On 14 Nov 2002 at 22:48, Roving Rowes wrote: > 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.
Stop right there. The fact is, it is many orders of magnitude more complicated than that. Consider if in your merge document, every character from the data source could potentially have a different size (height/width), and that it was not just a stream of characters from a single data stream, but one data stream with a second data stream overlaid, some of the items in that second data stream being related to items in the first data stream. Then multiply that by 5. Then adjust the width of each word according to how the 6 layers of data streams relate to each other. Then intermix it with some objects that are not part of the data streams but that are placed on the pages themselves. Dynamically adjust the formatting of each word, and each paragraph and each page, taking account of all the various interactions between the layers of data streams, all of which potenttially overlap and/or collide. And then you're getting about 1/2 way to the level of complexity of what Finale actually is doing. I don't mean to argue that Coda shouldn't try to make part extraction better. Obviously, they should. But comparing the process to a mail merge is like comparing a wheelbarrow to the space shuttle. -- 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
