At 3:48 PM 09/23/02, David W. Fenton wrote: >No. I mean the AUTO UPDATE checkbox in the click assignment dialog. I >assume it's intended to update the score in the background, but it is >not reliable. It seems to work for the first syllable of a measure, >and then the lyrics go blank for the rest of the measure, and do not >re-appear until the dialog is closed.
I never use the Auto Update checkbox. I'm still not clear what it is that bothers you about click-assignment without Auto Update, but I don't really need to know. The program should be designed so that you can work with Type-in-Score only and never need to visit Click Assignment or Edit Lyrics. > [...] >That's *your* instinct. There's absolutely nothing intuitive or >obvious about that. Your instinct comes from your long experience of >struggling with lyrics and you've discovered a kludge that makes >things works more reliably. > > [...] Workarounds like mis-using verses for segregating text divisions are >not obvious at all. OK, OK. I heard you the first time, and the second time, and the third time. I hereby stipulate: There is nothing obvious or intuitive about entering different texts into different verses. Can we please drop this point now? >It actually doesn't work that way, unless you are replacing something >in the score with a blank space or another syllable that falls at the >same location in a word. There's no such thing as replacing with a blank space. You cannot have a space in a lyric. >Try this: > >Create a new document, and input 4 quarter notes. > >With TYPE IN SCORE, put in Hal-le-lu-jah as the lyrics > >Now, go to the le syllable, and change it to "le,". > >Then change the "lu" to "Deutsch-" and the "jah" to "land." > >You'll see that you have a leftover hyphen that is actually not >redundant -- it doesn't belong there at all. In edit lyrics, you'll >see that the stray hyphen that used to be attached to the "le" of >hallelujah is now appended to the beginning of "Deutsch," and there >is no way in TYPE IN SCORE to get rid of it. You *must* edit the >lyrics in the EDIT LYRICS window. Although I'm pretty sure there is nothing that is completely impossible to fix from type-in-score, it is possible to get into a situation where the solution is so roundabout or unobvious that Edit Lyrics is the better choice. But in your example, that is not the case. Here it's very easy to change the hyphen in type-in-score mode: Select the syllable "le,". Type the space bar. The hyphen is now gone. That's usually the easiest way to get rid of an unwanted hyphen: Select the syllable preceding the hyphen and type space. Where deletions are involved, you can create a situation where this won't work, and in some cases it's hard to identify exactly what the preceding syllable is, but for ordinary extraneous hyphens, just use the space bar to change the separator to a space. >Since you do click assignment, you'd never see this. True, but since my view of the lyrics is closer to the real data, I'm more likely to see a solution that might not be obvious to a type-in-score user. The idea that a hyphen or a space is part of a syllable, however natural it may seem to you, does not reflect the reality of Finale's lyrics. A hyphen or a space is not part of either syllable; it is the wall between them. Thus, in type-in-score, the creation or deletion of a hyphen or a space is done not in typing any given syllable, but in traveling from one to another. In the example as you state it, the problem would have never even arisen had you used space to travel from "le" to "Deutsch", rather than tab, arrow or the mouse. >This would be avoidable *if* SHIFT LYRICS worked reliably. Shift Lyrics is obviously designed to go with Click Assignment. In its basic function (ie, making adjustments following a long alt-click-assignment) it's quite effective, but I've never found it to be useful for anything else. I'm not at all surprised that it's a weak tool for a Type-in-Score user. Its purpose is to realign an entire string of syllables, not to move them one at a time. I believe that a Type-in-Score user ought to be able to do everything with Type-in-Score alone, without ever needing Click Assignment, Edit Lyrics, or Shift Lyrics. Unfortunately, that's not quite the case now, though it's possible if certain behaviors are avoided. >So, it's unusable for fixing this, and the only way is either to >delete the syllables in TYPE IN SCORE and enter replacements, or to >unassign the lyrics and then re-assign them with click assignment. >I'd rather use TYPE IN SCORE and then fix the hyphens in EDIT LYRICS >than rely on the very shaky UI of the click assignment dialog. You should be able to fix most of these hyphens in Type in Score, using the space bar. >In the example I gave above, the hyphens aren't redundant -- they are >*wrong*. When I say "redundant hyphen", I mean when one or more hyphens appear consecutively in the text stream. If it is a single hyphen (ie, non-redundant), you can delete it in Type in Score, using the space bar. > I see no reason why the hyphen immediately to the right of a >syllable that is deleted in TYPE IN SCORE should not in all cases be >deleted. It makes perfect sense to me -- if the syllable whose ending >is symbolized by the hyphen is gone, the hyphen can serve no function >whatsoever, and should be deleted. I agree with your conclusion, though I reach it differently. I don't think of a hyphen as the end of a syllable, I think of it as a divider between two syllables. A space is also a divider between two syllables. When a syllable is deleted, it brings two dividers together. Currently, Finale leaves them both in place, and this causes various minor problems. One of the two dividers should be deleted. To a certain extent, this requires reading the user's mind, since if the middle syllable is deleted from "doo doo-dah", you really don't know if the desired result is "doo-dah" or "doo dah". But if you have to guess, you'll have a much better average by always deleting the second divider. Thus, I agree: when a syllable is deleted, the hyphen that immediately follows should also be deleted. I would expand that to say that when a syllable is deleted any and all hyphens, spaces and carriage returns which immediately follow it should be deleted. >I have figured out that >I'm not going to use spaces any more to advance the TYPE IN SCORE >cursor, as it puts all those redundant spaces in EDIT LYRICS Can you please explain this statement, or better yet give me an example? I'm unable to create redundant spaces in this way, so I think I must be misunderstanding what you mean. The only way I know to make redundant spaces with Type-in-Score is by deleting. >So, you don't think Coda cares about implementing features that help >those non-engravers get results that don't look bad? I *hope* they >care, since those people are certainly in the majority of Finale >users! How else do you explain the current state of lyrics? Obviously lyrics users aren't a priority. As for non-engravers who don't care about the look, the program can't dictate their style decisions. I know composers who avoid the problem of clumsy music spacing with lyrics by simply setting all their lyrics in 7pt type. That way the words are small enough that they have little effect on the music spacing, and the composer is happy because his music looks pretty. That's fine if you aren't the one trying to direct a chorus where all the singers have their noses buried in the book. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
