I think some of the postings on this thread show a greatly exaggerated idea of how much time Makemusic have spent on the plugin interface. The notion that they are packing lots of functionality into the plugin interface at the expense of program function is laughable. The plugin interface is essentially unchanged since it was introduced in Finale 97. The few enhancements Makemusic have provided since then are minor (in terms of effort on their part), and we've had to beg, plead, and wheedle to get them. The primary plugin-related effort Makemusic have funded has been enhanced documentation of Finale data structures.
The plugin interface's power lies in its underlying simplicity. Plugins have essentially direct and unfettered access to Finale's data. Finale is a layered program. It has a U.I. that you see and an Enigma engine that does all the work. The U.I. changes the Enigma data just as plugins do, but the Enigma engine is what performs the magic. (Of course, I am simplifying.) The point is, sometimes the Enigma engine implements features before Finale's U.I. does. This has nothing to do with plugins per se, but a plugin can exploit an enigma engine behavior even if it is not implemented in the U.I. A good example of this is in the "Horizontal Offset" attribute of mid-measure clefs. The Enigma engine implemented evpu horizontal offsets for clefs at least as early as Finale 97, but they were not available in the U.I. until Finale 98. Another example is varying fonts and styles for staff names, which were implemented in Enigma possibly as early as Finale 1.0 but not available in the U.I. until Finale 3.0. (In Finale 2.6.3 you could do it with EMEL macros, which were crude precursors of plugins.) Another laughable concept is that Makemusic programmers would all quit and start writing plugins. I can't speak for anyone else, but my motivation for writing them has never been money. I write them because 1) I need them myself and/or 2) sometimes the challenge of doing something cool is too hard to resist. The money I make off them is enough to buy some software upgrades and the occasional toy, but it hardly makes a living. -- Robert Patterson http://www.robertgpatterson.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
