Release Notes for Release 0.9

Please note that Release 0.9 has several limitations:

1. Only mono (one-channel) signal documents are supported.

2. SE currently has no crossfading or mixing facilities. 

3. The Scheme interpreter interface to SE is undocumented.

The SE user interface follows the NeXT conventions. In order to operate SE you should be familiar with these protocols, as they are not all documented in this manual. See NeXT User's Reference.

Known Bugs

Sometimes when you are greatly zoomed in-near to the level of individual samples--vertical bars might appear. These benign bars are not in the data; they represent an error in the display code. 

Caveat Emptor

Release 0.9 is an experimental Beta release of SE and is not guaranteed. We recommend that you make a read-only copy of any signal document you intend to edit before invoking SE, so that if there is a problem the original signal document is intact. You can do this by invoking the Duplicate command in the NeXT Workspace Manager and using the Inspector within the Workspace Manager to make the document read-only.

We welcome comments and criticisms of SE. Please contact: wyngaard@ircam.fr.Or write to: Peter Wyngaard, IRCAM, 31, rue S. Merri, F-75004 Paris, France.

Installation

This section specifies the system requirements and the installation procedure for Release 0.9 of SE.

System Requirements:

To run SE we recommend that you have 16 Mbytes of random-access-memory on your NeXT machine. For disk storage, remember that 16-bit mono signal documents sampled at 44.1 KHz take up approximately 5.2 Mbytes per minute. If you intend to save an edited document, you need to have enough disk space for any samples you inserted from another document. See the section on "How SE Editing Works" later.

Installation Notes

This section duplicates the information found in the online INSTALL note supplied with the Signal Editor distribution. To obtain the Signal Editor distribution run the Unix shell program ftp to access the appropriate directory at the distribution site. The distribution is named SignalEditor.tar.z.

Once you have transferred the compressed file archive SignalEditor.tar.Z to your machine, the first step in installing SE is to unpack the file package. You do this by typing the shell command line:

	zcat SignalEditor.tar.Z | tar xvf -

This command line uses the Unix zcat program to uncompress the file package and write it to its standard output. The "|" sign pipes this output to the tar program. The tar program extracts the files from the tar archive. (See the Unix documentation for more on zcat and tar, if necessary.) This creates a directory called SE. In this directory you will find a subdirectory for the manual, the Signal Editor application directory, and two text files: a README, and an INSTALL note. 

Where to Install the SE Application

In order for the NeXT Workspace Manager to properly handle signal documents, that is, to open them and launch SE when you double-click on them, you must install SE in one of the directories where the Workspace Manager looks for applications. The Apps directory in your home directory is one such place. 

Quitting SE

When you quit from SE (Command-q) all signal document documents are closed and the screen positions of the Scheme, Document Inspector, Help, and Font panels are saved. The next time you launch SE these windows will appear in the same position. This lets you customize your screen layout.