At 4:11 PM 09/22/02, David W. Fenton wrote: >[...] a large part of my dismay came from your recommendation, >Mark, that I clear all lyrics and start over. That Draconian solution >was not warranted at all, and you would be better not to offer it so >soon in such a troubleshooting process. My hysteria would have been >greatly lessened had you held your tongue a little while!
Yes, I realized that a while back, and I regret having said what I said. Before this discussion I hadn't realized that so many other users are accustomed to entering lyrics in a way so completely different from mine. You've mentioned that your repairs included using Shift Lyrics to move syllables one at a time and that you had to apply that to roughly 75% of the lyrics on a particular staff. The way I operate, individual application of Shift Lyrics to 75% of the syllables in a verse is already more work than the entire effort to repaste the text fresh into the Edit Lyrics window and then reassign them all at once with the multi-click-assignment. Also, I hadn't really absorbed the significance of your having all the syllables entered in a single verse. If your corruption is in a single verse, then you just clear out that verse and leave the others alone. (That is, after all, part of the reason I like to keep the verses separate in the first place.) For me, to "clear all the lyrics and start over" is a relatively minor fix, but I see now that that's a consequence of my click-assignment method. I actually still do clear and reassign entire lyrics occasionally. I no longer encounter perplexing data munges like what you describe, but I might have a situation where I make a major revision to layout, and it's easier to clear the lyrics and reassign them than to move them around to match. Or sometimes I might enter some stray lyrics in an irregular order in the course of developing a piece, and later in the process I'll go back and clear them out and re-enter. This sort of thing generally doesn't arise very often in straight engraving, where I will usual start out with a clear vision of my goal and proceed in an orderly fashion, but it might happens from time to time if I'm composing or arranging. For instance, if I'm writing an SATB choral arrangement I might start out with all voices singing the words homophonically, but later decide to redo a section so that ATB sing some pattern of "ooh" and "aah", in which case I'll usually clear out the whole A T and B lyrics, edit the source texts accordingly, then reassign. I know that probably sounds crazy to you, but for me (and for Christopher, I assume) it's very smooth. As I mentioned before, I've found this whole discussion very informative in spite of the occasional combativeness. Again, I apologize for any extra frustration I may have caused you along the way. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
