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In order to perform editing operations in NoteAbilityPro you must first select the images or groups of images you want to alter. Once they are
selected you move those images, copy those images, or modify their appearance. For example, you could
select a group of notes and adjust their pitches, select two notes and add a slur between them, or select a note and add an articulation to it.
In order to perform most editing operations, you must change the Activity Mode to Selection Mode by clicking on the Arrow icon on the Tools Palette.
When you do this, the Variable Toolbar changes to display buttons for accessing all the NoteAbilityPro Editing options. This Editing Toolbar scrolls left and right and contains
18 buttons which display panels with hundreds of editing operations that cover everything from Copy and Paste to changing the appearance of note heads or adding 1/4 sharps to notes.
Before any editing operation is performed, you must first select the images you want to alter using the Selection tool or the Select Score tool.
The Selection tool allows you select individual music images or to make rectangles around multiple images. However, if you want to
perform an editing operation on a larger portion of the score -- for example, all the notes on a staff across multiple systems -- then you should choose the
Select Score button:
Both the Selection tool and Select Score tool can be used to select images and perform editing operations. The vast majority of the time the Selection tool will be
used, but there are some editing operations such as Inserting Rests in Blank Measures, Building Multi-measure rests and Adding Pedal lines that require that you use
Select Score tool. The documentation will make it clear when you must use the Select Score tool. In all other situations either tool can be used.
Control Points.
Control Points are the handles by which NoteAbilityPro images can be moved and adjusted, and they determine how an image is altered.
Some images have one control point, some have two, and a few (eg. slurs and curves) have
more.
Simple images such as dynamic marks one control point.
Clicking on this control point, or including this
control point in a selection rectangle allows the entire image to be moved.
Images with two dimensions such as notes (whose stem height changes), crescendo marks,
trills, lines, etc. have two control points. Generally, the two control points are located
at either end of the image (eg. at the note head and tip of the stem or flag on a note).
Clicking on one of these Control Points will adjust the size or shape of the image
(eg. dragging the right edge of a crescendo makes it longer.)
Slurs and curves have five control points, one at the start of the image, one at the end of the slur, and three control points in the middle which control the shape of the
slur.
The following example shows the Control Points of various NoteAbility images:
When selected, the primary control point of an image is yellow and the second control point is green. Control points on slurs are gray.
| Image | No. of Control Points | Primary Control Point | Other Points |
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| Dynamics | 1 | centre of image |
| Text | 1 | bottom left edge | |
| Note | 2 | notehead | 2:end of stem or flag |
| Crescendo | 2 | left edge | 2:right edge |
| Decrescendo | 2 | right edge | 2:left edge |
| Rest | 2 | centre of image | 2:beam location |
| Slur | 5 | left edge | 2:right edge and 3 mid points |
When moving or adjusting images, you can just select individual control points (the head of a note, the stem of a note, or the end position of a crescendo line).
Some operations such as Cut, Delete and Copy will consider any image with at least one Control Point in the Selection area to be selected.
However, when you want to perform an editing operation that alter the characteristic of an image (such as adding an accidental, add a tremolo, or changing the colour of an image)
you must have the primary control point selected. Only images whose primary (yellow) control point is selected will be altered by theses editing procedures.
Selecting images for editing.
There are 4 ways to select images for editing:
- You can tap a control point and a rectangular section area will appear around the control point so that you can place your finger in the rectangular area and adjust the
image. The rectangular area is large enough that you can see the image being altered as you drag it.
In the case of a note, selecting and dragging the note head will change the pitch while selecting and dragging the second control point will change the stem length.
- You can drag your finger and make a rectangular area which will include several images
In this case all the images can be dragged up or down in the score or an editing operation (such as copy) can be used on the selected images.
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 - Notes and Rests are aligned to a rhythmic spine so they can't normally be moved left and right away from their beat position. Restricting this
movement ensures that notes at the same beat position are all aligned. If you need to move notes or rests to different beat positions, they should be cut and pasted into the new
position.
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- You can click on the EDIT LINK button and drag a series of rectangular areas any where on the page. When you do this, all the control points in all the selection rectangles
are considered to be selected.
The Edit Link button allows you to make a series of selections by dragging your finger across areas of the screen or by clicking on control points. All the images included in all the section areas are now
considered to be selected and can be operated on with the editing operation that follows. Selected images can be across several pages if desired.
In the example below, Edit Link was used to select
a number of notes on both staves and the Add Correct Tremolo operation was selected:
In the case of beaming notes, if you use the Edit Link button to draw rectangles around groups of notes, the notes in each selection are will
be beamed separately.
Similarly, when slurring notes, if you can use the Edit Link button to draw rectangles around groups of notes, the notes in each selection are will
be slurred separately.
- You can enter Select Score mode and click on a starting position on a staff and an ending position on the same staff or on another staff, and all images from the starting
staff position to the ending staff position will be selected. When you first touch the screen, a green bar will show the start staff position and when
you touch the screen a second time, a second green bar will show the end staff position. If you are selecting across multiple staves, the green bars will show which staves are
included in the selection.
In this example, the start staff position and the end staff position are on the same system, but they can cover
many systems and pages if you need to make a large selection.
Once the images you want to alter have been selected, you can click on any of the green editing buttons which will either perform the operation or bring up a panel containing more options for editing.
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