Karen wrote, responding to a question from Owen:
I have both left and right repeat marks created as shape expression that I use for some of the aleatoric music that I work on. Gives me a little more flexibility in moving things around.
prompting Owen to respond:
That sounds interesting......I'm afraid I've never come to terms with the shape expression tool. Both the interface and the implementation seem to be stuck in the late 1980s (along with nonstandard key signatures, my pet gripe). Of course, I'm not criticising anybody who successfully does such things with the tool - I just can't imagine the time it could take to create something such as a repeat mark (identical to the default one). If you know any handy tricks, please share!
To which I would note, the steps I would take in shape designer, to create a shape expression repeat sign
1) Check the font characters for the preferred music font to see if the there happens to be a predefined character for the desired repeat sign. For example, Corel offers a musical symbol font with WordPerfect which contains a left repeat at space 093, and a right repeat at 125; a true-type font named "Sonata-thin", which I obtained from a collection, "1,111 selected fonts", produced by Hemming GMBH of Germany, contains the same characters mapped to the same slots. [The Wordperfect font may be based upon the Hemming one; there is a significant amount of coincidence, but the two fonts are not identical.]
2) If 1) is not suitable, go to options > document settings > barlines, and make note of the thin barline, thick barline, and space between barlines settings.
3) Open the shape designer, by selecting expression, double clicking on the score, and selecting the shape radio button in the expression dialog box.
3) In the shape expression selection dialog box, select "create", and open "shape expression designer dialog" box.
4) In shape expression designer, click "select", to open the shape selection dialog box, and click the create button, to enter the shape designer. Make sure the size is set to 100 %
5) Click the "shapedesigner" menu option, and select show, and select "staff template".
6) Click the "shapedesigner" menu option, select line thickness, select "other", and put in the value for the space between barlines.
7) Select line tool, and place a vertical line on the origin, beginning on the center line of the staff template, extending below the staff.
8) Click shapedesigner menu option, select line thickness, select other, and enter value for the width of the thick barline.
9) Select line tool, and place vertical line on the staff template on the desired side of the line entered in 7 between top and bottom lines of the staff.
10) Click shapedesigner menu option, select line thickness, select other, and enter value for the width of the thin barline.
11) Place this on staff, as in item 9 above.
12) Move line created in 7, to the opposite side of thin bar line.
13) Select font tool, and place in the shape designer box, a small separator dot (ALT-0183 in windows)
14) Adjust point size as needed.
15) Place a second separator dot in a different place.
16) Move the separator dots into place in the staff template, on the opposite side of the line moved in 12, from the thick bar line.
17) delete line created in 7, and moved in 12, by finding the selection tool, and clicking on the line below the staff template to select it, and deleting.
18) Change size to 25 percent, and while using the selection tool, drag-enclose the entire visible area. Inspect for disused items, represented by a handle with no apparent attachment. If any such handles are found, select them and delete them.
19) Change size back to 100 percent, drag enclose the shape, and in the shapedesginer menu, select "group items"
20) Click OK to save shape, and exit shapedesigner.
21) Click select to select shape.
22) In shape designer dialog box, if the box, "allow stretching" is selected, click on the box to deselect it. Click OK
23) Shape is ready to use.
It would take me about a two minutes to create a repeat sign shape expression, and a significant part of this is opening a new document. It is my custom, before building any shape, to open a new document without libraries, create the shape there, and save the shape(s) as a library, which I would then load into the working document. It is faster to do this than to save the library out of the work document, and delete the extraneous material.
ns
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