Dmuse: quirks

Quirky aspects of Dmuse

• There is no undo/redo for editing.

• ↑ and ↓ will not scroll to lines outside of the screen (execept when highlighting). Instead the cursor wraps around to the bottom/top line on current screen. You have to use Shft+↑/↓ or PgDn/PgUp to move to lines below or above the current screen.

• Backspace at the beginning of a line will not move the cursor to the line above.

• Why is having "advanced features" of wordwrap, ibex, and dictionaries turned off initially in Dmuse advantageous? Would beginning users encounter these accidentally and be confused. If they are reading the manual in random-access style, and see instructions for using one of these features, they will not be able to use the commands without manually activating the features, and so may be more confused.

Quirks which should be fixed

• Using the word "library" for a directory is confusing. In unix-based systems "directory" is most common. In Apple OS X and Microsoft Windows OSes, "folder" is most common, see Wikipedia directory/folder entry. In general, when dealing with non-graphical interfaces (such as Dmuse or the terminal), the term "directory" should be used, and "folder" for graphical interfaces, particular when the icon for the "library" is a file folder (which is why Microsoft and Apple use the name "folder" for directories). The term library in nearly all computer systems is more commonly used for collections of compiled code used to link either statically or dynamically to programs. For example, the directory /usr/lib contains the main collection of library files in unix-based OSes. A file such as /usr/lib/libc.a is called a static library (they start with the characters "lib followed by the name of the library, and end in ".a"). A file such as /usr/lib/libc.so is called a dynamic library (ending with .so instead of .a, plus an optional dot and version number, such as libc.so.5). In Microsoft Windows, dynamic libraries have the extension .dll which stands for Dynamic-Link Library.

• Single-character width tab characters are quirky, and make working with Humdrum files in Dmuse difficult due to less readability of polyphonic music.