The main menu bar

At the top of the screen are several pull-down menus which are available at all times while Doggiebox is active. This section enumerates the commands listed in all of the menus and describes what they do, and also details the various settings which you can control via Preferences.

Doggiebox menu

The application menu, beside the Apple menu and labeled with the Doggiebox title, contains several program-wide commands.

About Doggiebox... brings up an information window containing some credits and other interesting information, including the version and build number of Doggiebox that you are running.

Preferences... opens the global preferences dialog, which allows you to customize various settings which affect the way Doggiebox behaves. All of the preferences options are discussed on the following page.

Services is a sub-menu of various functions offered by other applications installed on your computer. Doggiebox does not take meaningful advantage of any such services.

Hide Doggiebox hides all windows from the screen and dims the Doggiebox application icon in the dock. Conversely, Hide Others hides all windows that belong to other applications, leaving only Doggiebox windows visible on the screen. Show All reveals windows of all applications which might have been previously hidden.

Quit Doggiebox terminates the application, first prompting you to save any recent changes to open songs or drum kits if necessary.

File menu

The File menu contains commands which pertain to general document-related tasks.

New Song creates a new, empty song document. The new song will contain an initially empty section, using the most recently chosen drum kit file.

New Drum Kit creates a new, empty drum kit file. The new kit will initially contain no drums.

Open... allows you to choose an existing song or drum kit file to open for editing. The Open Recent menu lists the last several recently-used Doggiebox documents for quick access.

Close shuts the current song or drum kit file, prompting you to commit unsaved changes first.

Save commits any unsaved changes in the current song or drum kit file to disk. Save As... first prompts you for a new filename in which to save a copy of the current file.

Revert will discard any recent unsaved changes, and re-loads the last saved version of the current song or drum kit file from disk.

Export Audio... will mix down the song's current selection (or visible sections) to disk as a full audio waveform, suitable for using with other applications such as GarageBand or ProTools. See Exporting as raw audio for a further discussion.

Export MIDI File... will save the current selection (or visible sections) to a standard MIDI file suitable for use with other sequencing software. See Exporting to a MIDI file for a further discussion.

The Edit menu

Edit menu with Shift key pressed

Edit menu

The Edit menu contains commands which pertain to making and tracking changes in the current document.

Undo reverses the most recent destructive editing operation. Redo re-instates the change.

Cut removes the current selection (group of patterns, sections, text, etc.) and places it on the pasteboard. Copy does the same without affecting your document. Paste transfers the current pasteboard contents, if applicable, into the document at the insertion point. Clear removes the selection from the document without altering the pasteboard.

Many types of objects can be manipulated this way in Doggiebox. For example, you can copy and paste bars while working in the pattern editor, either within a song or between different songs; same goes for sections in the section list. You can also copy and paste drums in the drum kit editor. In many cases, you can also use drag and drop to handle items too.

In the pattern editor while editing a song, the semantics of these operations vary slightly depending on whether you have beats or bars selected.

Paste Over (with Shift pressed) allows you to merge drums on the clipboard into the current location.

Select All highlights everything in the current context (e.g. text in a text field, or bars in the pattern editor) for subsequent editing operations. Select None does the opposite.

Insert Bars... lets you add new patterns to a song at the insertion point, first prompting you for information such as tempo and time signature. Holding the Shift key changes this to Insert One Bar, which will immediately create a single pattern without prompting.

Tempo/Time Signature... is a convenient shortcut which reveals the inspector, if not already visible, and highlights the tempo field for typing. Making a change to the tempo marking or time signature will affect the currently-selected patterns.

Insert Beat will increase the time signature of the current bar and create a new, empty beat at the insertion point, shifting the current beats accordingly.

If one or more entire bars are selected, Delete Bar(s) will remove them from the current section. Alternatively, if one or more beats or beat subdivisions are selected, this command will read Delete Beats and function accordingly.

Special Characters... opens a palette to aid in entering foreign, special or other Unicode characters into text fields.

Song menu

The Song menu contains commands which pertain to manipulating things in the current song. (When editing a drum kit file, none of these items are meaningful).

Play begins playback of bars shown in the pattern editor. If one or more are selected, only they are played; otherwise, all bars in the visible sections are played. While playback is in progress, this changes to Stop. This corresponds to the play/stop button in the document window.

Zoom In (Expand) will increase the visual resolution of the selected patterns, revealing finer beat subdivisions on a power-of-two basis (e.g. change from showing an 8th-note to a 16th-note resolution). Zoom Out (Collapse) does the opposite, showing more of the song but at a coarser resolution. These commands are equivalent to the zoom buttons in the inspector.

Add Section creates a new, empty section in the section list. This corresponds to the button atop the section list.

Add to Playlist creates a new entry at the end of the song's playlist. This corresponds to the button atop the playlist.

Change Drum Kit... will allow you to choose a different drum kit file to use with the song; this is equivalent to clicking the button above the drum kit list. It is possible that after choosing the kit, you may be prompted to reconcile drum changes.

Window menu

The Window menu contains commands useful for managning open user interface windows.

Minimize will shrink the front-most document window into the Dock.

Song Inspector will show (or hide, if it is currently showing) the floating inspector utility window.

Bring All to Front moves all Doggiebox windows to the top layer of the screen.

Any open documents are also individually listed; choosing one will bring it to the front.

Help menu

The Help menu contains general reference tools.

Doggiebox Help opens this manual in the Apple Help Viewer for convenient reference.

Doggiebox Web Site jumps to www.doggiebox.com in your preferred web browser, where you can get the latest versions and stay updated on what's new.