At 03:20 PM 1/4/06 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote: >But I cannot construct a logical path to that destination without >first knowing that the feature is associated with transposition. That >association is not at all obvious to me.
I'm with David on this problem of poorly placed and described features. Finale's help files and manuals are not the answer. You could spend days looking up features that *might* seem to be what you need but turn out not to be what you need -- features you also won't remember when you *do* need them. (Tobias's mouse hover is very helpful in such situations.) Until it was recently mentioned here, I'd been copying to new staves and pasting back in different layers, or re-entering all the notes by hand. The transposition feature needs a rework to make its options instantly obvious and easier to use with a more effective dialog as well. But that's minor. It's not just that one dialog. The swamp of features that, for example, crosses Finale's *own* plugins (which should be features) with third-party plugins (some shipped partly with Finale), the mishmash of mass mover activities, etc., has now turned Finale into more of a usability nightmare than ever. I've been using it since version 2.2 -- that's 12 years, for goodness sakes -- and still can't find dozens of features that I *know* are there somewhere because they're not obvious, they use obscure terms, there's no proper manual or help file cross-referencing, and the interface is a mess. The real issue is not RTFM, help files, printed manuals, or what-have-you. It's that software should *no longer require* anyone to RTFM for everyday use. Sophisticated, well-designed programs as powerful as Finale, and some with almost as long a history, have outgrown this need (I haven't cracked open the manuals for Photoshop, Pagemaker, Sonar, Adobe Audition, and any of my graphics or video editors in months). The more Finale maintains its old GUI, the more confusing and forgettable its features become. Why is D'Arcy, for example, writing supplementary manuals for an undocumented major feature? Why is the PDF manual still indexed like it was 1992? This is all absurd. Finale got a good start when the document options were cleaned up, the cursor-select was established, and the expression tool was consolidated. Then they dropped the usability ball. There's still a *lot* more good rethinking needed for the workflow, and the updating behaviors of Finale's actions need coordination. Actions need to be visible and obvious. (I still believe ownership visibility and front-back arrangement of elements are essential. And last year I designed a completely revised toolbar that mimics programs with successful interfaces ... but the discussion kinda dropped dead here.) (That doesn't even begin to discuss the scandalous measure-dependent data structure!) You don't need to RTFM, you don't need a longer manual, a more exhaustive manual. You need to make the program work so it doesn't need a manual. After taking tutorials (and even without them), every time a user refers to a manual for program questions (vs. notation questions) *must* be considered a failure of programming an effective user interface. (Yes, as Noel suggests, the visual reference card is excellent. Everybody needs a cheat-sheet.) But instead of peripheral new features and manual-hunting, it's time for a complete, uncompromising and ruthless overhaul of Finale's interface that takes advantage of advances in hardware, operating systems, and user behavior. Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
