On 17 Apr 2002, at 18:06, Johannes Gebauer wrote: > On 17.04.2002 16:59 Uhr, Robert Patterson wrote > > > One element in this thread that puzzles me is the view that plugins are > > somehow > > "not part of" the program. Plugins are no less a part of Finale than they are > > of > > Protools or Photoshop. Some of them are incredibly useful. Indeed, it is only > > because of plugins that my efficiency has risen so much. And why should Coda > > waste resources implementing something that is already well-addressed by a > > plugin? Anyone reluctant to use plugins must love drudgery. > > And, in the specific case of Beams (ie the functionality of Patterson > Beams), I would argue that a plugin beats any other approach, as it allows > for by far the most flexibility and variation of individual beam settings > without becoming in the way of efficient working (building all these > functions into the program as beaming options would almost certainly slow > the whole application down so much it would be unusable on anything but the > fastest machine). > > So thank you for that one, Robert, it really makes Finale unbeatable for > beams.
I don't know if Finale's default beaming algorithm has been given any intelligence recently (I'm still running WinFin97, upgrading soon, though). The old algorithm set the slope based on the first and last note of the beamed group, which is a very, very stupid and brain-dead way to do it. Perhaps that was justified in the old days when CPU power was limited (say, the early 90s), but today, there's no excuse. Has Finale's default beaming improved? Is it still using only the first and last beam of the group for calculating the angle? If so, then I think it really ought to be fixed IN THE PROGRAM ITSELF. A plugin should be required only for exceptional cases, not for every measure of a piece with beams. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
