On 22 Mar 2004 at 11:35, Aaron Sherber wrote:

> At 11:16 AM 03/22/2004, David W. Fenton wrote:
>  >ability to continue, I need to pause. The current setup requires
>  >remembering that I was paused, hitting STOP and only *then* typing
>  in >the number where I want to restart.
> 
> You don't need to remember that you were paused -- you can tell by
> looking at the buttons. Although it would help a little if the Pause
> button were greyed out when you're in Pause mode. I know technically
> you can hit Pause or Play to start playing again, but it's a little
> confusing.

I've never liked that kind of layout. It would make more sense to 
have the PLAY button become the PAUSE button while playing, and vice 
versa, rather than having two independent buttons for that.

I haven't been hitting the PAUSE button to "unpause," as it makes 
little sense to me to do it that way.

>  >Isn't the fact that I've *changed* the number definitive enough to
>  >cancel the pause?
> 
> Well, in theory you shouldn't be able to change this number while
> you're paused. Pressing pause should disable the counter -- although
> in the grand scheme of Finale bugs, this one is rather minor. <g>

It's not what I'd call a bug, just a counterintuitive UI behavior.

And having the thing disabled would drive me crazier than the way it 
actually works. Well, maybe not -- what I'm doing has no effect, and 
one principle of UI design is that you never suggest to the user that 
they can do something that they cannot. The current implementation 
does that, your suggestion would not.

But the ideal for me would be that if you type in a different number, 
it plays back from that number.

Of course, then the question becomes:

Should it restart playback at the entered measure number or should it 
scroll back within the paused playback? My preference would be the 
former, since that's what I want to do each time!

But I can see how it would make some sense to do the latter, as well.

There are lots of places where Finale is better about this kind of 
thing than it used to be, but still needs improvement. Example:

In the MOVE layers dialog. If you choose a layer number from the 
dropdown list, the CHECKBOX for that action should automatically be 
selected. You wouldn't choose a layer number if you didn't intend to 
move the music in that layer.

-- 
David W. Fenton                        http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
David Fenton Associates                http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

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