At 01:18 PM 4/2/03 -0600, Thomas Schaller wrote: >But today I discovered what looks like a bug: I have a score where some >parts break correctly and some don't. Can't figure out the reason behind it >- everything is set the same way. >Has anybody else experienced this? Is this a known bug?
I had this problem, and it turned out to be my fault -- unless you consider how dismal Finale's "ownership" features are. You can't tell what expression or marking belongs with what measure or note. In one notorious episode a few years ago, I entered rehearsal letters as I had done for years: by clicking on the barline that identified the division. It wasn't until the rehearsal that I discovered that rehearsal letters do not belong to barlines, but rather belong to measures. Since Finale doesn't have any sort of danger zone where clicking isn't allowed, my rehearsal letters were variously on the measures to the left or right of the barline. What a nightmare! Believe me, this is only obvious once you know how it works. I've used Finale for hundreds of scores since 1993; I don't know what version introduced special part extraction that respected expressions, but it wasn't until that rehearsal that I learned the true ownership of these markings! This ownership problem actually goes for all sorts of expressions and articulations and graphics and even notes. Just try to figure out what part of a score owns some other part of a score when you haven't looked at it in six months or six years. What it comes down to is that Finale doesn't display enough information, especially considering how Byzantine its ownership is (note, measure, staff, page, document, program...). I've asked for ownership rubber bands and info popups for years -- some sort of hover feature, say, available with the pointer tool. Hover over a measure and see everything that's attached to it. Hover over a specific note or articulation or expression and see where it belongs. Hover over cross-staff notes and see them appear ghosted in the correct staff. Hover over a repeat and see info on the measure it points to. Hover over images (such as white blocks) to find out what they are and who owns them. Hover anywhere -- find bits & pieces that have fallen way off the page and out of view (crashing some printer drivers, too). Hover over brackets to see the 'real' groups (I recall Barbara Touburg's loss of a brass section relationship many months ago). Hover over notes to show their accidentals (hidden or not, and tied across barlines, where the score may look good, but demos badly where the accidental hasn't continued across). Make such a feature user-configurable: Only ownership, only popups, or both. Show layers or not, in colors vs. gray. Include a "show all ownership" keystroke. There must be a dozen ways of doing this, but I wish they would do *something* to allow this in a simple viewing method that doesn't require changing tools, clicking, and a whole lotta guessing. Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
