Asaph for Mac0.5.5

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.