At 01:07 PM 6/9/03 -0500, Richard Huggins wrote: >The exception, of course, is when using the bottom handle that is >available only after optimizing systems, when needing to nudge a particular >staff up or down.
Not a third handle? I always have top & bottom handles. I don't see anything in the manual that tells me another one appears or that they work differently after optimizing; I just tried optimizing a score and the bottom handle's function seems the same. Most of the time I can just click-grab the system itself (not the handle) for little positionings. I use the handles to widen space between systems and deal with the bottom-of-page problem. (On pages with multiple systems, I like every page to have top and bottom staves in the same place from page to page, and work inter-system white space else around that.) >The place to use the upper handles, in my view, is in Scroll View. I use those to set left margins around blocks of text. I never could figure out what its vertical function really was in page layout view. >I don't even think much about systems until I have virtually locked in which >measures I want on which systems. Unlike the official engravers here, I produce the bulk of the scores of my own music and that of a few friends. I have nothing but one default template with one staff one it. Things change from score to score, and they undergo sometimes drastic changes because I compose into Finale using Speedy entry and the alphanumeric keyboard. And because the score is usually being cleaned up at the last second, I'm mostly interested in a kind of gross-level clarity of elements. That means proofing accidentals and constantly respacing every time I find another one that needs to be shown or 'courtesied', and then moving things out of each other's way (such a colliding beams from staff to staff, high & low notes, text blocks, etc., that I mentioned in the last post). In other words, I'm not a very good engraver. I'm interested in the content and only the look insofar as it isn't blatantly ugly. It's that last business of moving systems out of each other's way -- which is usually done in just enough time to print score & parts for rehearsal :) -- that makes me crazy in layout mode. I will agree that Finale layout has come a looooooooong way since I first worked with it (version 2.2 on Windows 3.1), but it still resists my will. "Put it here! Now! And *don't* fall over on the next page! Oh, I did it again! *#&$(#&$(&#(@!!!" >If you have Show Multiple Pages on (in Page View), this is what happens. >It's convenient to compare pages, and such, but yes you only can work on the >leftmost page. You really should turn that off just to save redraw time. My system is fast enough that I don't have redraw issues. But I do wish that, like Pagemaker, you could work on any visible page. (My first calamity in that view was dragging all sorts of elements over to the second visible page, happily placing everything very carefully, and then discovering that all those elements were actually attached off the page of the leftmost page. Ouch.) >I can't agree with the guesswork thing. In my experience, Finale, when used >as it was designed (not to ask it to be something it isn't, although I >understand in spirit what you're saying) works well and layout is not a big >issue. But since Finale was designed with the handles, and because I'm a graphical kinda guy, I like to push things around where they look good to me. The day when Finale gives me a context menu for every item is when I'll send them a case of some nice Vermont microbrew beer. I've always loathed all those icons (except maybe the little truck). Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
