Asaph

Name: Asaph
Rating: 2.625 (5 reviews)

0.5.5

07 December 2004

Christian worship song manager.

Overview

Asaph is a powerful desktop application that assists Christian musicians and worship leaders with managing song databases, publishing songsheets and booklets, and generating presentations for group worship.

What's new in Asaph

Version 0.5.5:

Fixed classloading problem with experimental import plugin that prevented it from working in 0.5.4.
Fixed NullPointerException when pasting multiple lines from an external source.
Windows installer now built using IzPack 3.6.1.
New songs are automatically outfitted with a default chord set.

6 Asaph Reviews

Alpha quality is right. Also note that this is basically an app to sell you music products from a specific vendor. More a product catalog than a tool.

Version 0.4.4

Albabe

05 September 2013

I never realized that "Christian Musicians" were so different than the rest of us Musicians. I always assumed we all Managed "our song databases." I guess it must be the worshiping leaders part that separates the men from the goys...

Version 0.5.5

I have to step in with my 0.02- I use this program weekly in my work. I direct the music program of a 1700 member church, and Asaph does one job and does it well. It is not intended to sell music, it is intended to be a database of your own created music. The ability to generate transposed lyric charts is extremely useful, as well as the ability to export text (to my media guys) and to keep several versions of songs. It is tricky (at first) to understand how to input lyrics and chords, but a trip to the website showed me how to do it. I print my charts to a PDF file all the time and save them with the key in an Asaph Charts folder. The app is slower than a native app, but not so much that it's a hindrance- I'm running a 500mhz G4 here. My work has been made easier with this app.

Version 0.5.5

Has potential but is not useful in it's current state. Went through tutorial and wondered how to actually type in new music. Tutorial states that entering new music is the most complex part. Clicked the link to learn how to do it, and it states that "content is pending;" in other words, there are no instructions on how to enter music. Tried to enter music myself but was not intuitive at all. Again, there is potential; just not yet.

Version 0.5.5

Asaph 0.5.3 has improved the Mac OS X integration. It is capable of using the Mac print capabilities (e.g. preview and print-to-PDF), and also defaults to a more Mac-friendly single-document interface, although you can also set it to use the MDI if you want. Even though this is a Java application, I'm doing most of the development on a Mac, so I'll continue to tweak it for performance and usability on Mac OS X over the next few releases.

Version 0.5.3

Its an OK start (and no its not intended to sell you music). I'd encourage the developer to keep it up, but its got a ways to go. I normally get iritated with the sluggishness of Java Apps & this is no exception. My criticism are 1. That the entire printing process should be scrapped. OS X has great printing features & these are not available to this program. I cant "print" to a PDF file, for example. The Java Printing is just not working. 2. Look at an OS X native app... ANY app. Please try to be somewhat standard with the interface. Theweird windows inside a window, menus attached to windows thing alsone is enough to turn me off. Moving to a document based but standardized GUI would be wise. I recommend apples Human Interface Guidelines as reading material.

Version 0.5.1

1 answer(s)

Daniel Azuma

07 March 2004

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback! Regarding the use of Java, I'm aware it's not ideal, especially from the performance angle. Cross-platform operability was a requirement, though: I expect most users to be running Windows, and I don't have the resources or the know-how to develop a Windows native version (not to mention Linux) in parallel with the Mac version. I'm continually tweaking the performace, however, and I know Apple still has a lot of legroom to improve the performance of Java on the Mac in general, so things should improve over time. Regarding printing, unfortunately, Java's basic printing capabilities are rather primitive, and they don't seem to hook in with the standard Mac OS X dialogs very well. That said, however, I do have plans to improve things in the future, including leveraging an open-source PDF library to provide print-to-PDF capability. Regarding the human interface, you make some good points about the MDI and menus-within-windows being foreign to Mac users. I've spent so much time running Linux that I forget those aren't part of the Mac user experience. I think I can come up with some alternate GUIs for the Mac version. There are also some more minor issues, like button placement, that can be improved.

Version 0.5.1

Alpha quality is right. Also note that this is basically an app to sell you music products from a specific vendor. More a product catalog than a tool.

Version 0.4.4

2 answer(s)

Daniel Azuma

29 January 2004

A quick response from the developer here... Yes, it is alpha quality. But no, it is NOT a catalog or at all intended to sell products from any particular vender. It is an open-source tool, and neither the tool nor myself as the developer have any connection to any music label, publishing company or vendor. I do make mention of two musicians in my documentation. They are simply local musicians that I happen to know, who have merely graciously allowed me to include some of their original songs as sample files, without charging me any royalties.

Version 0.4.4

Anonymous

24 February 2004

Giving a low rating for an alpha release simply because it is an alpha release is bogus!

Version 0.5

Asaph

Overview

What's new in Asaph

6 Asaph Reviews

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