[cc to Coda] >Am I the only person on Finalelist who has almost NO trouble using >Finale's lyric entry system?
No. I joined this thread because I have a geeky interest in how the data behaves, and because I thought (incorrectly, perhaps...) that I might be able help some others who were having problems with lyrics. In my own personal experience of using Finale's lyric system, I haven't had any problems of the sort we're talking about in about six years. Those of us who have developed habits which avoid the problems never encounter them, but the problems do exist: If you use mass copy to create duplicate assignments to a single lyric, and then edit the new copies using type-in-score, it will alter the corresponding lyrics in the original passage. This is a real problem. If you delete an unneeded syllable from the Edit Lyrics box, it will cause all assignments of syllables that follow to be shifted to the previous syllable. Likewise, if you insert lyrics in the Edit Lyrics box, it will cause all assignments of syllables that follow to be shifted to the following syllable. This is a real problem. If you delete a note with a lyric attached, that syllable will remain in the Edit Lyric box. If you then insert a new note in the same place and retype the syllable, you will have duplicate syllables in the Edit Lyric box. If this syllable has a hyphen attached, that hyphen will display incorrectly. This is a real problem. If you use have a certain multisyllable word which appears more than once in your text stream, and you use click assignment to assign one syllable from one place in the stream and the next syllable from another, it will result in the hyphen appearing incorrectly in the score. This one might be attributed to sloppy input by the user, but it might occur as a result of a roundabout editing procedure, and when it does it will be very hard to diagnose the problem. This is a problem. All of these are specific circumstances, so it's no surprise that many users have developed habits -- whether intentionally or by accident -- whereby they never encounter them. On the other hand, all but the last one are perfectly reasonable actions, which an unwary user could be expected to make. The suggestions I made in an earlier post address these problems. In addition to them, a comment by David about parent and child items suggests that if one deletes a syllable from the Edit Lyrics box, the program ought to check if that syllable is assigned anywhere and issue a warning if it is (sort of like currently happens if you delete an expression from the expression list). That would probably be a good safeguard as well. -- Like you, Linda, I am completely satisfied with the fundamental structure of the Finale lyrics system, and that's how I found myself in the awkward position of defending it against people like David who obviously have had very serious problems on account of some of its specific flaws. <*** begin feature request ***> I do have several complaints about many of the details of the lyric system. (Comments in brackets indicate the relative importance of such a feature to me.) - I wish the word extensions could be smart attached to a note (or beat chart position) and stay attached even as the music spacing changes. (There should also be an option where I can set the horizontal offset to the beat, in case you and I have a different idea of what makes the line in correct alignment with the notehead.) [very important] - I wish that both hyphens and word extensions continued properly across a system break, so that I don't have to rely on clumsy opt-space kludges. [very important, but currently kludgeable] - I wish that half-point type sizes were available. I used to use 10.5 pt type for lyrics on my main template (achieved as 14-pt type with 75% page reduction). Later, I encountered problems attaching lyrics to notes which were reduced-size (for cadenzas) and thus I was forced to use Fixed Size. That meant abandoning the 10.5 pt size for certain documents, as well as any others which needed to match the over all style. Since then I've experimented with styles using 10pt and 11pt, but I find I really do prefer 10.5, so I wish it were available. [moderately important] - I wish that I could set the distance threshold at which a hyphen will appear between two syllables. In my judgment the current setting is too small. [important aesthetically, no effect on efficiency of work, since my current practice is to just live with it] - I wish there were an option for "smart quotes" when typing lyrics, so that I don't have to go to a two-hand keystroke everytime I need an apostrophe. (Yes, I realize there are various key definition macros which might be employed, but I wish it could be right there in Finale.) [very convenient, but not essential] - I wish that I could define which characters are treated as a "hyphen" in terms of syllable separation, either globally in some sort of table or individually with some sort of escape-character mechanism. This would solve the very significant problem of the non-existence of an acceptable non-breaking hyphen on the Mac, as well as minor problems like occasional use of an equals character as a hyphen, or use of a non-standard font which maps a letter to the hyphen position. [the non-breaking hyphen for Mac is very important; the rest is important only on rare occasions] - It would be handy if "all-at-once" click-assignment were enhanced so that it looks for a slur on the notes. If it finds one, it could assume a melisma and skip ahead accordingly. There should be an option to turn this behavior on or off. [not essential, but could be a big time-saver] - I wish that tracking were available in lyric text, so that I could do occasional spot kerning. [moderately important aesthetically, no effect on productivity] - I wish that there were an elision character sized to match an ordinary type font (or lacking that some sort of code I could enter which will be converted to the EngraverFontSet "I" at some other level), so that my line spacing isn't knocked completely out of whack in the Edit Lyrics window any time I use an elision. [would eliminate a major annoyance, but no real effect on functionality] - I wish that various line style options were available to the word extension line, including the ability to repeat a certain character, such as the repeated period used for word extensions in old Ricordi scores. [low priority, but virtually impossible to kludge] - I wish that I could set the baseline position for syllabic hyphens, so that I could imitate the lowered-hyphen style of old Ricordi scores. [would be nice, but not essential] - I wish that there were a mechanism that draws a thin curve, looking sort of like a downward slur, from the lower right corner of one syllable to the lower left corner of the following syllable, for use in special pedagogic choral scores to indicate consonant liaisons and/or non-breaths. This would be best if implemented as new type of syllable separator, similar to how hyphens work. Options would exist to set thickness, endpoint offsets, etc. [useful on rare occasions, currently kludgeable with difficulty] <*** end feature request ***> There are probably others I'm not thinking of right now. I haven't addressed spacing at all. My personal opinion is that optimal spacing of vocal music is too context-driven to be perfect with a spacing algorithm, so I accept the need to tweak spacing and nudge syllables. Still, there's plenty that the program might do to make it possible to get better spacing by default and reduce the need to tweak. That's a whole other discussion, for another day. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
