I'm with Phil on this one. If I'm in a word processor (WordPerfect, MS Word, even old WordStar, take your pick) and I do a merge document, the program combines the text with the fields from the database and automatically formats it, does all its word wrapping, etc. and the output is just right with no need for touching things up. That should not be any more involved than a part extraction in Finale. I've spent many hours fixing extracted parts myself. Even with all the "avoid collision" boxes checked I end up with collisions all over the place, especially with accidentals. It even happens in the original document! (So I fix them in the original score, extract the parts, and then have to do it all over again in the extracted parts.) And often I can fix them up with the Speedy Entry tool by clicking on an offending note and adjusting it slightly one way or the other without having to change the width of the measure. There was room there for the material, but Finale didn't make the adjustment like Phil and I (and probably many others) think it should. After all, what's the point of having the "avoid collision" options if they aren't going to work when you activate them?! And using the Mass Mover (now MassEdit) tool to change the spacing doesn't help any either. It doesn't seem to make any difference whether you choose note spacing, beat spacing, or time signature spacing. There are collisions that just won't go away unless they're dealt with individually and manually. I also get similar problems with first and second endings, particularly in parts that have just rests in one, the other, or both. And in that case (with a multi-measure rest in the ending, or at least at the end of it), you can't access the right-end repeat handles without going into scroll view. And then sometimes I get it fixed in scroll view but when I switch back to page view, the changes go away and I have to try again. It can get very frustrating doing individual manual fixes that should have been made automatically.
And now for an entirely different question: is there a way to get the various voices in a score to play back only on the left side or right side? I.e., if I'm working on a string quartet and want the first violin and viola to play back on the left while the cello and the second violin play back on the right to achieve a stereo effect. Maybe better yet, have the first violin play back totally on the left, the viola 2/3 on the left and 1/3 on the right, the cello 1/3 on the left and 2/3 on the right, and the second violin totally on the right which would produce a sound very similar to what one would receive while standing in the midst of or directly in front of a quartet in which the players are, left to right, first violin, viola, cello, and second violin. I haven't been able to find a way to do that. (And I'm using speakers plugged into the sound card, not a MIDI instrument.) Thanks. Norm ----- Original Message ----- From: "David W. Fenton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 17:54:52 -0500 Subject: Re: [Finale] Re: Paul McCartney (Finale is "easy"?) Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 13 Nov 2002 at 9:41, Phil Shaw wrote: > I contrast this Finale experience with any > word processor: after I enter a text document, > I can simply "Print", and get an acceptable > copy. If I do the same with Finale, without > the final tweaking and editing, I get a > wretched unreadable copy, full of collisions > and freaky spacing. Well, I agree with your overall point, but is simply not even close to fair to compare a Finale document to a word processing document. There are several orders of magnitude of differences in complexity between the two. Indeed, even a PageMaker file is several orders of magnitude simpler. While I would agree that extracting parts really ought to be substantially easier, and layout and spacing easier, too, comparing Finale to trivial applications is just not helpful. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
