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User manual

Welcome to the User Manual of Polyphone! To quickly discover what soundfonts are and how to edit them with Polyphone, you can start with tutorials or watch videos on YouTube  (special thanks to Polyphone users for their useful videos). And if you'd like to learn all about the software's features, simply read on.

If you need more help, or if reading these pages puts you off, you may find assistance in the forum.

Home screen

The first screen of Polyphone is basically made of 3 parts:

• a left part, containing a history of open files and directories, as well as shortcuts;
• a right part, dedicated to the soundfont repository;
• a top area, containing tabs and a menu.

Below the tabs, a banner can also display a notification published on the website.

Left part

Opening a soundfont

Several ways for opening a soundfont:

• a click on Open soundfont opens a file browser, the selectable files having the extension .sf2, .sf3, .sfArk, .sfz, .dls or .organ (the different formats are described here). Several files can be selected at once;
• a click on New soundfont opens an empty soundfont, everything having to be done from scratch;
• a click on Open directory opens the soundfont explorer, which scans an entire directory and allows you to open the desired file;
• a double-click on a soundfont from the history reopens it (the selected items can also be opened with Enter and removed from the history with Del or with the trash icon displayed on the right of their path);
• a file or a directory dragged and dropped on the history area, or on the tab bar whatever the current tab, is opened.

When a soundfont is open, a new tab appears with a soundfont editor inside.

Shortcuts

Three buttons are located at the bottom of the left part:

• Documentation: opens a web browser for reading the Polyphone documentation;
• Forum: opens a web browser with the URL of the Polyphone forum;
• Settings: opens the settings of the software in a new tab (also accessible with Ctrl+,).

Right part

Online repository

A click on the button Online repository opens a tab displaying the content of the online soundfont repository.

Daily soundfonts

Every day, 5 random soundfonts are displayed here, to encourage people to discover new soundfonts. Double-clicking on one of them opens a new tab with the corresponding soundfont description. A click on the name of an author or on an attribute of a soundfont opens the online repository with the corresponding filter.

Search

A keyword can be written here to search for specific soundfonts in the online repository, the results being displayed in the dedicated tab.

Top area

Tabs

The tabs provide a quick access between:

• the home screen (first tab — always open),
• the editor of an open soundfont,
• the soundfont explorer (one per opened directory),
• the software settings,
• the online repository,
• a soundfont description from the online repository.

Navigation between tabs can be performed using keyboard shortcuts or the mouse wheel:

• Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+PageDown or Shift+mouse wheel down over the tab bar to go to the next tab, excluding the home screen tab,
• Ctrl+Shift+Tab, Ctrl+PageUp or Shift+mouse wheel up over the tab bar to go to the previous tab, excluding the home screen tab,
• Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End to go to the first and the last tab, excluding the home screen tab,
• Ctrl+W to close the current tab,
• Ctrl+H to go to the home screen.

The shortcut Ctrl+F puts the focus on the search field of the current tab: the search field of the home screen, the search field of the online repository, the search bar of the tree in a soundfont editor or the search field of the soundfont explorer.

Menu

The menu, located in the top right corner, contains general functions and is described here.

Notifications

At startup, Polyphone reads the messages published on the website for its users and displays at most one of them in a banner below the tabs, across the whole width of the home screen. The icon of the banner depends on the type of message:

• an alert, for instance about a known bug in the installed version;
• a new version of Polyphone, only displayed by the versions downloaded from the website (the package of a Linux distribution is updated by the distribution);
• an announcement about the software or the project;
• an appeal for support, displayed after several days of use and never when Polyphone is connected to a Premium account.

The button on the right, if any, opens the corresponding page of the website. The message then disappears for good, as with the cross. The next message is displayed one week later at the earliest, except for an alert, which is displayed immediately.

Only the language of the interface is sent to the website, so that the messages are written in this language when it is available. Notifications can be disabled in the settings.