[ANN] bach 0.8 released

[andreaagostini]

Dear friends,

we are happy to announce that the new major version of bach (v0.8.0.1b — v0.8.0 was a release candidate we chose not to distribute publicly) has just been released. This new release contains pretty drastic changes in some areas, and a ton of bug fixes and new features. Before giving you a hint of what they are about, let me caveat you about a few important points:

- This release is not 100% complete. In particular, some new features of the bach.score object are not properly implemented in the MusicXML import and export.
- We made as many tests as we reasonably could, but some very deep parts of bach have been completely reworked, and we can’t rule out that there are still bugs looming around, possibly even breaking behaviors that were working correctly so far.
- We have conducted very little testing on Windows. This, together with the fact that Windows machines and systems can be much more diverse than Mac systems but we only have one Windows 10 platform on which to test, makes us worry about the stability of the Windows version of this release, and even about whether it will have machine- or system-specific issues.

For these reasons, you should consider this version as something like a public prerelease. This is also why you won’t find it in Max’s Package Manager, but you’ll rather have to put it manually in your Packages folder, replacing the bach folder on your machine if you had a previous version installed. The Package Manager will then report a version conflict, but don’t worry about that: it's all right. On the other hand, our advice is to avoid using this version for production and critical tasks: in these contexts, please continue using version 0.7.9, at least for a while. You can also swap versions according to what you need to do.

All this, of course, doesn’t mean that we think that this new version is unusable: on the contrary, we are already using it all the time, and we hope that you’ll find it useful too. But if you come across any problem, please let us know and we’ll take care of it. Our goal is to release a stable version numbered v0.8.1b within a few weeks, on both the site and the Package Manager.

Ok, so much for the bad news. Let’s switch to the good ones.

I’d say that, besides the usual ton of bug fixes and various improvements (if you feel brave, can check them all out in the History.txt file: they take more than 400 lines!), the major new things are:

- A new data type for representing pitches and intervals, with their own arithmetic. Now you can say things like “C#5 + E0”, and obtain “E#5” as the result. Does this make sense? Perhaps not now, but we hope it will soon!
- New slot types for articulations, dynamics, noteheads and lyrics.
- A new kind of temporal syntax for slots, with an absolute representation of time.
- The ability to gather more than one part in a single staff, thus allowing for representing concepts such as voices, layers and the like.
- A new “goto” message of bach.roll and bach.score, for navigating scores.

All this, as always, is completely documented, but, for a kickstart, have a look at the new section named “What’s new in bach 0.8” in the bach.overview patch (which, as always, can be found in Max’s "Extras” menu).

Finally, alongside all this new bach stuff, you can find a new version of cage and the first official release of the dada library. You probably know about the former; as for the latter, stay tuned for Daniele’s forthcoming announcement on this forum.

As always, we hope you will enjoy this release. Have fun, and please keep us informed about any issue you might encounter.

andrea & daniele — the bach team

[pedrnun]

Dear bach team,

I've just browsed through Max Package Manager and found that bach's current available version is 0.8.0.
I wonder if this is the same 0.8.0.1b I've downloaded form the website a few month ago (at that time, it still wasn't available from the PM) or if it is an improved one.
Anyway, what I really want to know is if you already recommend it for use in "production and critical tasks".

Cheers guys and I'm looking forward to seeing you at TENOR 2018
Pedro Louzeiro

[danieleghisi]

Hi Pedro,

that is weird. We haven't uploaded any new version on the package manager, which should still have the "stable" 0.7.9.
We are still waiting to fix some bugs and add some minor features before releasing a 0.8.1 which will also go on the PM.
This will hopefully happen during the summer. For the time being, if you need the new features, please stick with the version on our website.

I'll ask Cycling why the releases (cage 0.5.0 as well) have ended up in the PM. They shouldn't have, and we haven't put them...

Thanks for notifying,
d

[danieleghisi]

Update: you see 0.8.0 on your PM ONLY if you have installed it manually. If you have no 0.8.0 on your machine, you just see 0.7.9 in the PM. Hence 0.8.0 is NOT on the PM, as expected.
The PM shows you however that the version you have on your machine is 0.8.0, but you should NOT be able to download 0.8.0 from the PM, because it's not there.

Hence everything is correct, I think...

Daniele

[pedrnun]

Yes!
After manually swapping between versions 0.8.0.1b and 0.7.9b, I went back to the PM and I can confirm what you say.
Thanks!