Notation Composer and Mac users

[stormproof1]

Notation Composer works on an iMac fine using the reFit dual-boot system.

[Sherry C]

Hi,

Originally Posted by stormproof1

Notation Composer works on an iMac fine using the reFit dual-boot system.

Thanks for sharing that bit of info. Is the reFit dual-boot system you mention the same as this one at SourceForge http://refit.sourceforge.net/

Have you had any experience with the reFind that is mentioned there? (http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/)

Even just the reFit gives Mac users another resource for running our (and other Windows) software - very nice!

ttfn,
Sherry

[stormproof1]

Yes it is the reFit you mention. I hadn't realised it was now unsupported, but it seems to do a good job of standing up by itself Having sorted it out, and feeling very pleased with myself, I realised that there's a native Mac app to do the same thing. I guess that's life.

[Sherry C]

Hi friends,

Because there have been some issues with installing from a removable drive (eg. memory stick or such), the installation file needs to be on the hard drive of the machine it will be installed on.

For Mac users this means having the installation file on the "Windows side" of your hard drive. If you're getting an error message that "An installation from a removeable drive is not possible", then this is probably the issue. Just put the installation file on the "Windows" side and all should be well.

ttfn,
Sherry

[Reinhold H.]

Hi all who use MACs and other PCs than Windows,

As you can imagine we continuously have demands to offer Notation Software on other operating systems than Windows. The demands are growing and for us such an offer is an opportunity.

In this thread as well as in that one, proposals were made what is the best way going forward. However, the only acceptable solution of today is based on third party software. The solutions is either to run a second bootable image using Parallels + Windows, VM Fusion + Windows, Virtualbox + Windows, somehow directly using Codeweavers or others. The key downside is that it costs additional money and/or is complicated to use for someone who is not familiar with those configurations. On our side we are only able to provide basic support for a Windows environment.

Based on the recommendations in this and this other thread we have started an investigation what feasible options we have to offer our software conveniently on other operating systems at low costs. I would like to share shortly the findings here. They are just a snapshot as of today (August 20th, 2014) but given the discussions in the past it might be interesting for some of you to know.

In a nutshell:
We used the free open source package WineHQ. WineHQ meanwhile became very powerful and offers Windows applications to work on Mac OS X, Linux, BSD and Solaris. We used Ubuntu-Linux and were able - with tweaks in the Notation Software - to get Composer 3 installed and running on Ubuntu using the WineHQ package. Clearly, there is still work to be done before we can offer a final solution (from coding, testing, beta test to ordering). But due to the powerful capabilities of WineHQ it is worth spending more investigation effort to see if we can offer a convenient and cheap solution to non-Windows users based on WineHQ.

Please see a screen shot of Composer 3 on Ubuntu-Linux below .

I am going to use this thread to keep you informed about our further directions.

Reinhold

[Reinhold H.]

Hi friends,

as stated in my last post I would like to share the progress on this subject further with you.

Our next step was to test whether the findings of Composer 3 on Ubuntu are reproduceable on other Linux distributions based on WineHQ.
YES, they are. We have now Composer 3 running on an off-the-shelf openSUSE 13.1 and tested playback and recording with a Yamaha keyboard PSR 910.
This again looks very promising. However, there is still a way to go. As you can see from the screen shot below where we have loaded Peter B.'s arrangement of The Fat Man. There are a few bugs in complex arrangements like Peter's when displaying ties, slurs or brackets.

Our next step is to achieve the same status on a Mac based on WineHQ. The outcome of this test will be the final proof point whether we are going to start a project in this direction.

Reinhold

[Reinhold H.]

... and here comes Composer 3 on a MacBook Pro

But as mentioned earlier there are still software changes required for a full product launch. (For the time being the Paralles/VM Fusion + Windows works fine)

Reinhold