Finale also draws the music a system at a time. If you attach the opaque expression to a measure in a system in the middle of the page, then drag the expression to a system higher up, it will mask anything on the system, since it is drawn after it. If you drag it to a system lower down, it will be drawn "underneath" everything on that system, so it won't look opaque (you may need to force a screen redraw to see these effects).
You should find some more information in the user manual: I'm not sure if there were any changes between 2000 and 2003 here, but look for "Masks" or "White-out" in the index.
Michael Cook
At 20:06 +0000 19/01/2003, Patsy Moore wrote:
I wrote earlier: >I've just opened Finale and read the stuff about measure-attachedslurs, which I didn't know existed, but which turn out to be a form of shape expression. I created a measure-attached slur and tried to superimpose a measure-attached text expression over it. As soon as I re-drew the screen the slur showed through the nominally opaque background again. When I tried superimposing it on the staff instead>the staff lines were masked but the notes showed through.Michael Cook (and others?) wrote that there was also the possibility of creating measure-attached slurs in the smart shape menu, so I've been messing about with various combinations of slur and expression. The existing text expression in the file, to which I had added the opaque background, still showed the slur, but didn't show the staff lines when I put it over the staff. Now I've moved it again and it shows everything, just as if "opaque" wasn't ticked. Depending on where it is on the screen the whole expression sometimes disappears. I then used exactly the same text expression, adding the opaque background immediately, and it masks the slur and staff lines but doesn't mask notes. I created a third one (a pause sign in a large enclosure) which masks all staff lines and some but not all notes. I'm currently using FinWin 2000c but it's possible the file in question was generated from something in an earlier version, as I tend to use old files of a similar type as templates.
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