You can always open them to find an older version of a document, if a document can no more be opened or when it has been corrupted.

You should also read the two lessons about Handling documents and windows (1) and Handling documents and windows (2) as they explain the basic use of the document manager.

Customizing the displayed folders [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

Configuration one keeps track of the documents you create when you work with Pizzicato. The My Scores folder is in fact located in the My documents / Pizzicato 3.5 folder (Windows) or Applications / Pizzicato 3.5 folder (Mac). The tree structure of that folder may be customized directly within Pizzicato. See the next section.

You can also add other folders in that area of the document manager. For instance, you may prefer to store your personal documents on another hard disk or in several different places on your computer. Here is how to add these folders so that they can also be reached and displayed through the document manager.

• Select configuration one and right click inside that configuration (but not on a document or folder), then select the contextual menu entitled Setup this area... The following dialog appears:

The name of the full path displayed here will probably be different on your computer, that is normal. By default, only one path is defined, corresponding to the above explained My Scores default folder. A path is in fact the full name of a folder on your computer. It is the concatenation of the names of folders and sub folders that lead to a specific folder.

You can add a new path to an existing folder in the list with the Add... button. A dialog lets you specify the folder on your computer. You can delete a path from the list by using the Delete button. Only the reference of that folder is removed. The folder on your computer is not deleted. You can organize the order of the list of folders by using the Up and Down buttons, that simply move the folders up and down in the list.

When you select a path in the list, the lower part of the dialog displays several options that you can modify for the files in that folder:

• Save files automatically - If this box is checked and you exit Pizzicato or close a document from this folder, Pizzicato will automatically save it, without asking you.

• Do not modify files - The files of that folder will never be saved, even if you explicitely save them. This is useful for instance for the example directory, so that you can never overwrite an example. You can protect any folder against modification.

• Template score folder - When this option is checked and you double-click a score from the documents of this folder, Pizzicato will take this score as a template, and create a new score based on that template, in the default folder. This can be used to store many templates in a folder and use it to start a new document with that template. The original template is not modified.

• Display full path name of the folder - Pizzicato will display the full path name of the folder as the name of that folder. It is useful if you have several folders from various hard disks, so you know which folders is in which disk.

• Default directory for new documents - Only one folder should have that option active. Pizzicato will use that folder to place any new document that you create. If more than one folder have this option, Pizzicato will use the first that it finds.

• Reopen documents automatically - When this option is enabled, if you exit Pizzicato with some documents open from this folder, Pizzicato will automatically reopen them when you start Pizzicato again. This may help you to save time when you are working on a document that contains useful resources, but it will also slow down the starting of Pizzicato if you have too much documents open in that folder, as Pizzicato will take the time to load them all into memory.

• The 6 other check boxes specify which types of file will be displayed in that folder. Some of these file types may only be used by more advanced versions of Pizzicato.

The Select... button can be used to select another path (which is to say, another folder in which you can access files).

When you click OK, Pizzicato will update the area and display the folders and files you selected.

Files and folders operations [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

When you right click on the icons of the document manager tree, you can reach a series of actions you can do on each one of them. Here are the most common actions, for folders, documents and scores. Please remember that a Pizzicato document is in fact a file of the Windows or Mac operating system. They are here represented by green icons in the document manager. Folders that contain documents or other folders are in fact folders (also called directories) of the Windows or Mac operating system.

One word of warning. The document manager is just another way to access these files and folders, from inside Pizzicato. If you move, create and delete files and folders in the document manager, they will be in fact moved, created and deleted on your hard disk. The Windows files Explorer or the Finder on Mac will display the same files and folders. But you should not keep Pizzicato running while you modify the files and folders with Windows Explorer or the Finder, as Pizzicato may loose track of which files have been moved or changed. You may modify the files and folders structure outside Pizzicato, but be sure to exit Pizzicato before doing so. When you start Pizzicato again, it will then analyse the new structure and display it correctly.

On a folder, you can do the following operations:

• Create a new folder
• Create a new Pizzicato document (it will have one score with one measure)
• Create a new audio wave file
• Delete a the folder and all the documents inside it. Please note that it will really delete the folder and files from your hard disk. This is not only hiding them from the display tree !
• Ask Pizzicato to open all folders and files inside that folder. It can be used if you want to explore the content of a folder rapidly.
• According to the Pizzicato version you have, other options are available, like importing various types of file into Pizzicato.

On a Pizzicato document, you can do the following operations:

• Change its name
• Delete the document
• Add a score (only for more advanced versions of Pizzicato)
• For more advanced versions of Pizzicato, particularly for Pizzicato Pro and Composition, many other options are available there. They are explained in the lessons covering music composition tools.

On a score, inside a Pizzicato document, you can do the following operations:

• Rename it
• Delete it (but there must always be at least one score in a document, so the last one cannot be deleted)
• Access the various views for that score (score, sequencer, instruments,...). These views can all be accessed by other ways explained in the manual, but they are also presented here, as it can sometimes be easier to open them from the document manager.

You can also drag and drop a folder or a document to another folder. This will move the document or folder. If you CTRL drag and drop, Pizzicato will make a copy of the document or folder.

For the more advanced versions, you can also drag and drop a score from or to another document. This will copy the score into the document.

By double clicking a score, you display its content in the score editor and you can edit it.

By double clicking a Pizzicato document, the advanced versions of Pizzicato will open the conductor view.

Adding configurations and areas [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro]

The more advanced versions of Pizzicato have other configurations. Most of them are related to the intuitive composition tools and the selection and use of instruments. They will be explored in the corresponding lessons.

In Pizzicato Pro and Composition, you can create custom configurations to make your work easier. The last button is a "+" button. When you click it, a new empty configuration is added. You can then edit it as explained above.

You can delete a configuration by clicking on its button while holding the CTRL key. Pizzicato asks for confirmation. In this case, only the display is modified and the files and folders from that configuration will not be deleted from the disk.

You will notice that in the advanced versions, some configurations may display several areas of the document manager. You can indeed add new areas to customize a configuration. To do that, right click the background of a display area and you can select to add an area to above or below, or even right or left, which will create another column of the document manager. This multiple area proposition is useful when you need to work and use music elements that are found in various folders. You can organize the screen so that you can see all needed folders and then you can drag and drop from them without the hassle of moving and changing the current folders for each operation. You can create custom configurations like this:

Light

Beginner

Professional

Notation

Composition Light

Composition Pro

Drums and Percussion

Guitar

Choir

Keyboard

Soloist