Hi David,
Objects in Sibelius can't be right-clicked to invoke Properties or a
contextual menu. You have to open the Properties window, then left-
click on the object, then open a bunch of disclosure triangles in the
Properties window to see if what you want to do is there.
Cheers,
- Darcy
-----
[email protected]
Brooklyn, NY
On 26 Jun 2009, at 3:59 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 26 Jun 2009 at 15:30, Darcy James Argue wrote:
The Properties window does not open by default when you launch Sib.
It's not mentioned in any of the basic tutorials. It was a while
before I even realized it existed.
It seems obvious to me since the introduction of Windows 95 that if
you want to manipulate the characteristics of anything at all on
screen, you right click on it in hopes of getting a menu choice to
view the object's properties. Perhaps this is a Windows thing, but it
is bog standard UI on Windows that a properties dialog is a couple of
clicks away for any clickable object.
It takes up a lot of screen real
estate so I tend to leave it closed when I work. It's context-
sensitive, so you can't see all the things it is capable of
controlling at a glance -- you have to select an object first to see
what properties are available for modification.
I don't quite understand why you'd want it to work any other way.
It's certainly the convention for properties dialogs as implemented
in Windows applications for 15 years or so (and it was present before
that in MS Office 4.3, and before that in Borland's products, though
it was called the "object inspector").
And when I am trying
to do something I don't know how to do in an application I'm not 100%
familiar with, I tend to look in the *menus* -- I don't think I'm
that
unusual in that regard.
Certainly one of the Windows UI rules is that any shortcut menu
should be accessible from the standard menu without the requirement
for a right click (or the neglected properties button on any standard
Windows keyboard). Many applications (including MS's own), and
particularly Finale, ignore this rule, in fact, so I'd say you're
certainly correct to expect a menu option in Sibelius to give you
access to the properties sheet for whatever is currently selected.
If a feature is not accessible via the menus,
but only appears in a separate, context-sensitive window when you
have
precisely the right object selected, it's easy to overlook. It's
certainly a very different UI philosophy from Finale.
I would not be stymied by the lack of a menu choice. Indeed, I'd much
more likely right click than go hunting for a menu choice. I guess
this UI convention has not been around long enough for it to be
second nature to Mac users.
And it's yet another of those things that the computer software
makers slip into to their products in the interest of making things
EASY!!! and INTUITIVE!!!!, yet nobody ever gets any training on these
aspects of of user interface.
It's been that way since the advent of GUIs, where you're supposed to
be able to figure it out, but you're out of luck if nobody has ever
clued you into the secrets.
--
David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/
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