At 7:19 PM 09/18/02, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
>When lyrics are not considered simple straight text as the default state,
>but rather some sort of 'objects', then you're in geek mode. I think that's
>just not acceptable behavior, and that anyone has adapted to it is only a
>statement of their flexibility, not Finale's inherently nonsensical
>implementation.
OK, but couldn't the same be said about pretty much any feature? Couldn't
you say, for example, that speedy entry is an awkward and counterintuitive
system and the fact that you and I get good results out of it is evidence
only our our flexibility?
I can't tell if your objection is only to the interface and its unexpected
behavior, or to the basic concept of having lyrics be assignments to a
separate, ordered list of items. If it's the latter you object to, then I
would very much like to know what you have in mind instead.
Many years ago, before I became fully committed to Finale, I did a lot of
work in Lime. Lyrics in Lime worked more or less like you seem to be
describing: any lyric syllable was simply a text item attached to the note.
When you typed one in, it automatically positioned itself a certain
distance under the note; if you entered a second one, it automatically
positioned itself below the first.
This was very simple and intuitive, and certainly much easier to learn than
Finale's system. Nevertheless, before long I found it unsatisfying, because
it couldn't do a lot of the things I could do in Finale's more complicated
system. In those days (about 1993, I'd guess), Finale was even harder to
learn than it is now, but because it was worth the extra effort to learn
because it could do so much more.
Among the things that I can do (and routinely do do) in Finale which are
not possible in a system like Lime's:
- First and foremost, I like having the Edit Lyrics box. I want a place
where I can type (or import) in all my lyric text as text, and then use
click assignment to assign syllables to notes afterward. I find this much
quicker and easier than typing lyrics directly into the score, and I like
having a window in which I can view and edit the text all together rather
than bouncing through the score to read all the syllables individually.
- I want to be able to make font changes at a global level. For example, if
I enter the lyrics in one size and then decide to change to a different
size; I don't want to have to go through the document and select each
syllable individually. Likewise, if I decide that the French text should
be in italic while the English remains non-italic, I want to be able to
change that entire verse all at once, rather than carefully selecting all
the syllables of one line and not the other.
- I want to be able to make adjustments to the baseline on a verse-by-verse
level, again without selecting the syllables individually.
- If I want to shift all syllables in a verse to the left or the right, I
want that shift lyrics function to be there.
All of these functions are intimately linked to the fact that the computer
recognizes the lyric text as a group of syllables that exist in a certain
order, grouped into verses. If you take that away, then either these
functions disappear or they have to be recreated as plug-ins. In the case
of the last one, it would be quite tricky to make it perform properly all
the time, since it has to rely on indirect clues to determine which
syllable is the "next" one in the verse.
Another thing I encountered in Lime was that if I did anything at all
unusual, it tended to get confused about hyphens and word extensions. If
you're proposing a system where each lyric is a separate note-attached
item, how do you assume the hyphens will be made to work? The basic trick,
obviously, is to look and see if there's a syllable on the next note. But
what if you have two verses with different scansion, so that a certain note
has a syllable in verse two but not in verse one? The system needs to know
that the verse-two syllable "doesn't count" so the hyphens can be placed to
go through that note for verse one. Perhaps the program can check to see if
the syllables are at the same vertical position, but then what if this
happens over a system break and I have intentionally adjusted the baseline
for the following system?
These are not just theoretical possibilities that I'm making up. They are
actual problems that I had with lyrics in Lime, and they are one of the
reasons why Lime - in spite of its greater ease of use - was simply not
sufficient for my needs as an engraver of vocal music.
If you're asking for improvements to the user interface or the
documentation, I'm all for that. But if your solution is to rearrange the
("inherently nonsensical") data structure so that I don't have an Edit
Lyrics window any more, then I'm very much opposed. Access to that data is
essential to my work.
>I have avoided the whole lyrics nonsense by taking advantage of my typing
>speed and entering everything always separately, no matter how many times
>the same words are used. That's the only reliable way to be sure that what
>you see is what you get.
I too type every lyric syllable separately. That's a separate issue.
As I said before, it would be no loss to me if each syllable in the list
had one and only one assignment. Curiously, David was the one who objected
to that. For me, the value of the indirection in the system is that the
texts exist with a defined order and grouping which is independent of where
they happen to appear in the score.
mdl
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
