At 8:47 AM 09/19/02, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: >Certainly, and there are systems that work that way. But pitches have a >much stronger linkage in all directions than words. And I think that what >you're looking for is perfectly achievable if text still behaved like text, >however the program worked underneath.
Oh, OK. As long as I can still do all the text edit and grouping stuff, I'll be happy. I misunderstood what you were suggesting. >I remember. And I was using a PC (you too?) where all that Mac-like >behavior (and the requirement for Adobe Type Manager) was pretty frustrating. Nope, I've always been on Macs, until just recently when I've become bi-platform. >Let's put aside what work programmers have to do for the moment, and just >look at what you want. And perhaps I wasn't clear -- I type lyrics into >score because I am trying to avoid all the Finale craziness. It isn't that >I wouldn't enjoy the features you request below, it's just that Finale is >not trustworthy if I am required to remember everything I've done in order >to make sure I don't fall into some sort of invisibility trap (same goes >for ownership, and for my regular request for rubber bands to indicate that). In my experience, it's type in score that has all the craziness and invisible traps. That's what got David into trouble, for instance. His problem began when he edited the copied lyrics with type in score, before he ever even looked at the Edit Lyrics box. The problems with the Edit Lyrics box all stem from the fact that when the user adds or subtracts a syllable in that box, Finale does not increment or decrement all the subsequent assignments accordingly, which I think is what the user intends 99% of the time. Obviously the routine to do this already exists, since that's what happens when you insert or delete a syllable via type-in-score. If only it were applied to Edit Lyrics edits as well, I think that would solve all problems not related to type-in-score. That's a simple fix, requiring no changes to the data structure. Why it hasn't been done before now is beyond me. (And for those rare occasions when one really does want to use an Edit Lyrics edit to kludge a lyric shift, there could be an option to turn it off.) >>- 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. > >Or individually. There's no reason to lose these features if text is text >to start with. Highlight the text you want to shift, and move any word, or >some of it, or all of it. I think you may have misunderstood what I mean by "shift" here (I meant change all the assignments to adjacent notes, as in the current Shift Lyrics function), but I can see it would be no problem in what you're describing. >Turn it around. I'm saying that the text is its own entity and the notes, >verses, etc., are assigned to *it*, not the other way around. If the >computer establishes any table of relationships, set of pointers, or >whatever the database-du-jour method is, then to my mind it would retain >the text as any text block within Finale. That would allow anything to be >called a lyric (and I do that with my special barline technique, using >arbitrary barlines as one set of 'lyrics') and have a >note/chord/barline/clef assigned to it -- without ever losing the text as >an integral and integrated component. OK, that all works for me, but how does it solve the existing problems? Let's suppose that the text is now a separate entity and notes are attached to it, as you suggest: - I assume type-in-score still exists. (And if it doesn't, I'm sure many will object.) When you use type-in-score to create a lyric, how does Finale decide where in the text to create the new syllable? Does it add it to the end of the text, or does it insert it in the middle based on where in the music you're placing it? If the latter, the hyphens don't work properly. If the former, you've left the door open to weirdness, and if the user does the "wrong" thing, then the hyphens don't work properly. (For example, I enter four notes and type "hal-le-lu-jah" below them. Then I notice the middle two notes are entered wrong. To fix them, suppose I use Speedy Entry to delete them, and then re-enter two notes in insert mode. Not the only way to do it, of course, but a reasonable possibility. Now I see that I have deleted the "le-lu" syllables, so I re-type them. As a result, I have lost the hyphen between "lu" and "jah". That's because the original "le-lu-" are still in place in the text stream, which now reads "hal-le-lu-le-lu-jah".) - Can you use type-in-score to change the text to which a note is attached? If more than one note is attached to that syllable, would it not change the text in all instances? This is exactly one of the unexpected results many users have complained about. - Since lyrics are not assigned to notes, when you do Mass Copy, do the lyrics not copy at all? Does Finale review the lyric text for assigned notes and copy those assignments (ie, with the same result as currently)? Or does Finale create new lyrics in the underlying text, and if so, where are they placed in the text stream? - If a note is deleted, should any lyric to which it is attached be deleted from the text stream? If no, then that's what results in the extraneous "le-lu" in the example above. If yes, then you're liable to mess up a person who uses click-assignment, if he deletes a passage of music and it destroys a selection of lyrics which he still planned to click-assign elsewhere.) I'm not saying these problems aren't solvable (or at least improvable), I'm just saying that your proposed system is in exactly the same situation as the current system with regard to fixing them. Why make the drastic data structure change if it makes little or no difference in dealing with the existing problems? The fundamental issue here is that if there is an underlying ordered text and type-in-score exists, then any time type-in-score adds a lyric, the user has not in any way specified where it belongs in the text stream. Thus the program has to take its best guess based on the context. Likewise, if type-in-score is used to delete a lyric, the program has to guess whether it should be deleted from the underlying text entirely, or left there but without assignment. Currently, the program does an inadequate job of making these decisions. It could be improved a lot, and I think we all agree that it should, but in some situations it really will depend on reading the user's mind. Since different users will have different intentions, there is no way it can get it "right" 100% of the time. This is a consequence of the fact that, by using type-in-score, the user never specifies where he wants the text to be in the underlying text. >I'm suggesting each note as a lyric-attached item, not the other way >around. The text still has its integrity, and a hyphen is a hyphen. It >continues until it finds the next syllable, so to speak. A word extension >is like italics or color or font, and it continues until the next word (or >the use of some sort of visible control code to end it). Sure, but if the text gets out of order, through type-in-score manipulations, then the hyphens don't work anymore. Like in my "hal-le-lu-jah" example above. (Word extensions are an entirely different matter. I only mentioned them because in Lime they are treated like hyphens. In Finale, it's completely different. The word extensions are in grave need of improvement, too, but that's really separate from any issues of how lyrics are treated.) >The problem goes away if the notes are assigned to the lyrics. The lyrics >are then contiguous, with information applied to them. Again, you're assuming the lyrics stay contiguous as intended. The problem is that they don't. >There are difficulties in re-thinking the programming that goes this deep, >but I don't see a situation that text-as-text doesn't work. With text and >lyrics being the same thing, and only having different types of assignments >to it, you sweep away the artificially difficult situation that Finale set >up years ago. (It would probably mean up-translation of old material to a >new Finale format would result in all sorts of indigestion, though.) I'm still not seeing how this sweeps away the difficulties. If I'm missing something, please enlighten me. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
