Fronimo 3.0 - U.S. Mirror Site

Below are the downloadable files for Francesco Tribioli's Fronimo 3.0, the latest version of this tablature typesetting software.

In the installation program there is both the demo version, fully functional beside the saving commands, and the registered one. You will find also 3 new dll files which contain the translation in French, German and Italian of the program interface. To use them download the preferred ones in the same directory where Fronimo 3 is installed and chose the language from the Options menu.

Fronimo 2.1 and Fronimo 3 can coexist in the same computer, provided you have upgraded Fronimo 2.1 to the latest available version and you have installed Fronimo 3 in a different directory.

Fronimo 3 can of course read all the files in the old format but cannot export in ft2 format because the internal data organization is changed quite deeply. In particular, the different way the note spacing is managed in Fronimo 3 can lead to some small differences in the look of imported ft2 files when they were originally spaced using modern setting.

Please contact Francesco for details if you are interested in purchasing a license or an upgrade, or to make any comment, suggestion, or bug report.

Also, consider joining the Yahoo Fronimo group/list by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fronimo_editor/.

To download any of the following files, right click on the appropriate file name and choose "Save As" to save the file to a location on your computer.

For beginners, a compact online tutorial is available:

Also, for those who need it:

  • Fronimo 2.1 - last updated Feb., 2005 (no longer being revised)

Version 3.0, build 16, revision 104 (and greater) notes:

The new maintenance release of Fronimo is now available. As for the previous one it is free and the registered version can be installed with your old license code.

The installation program is now split because Yahoo has a file size limit of 5120kb and the new installer was larger of a few kilobytes. So now there is an installer for the demo version and one for the registered version. There are also new language DLLs that must be of the same version of the program to work properly. If you are using a localized version please download the relative DLL too.

This new version contains as always some bug fixes and has a couple of new features. Now it is possible to print a Fronimo file by right clicking on its icon and choosing the option in the popup menu, without any need to open the file. It's possible now to put the titles to the right margin of the page, before the choice was only mid page and left margin. This will allow for instance to have the titles always on the outer (or inner) margin of the page when printing a book. Also added is a new parameter to Print Options page to add some spacing between titles and subtitles because in some cases letters in the title with descedants, like g for instance, clashed with tall letter in the subtitle, like f.

The new features change a bit the file format but the new format is compatible with the old one in the sense that the previous version of Fronimo can read the new files: the new settings are just ignored. So far it seems there are no added new bugs doing these changes but if there are please let Francesco know and he will correct them as soon as possible, as usual.

Version 3.0, build 14, revision 91 (and greater) notes:

This latest revision contains bug fixes and some small new features and tweaks to the interface. To install it any registered user can use his/her own code. The demo works as before. If you are using one of the localized interfaces please download the corresponding DLL too or the program will crash.

The program has been ported from the 3rd part version of the user interface library that Francesco used to the version of it that now comes directly from Microsoft. This will ensure a longer lifetime to the program. It has not been tested thoroughly under Windows 7 but there haven't been any particular problem till now so it should be considered compatible. On the other hand Win98-ME is no more supported because the new MS compiler doesn't support anymore the older versions of Windows.

Also updated is the look of the toolbar and menu icons following the full color standard that is common today. The general look now is Office 2003 like. For the WinXP users there is an option in the View menu to choose the Office XP look, which maybe fits better into the WinXP interface. The new features and tweaks that have been added:

  • a new option in the Sections submenu of the Edit menu to copy a whole section in memory so that it can be pasted in the same or in a new document, keeping all its settings, titles etc.
  • a new box into the Bar Attributes first page (Endings page) to add a positive or negative offset to the number of the current measure. This allows the user to change the way the measures are numbered in the first and second endings, for instance, or to keep track of multimeasure pauses which are often written in a single measure in the separate parts or any other use that one can think for it
  • a new button in the MIDI toolbar to toggle the continuos repeat of the playback.
  • all the function keys now work independently from where the focus is. If the focus is for instance into the Bar Attributes box, you can now use the F5 key to bring up the Section Options box or use the F2 to close the Bar Attributes box etc. without having to click on the edit window to move the focus back there. Also, the Esc key now closes all the boxes.
  • the Set Selection box now defaults to reasonable values.
  • the fingering feature now works in a slight different way, hopefully to make it faster and more usable. When there is a fingering button toggled on, a first click over a note or tablature letter will put the number in a default position. If one needs later to move it, clicking again over the note and holding will allow the user to drag the number around as it was the default till now.
  • shortcuts for entering the continuo numbers are provided; only for people using a regular keyboard, as it uses the kepad which laptops haven't. The keypad keys + and - does the same as the corresponding buttons in the Continuo page of the Note Attributes, the / and * add flat and sharp signs while the . adds a natural sign, the PgUp and PgDn keys move to next and previous note.

There are many bug fixes too but Francesco does not keep track of them and it would be tedious to enumarate them. Of the more important that comes to mind, one is about the instrument selection, another one is about the formatting of the text at the end or before sections, preface etc. but there are many others here and there. To allocate space for the new features Francesco had to define some new values inside the file format. This means that the files written with this version are not readable by the previous ones. Therefore it is suggested that everyone upgrade...