Solution Management, Incorporated

Gnometab -- Guitar tablature editor for the GNOME2 desktop environment

Gnometab aims to be a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) tablature editor. I created Gnometab because, as a guitar teacher, I grew weary of writing out tablature -- it was barely legible, and I always seemed to be handing out the originals, which inevitably were never returned to me. Gnometab allows me to generate legible tablature according to my own conventions and preferences, and to preserve the originals in an electronic, editable format.

News

• 04/28/2003 - Gnometab-0.7.3 & 0.7.4 released. It has been a long time!
  • A default pointer tool has been added. Now it is only possible to select, move, or delete tab objects with the pointer tool, making it easier to modify the layout without inadvertently creating new tab objects.
  • Menu accelerators have been added for all tools.
  • Gnometab now maintains a "Recent Files" list in the "File" menu.
  • The chord builder has been slightly over-hauled, and chord builder objects now have a right-click popup menu, consistent with regular tab objects.
  • Gnometab-0.7.4 has been ported to libgnomeprint-2.2, and now uses fontconfig for both screen and print fonts. Libgnomeprint-2.2 is included in GNOME-2.2. Users of GNOME-2.0 should stick with version 0.7.3. This is the only difference between versions 0.7.3 and 0.7.4. Thanks to Joachim Breitner for the port.
  • Other enhancements and bugfixes; see the ChangeLog for details.
• 11/26/2002 - Gnometab-0.7.2 released.
  • This bugfix release attempts to address some reported layout problems with 0.7.1. Toolbars and menus should behave correctly now.
• 11/25/2002 - Gnometab-0.7.1 released.
  • A new graphical rhythm creation dialog with keyboard support has been added. It's now much easier and faster to add rhythm notation. The rendering algorithm has been improved to handle more than simple rhythms.
  • Gnometab now prompts before changes are lost.
  • Print output attempts to scale to paper size.
  • Sundry tweaks and bugfixes.
• Older News...

Features:

• Gnometab's features include copying and pasting of tablature passages, a chord library (which the user must fill with chords), professional-looking rhythm notation (not perfect yet), the ability to create a variety of tablature symbols specific to the guitar -- bends, slurs (hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc.), etc. -- and, of course, clean-looking printed output, given any postscript-compatible printer. Gnometab does not attempt to be "smart", i.e., it does not know how many beats are in a measure, nor does it know an E chord from an Am chord. Instead, the emphasis has been on the appearance of the output.
• Gnometab was designed by me, for me. Consequently, it reflects the kind of guitar player that I am. It has a heavy emphasis on fingerstyle guitar. Note that chords can be printed directly on the staff rather than over it. This may prove helpful for teaching -- the student's progress across the staff is interrupted by the chord, making overlooked chord changes less frequent. Gnometab lacks some features peculiar to "rock" guitar, most especially a method for creating complex bends or for notating wild whammy-bar pyrotechnics.... Please feel free to add these features and send me a patch!
• Gnometab is released under the GNU General Public License.

Screenshots

• A screenshot of Gnometab with chords above the staff is here.
• A screenshot with chords inline is here.
• And here is a shot with the new rhythm dialog.

Requirements

• Gnometab requires GNOME2, an open-source desktop environment for UNIX-like systems. Gnometab is written for the GNOME2 libraries, and depends on libgnomeprint for printing.
• Gnometab uses an xml file format, and requires libxml2. These should be included with any GNOME2 installation. A sample file for use with Gnometab can be found here.
• Binary RPM packages are available for x86 RedHat 8.0. To build source packages, you will need a C compiler and all associated GNOME2 "devel" packages. Feel free to contribute binary packages for your platform by contacting me at the address below.

Download

• See the README.

Version 0.7.4
Note that version 0.7.4 requires libgnomeprint-2.2; this library is included in GNOME-2.2. This is the ONLY difference between versions 0.7.3 and 0.7.4.

• Source tarball for Gnometab version 0.7.4.
  MD5 Sum: 63cf945a16a4dbf2bc240dff99354114
• Redhat 9 RPM for Gnometab version 0.7.4 (contributed by Chris Lea).
  MD5 Sum: 41354f65f294993bb7657b649699dad1
• Source RPM for Gnometab version 0.7.4 (contributed by Chris Lea).
  MD5 Sum: 7b5c0a05ff9bc4abae7ec4daea2c375a
• Redhat 9 and Redhat 8.0 RPM packages are also available in Dag Wieers' repository here.
  These RPMs can be installed via apt as explained here.
  
  Thanks to Chris and Dag for contributing packages!
  
  Version 0.7.3
  
• Source tarball for Gnometab version 0.7.3.
  MD5 Sum: fc4e11094068ec6424960ca333ae5078
• Redhat 8.0 RPM for Gnometab version 0.7.3.
  MD5 Sum: ae3909e76c818ab6b13dcf0292f4cc38
• Source RPM for Gnometab version 0.7.3.
  MD5 Sum: 2d727c7ba5b56855ed81d91933e5e71b
• Gnometab 0.7.3 RPM packages are signed with my public key, 89753C77, available here.

Debian Packages

• Gnometab is available in Debian unstable ("sid"). You can get it by
  
  apt-get install gnometab
  
  or here.
  
  Users of testing ("sarge") or stable ("woody") should only use this precompiled package if they know what they are doing.
  
  Thanks to Joachim Breitner for his maintenance of the Debian package!



• Please feel free to contact me with feedback and suggestions. Thanks for trying Gnometab!

• Contents copyright 2001, Solution Management, Incorporated.