On Apr 12, 2006, at 7:49 AM, Greg Scheer wrote:
. Does anyone have recommendations about
fonts (Engraver? Maestro? Word typefaces?), settings or libraries that
would
help me get a better looking score faster?
Maestro is definitely the concensus favorite, but all my publications
use Engraver. I find it beautiful and wonderfully clear. Most
importantly, it is the most legible music font I have ever encountered,
and that does it for me.
Andrew, before I start changing settings, what
are the settings below going to do?
Stems/Shortened Stem Length: set to 72
If you take, say, an E at the bottom of the treble staff and flip it so
the stem points downwards, you will see that it is shorter than it
would be if the note were not flipped. About 7 or 8 years ago there was
a big discussion about this on the list. There was broad agreement that
Finale's default short-stem was too short, but disagreement as to how
long it ought to be--70%? 80%? 100%? 72 was a widely favored solution,
so I tried it, found the results both attractive and effective (the
shortened stem must *look* shorter at a casual glance, but not so short
as to make the music look crushed). At any rate the default 60% is
shorter than anything you'll see in hand-engraved music.
Lines & Curves/PostScript Options: Underline Depth -5, Underline
Thickness 1 (these two defaults may have been corrected in Finale 2K6)
The default settings (at least in Finales 2K-2K4) result in underlines
that overlap the bottoms of the letters, and are hairline thin. In
older versions of Finale, these same default numbers produced a much
more normal looking underline, but Coda (as it then was) forgot to
change the numbers when Finale's PostScript engine was changed around
3.5 or something like that. My proposed settings restore the original
appearance.
Smart Shape menu/Smart Shape Options/Hook Length: 24
Several of the smart shapes contain straight lines w. a hook at the
end. Finale's default hook length is 12 EVPU, wh. is OK, but I prefer
a longer hook as being more legible and unambiguous.
--Andrew
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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