January 2025 - 0.0.5 - Custom Shapes, Mature Installation and Quality of Life Improvements

Try it out - Install 0.0.5

New Features

Custom Shapes

• Shapes are now supported
  • Create a line, curve, or double curve shape
  • This shape can be edited and chained together
• From 0.0.5a shapes can now be deleted and they are less buggy when adding/deleting segments
• Shapes can be copied to the next and previous page for show continuity

Temporary Indoor Support

• Indoor fields are now supported in both 6 to 5 and 8 to 5 (ish) steps. In feet:
  • 40x60
  • 50x70
  • 50x80
  • 50x90

NOTE - These fields are temporary solutions. A future update will include a tool to create your own custom grid. A 6 to 5 step is 30 inches in all of these cases, but an 8 to 5 is a bit more complicated to keep the grid divisible by 4.

Lengths of 40’, 60’, and 90’ have an 8 to 5 step of 22.5”. These are the conversions for the other lengths:

• 50’ 8 to 5 = 21.429”
• 70’ 8 to 5 = 23.333”
• 80’ 8 to 5 = 21.818”

Old file compatibility

• You can use files from older versions of the app and they will be converted to the current version
  • You cannot currently use a file from a newer version of OpenMarch on an older version

Quality of life

• Pages can now be turned into subsets and vice versa
• Timeline progress so it’s more obvious what page you’re on/going to
  • Some additional styling was applied to make the measures not wrap in a weird way
• Field properties editor is now a modal
• Step sizes are now visible when marcher(s) are selected
• .mxl files are now supported
  • Nothing else has been changed about music
• Swap marcher coordinates when two are selected
  • Works with marchers that are assigned to a shape as well
• Marcher coordinates for the next page can be copied to the current page
  • You could already do this with the previous page

Bug Fixes

• PDF exporting now works
  • Only for individual coordinate sheets
  • Use your system’s print dialogue for quarter-page sheets
• Changing the counts of a subset no longer turns it into a page
• Marchers being deselected is now reflective in the canvas
• Shapes from 0.0.5a
  • No longer trigger multiple update events when selecting them, messing with undo history
  • Shape editor is now on the correct page at all times
  • Doesn’t allow you to add a marcher to multiple shapes on the same page

Dev

• Many pre-commit hooks and status checks to ensure code quality (thanks Ben)
  • Spellcheck, testing and linting
• Building, signing, notarizing and publishing the app is now automated

Plans for next month

My two highest priorities are:

• Redesigning the music system for aligning sound and measures
• Creating custom fields/grids for ensembles with any need

I’m going to tackle the latter first because it’s a bit easier and the task is well-defined. In order to get the music to work in a way that makes sense, we need to fundamentally change how we handle tempo and time.

Join the community discord to be part the discussion. Remember, you can always check the GitHub project to see what current issues are in the queue.