View Menu
How to get there
The View Menu is one of SongWriter’s
unchanging menus.
What it does
This menu contains commands pertaining
to your view of the score. You can never change the score itself with
the commands in this menu—only modify the way you see it on the screen.
- Scroll View · Page View. SongWriter
offers you the choice of two views of your music: Scroll View, where the
music is a continuous horizontal band, and Page View, where the music
is laid out like a page of sheet music. Most of SongWriter’s tools work
equally well in either mode, although you’ll find that your computer redraws
the screen faster in Scroll View than in Page View. Use these commands
to switch from one view to another.
- Select Layer. The Select Layers submenu
in the View Menu allows you to use a menu to choose the layer you want
to edit. Choose Select Layers from the View Menu, then select an option
from the submenu.
- Redraw Screen. Choose this command to
force SongWriter to redraw the screen. Whenever you spot a visual anomaly—a
phantom fragment of a slur, for example, or a missing barline—this command
usually clears up the problem.
- Zoom: Zoom In · Zoom Out · Fit Width · Fit in Window · Zoom to 100% · Zoom to 200% · Zoom to 75%
· Other · Last Size. With these commands, you can
specify the size at which you want the score displayed on your screen,
expressed as a percentage of its actual size. You can’t change the actual
(printed) size of the notes on the page in this way; this technique simply
lets you magnify or reduce the screen display of the fixed-size notes.
To change your view of the score, just
choose the appropriate command from the submenu. (You can also use one
of the command-key equivalents: press command-+ (plus) to zoom in and command-- (minus) to zoom out. If you choose Other, the Scale View dialog box appears, in
which you can specify any reduction or enlargement you want—from 10% to
1000%. (See Scale View dialog
box.)
If you’ve been viewing your score at
several different degrees of magnification, Last Size takes you back to
your last magnification setting.
There’s one other command in the submenu:
Fit in Window. This command is available only in Page View; it automatically
reduces the viewing percentage just enough to fit the current page completely
on your screen, no matter what size screen you have.
- Show (Hide) Rulers. Choose this command
to display nonprinting rulers at the top and left side of the screen.
As you drag an object, you can see thin dotted indicator lines that show
you where the cursor is, making it easy for you to align and position
various objects precisely on the screen. The units of measurement are
whatever you’ve selected using the Measurement Units command in the SongWriter
2012 Menu.
- Show (Hide) Page Layout Icons. When
this item is selected, SongWriter displays non-printing icons for systems
which have been locked or systems
where Allow Individual Staff Spacing has been turned on with the Page Layout tool.
The systems are locked when you use the Fit Measures command in the Selection
tool or Page Layout Menu and when you move measures using the arrow keys
in Selection tool. See Selection tool,
Fit
Measures dialog box and Page Layout
Menu.
- Show (Hide) Display Colors. This command
toggles your display between using colors and black and white for different
elements in the score. To print in color Show Display Colors must be selected
(the menu will say Hide Display Colors). See the Print
Dialog Box.
