On Jun 11, 2007, at 9:27 AM, dc wrote:
Why don't we start a list of 2007's worst bugs? If we are numerous
to agree on these, perhaps we could convince MM to act?
For me,
#1 is the hyphen bug, or rather bugs, because there are several
hyphen bugs (disappearing hyphens and misplaced hyphens, non
wysywigness of the hyphens, etc.), to which I'd add, although MM
probably considers this as a feature, the wrong, or at least
unadjustable placement of the first hyphen after a system break.
I made a quick list in a previous email, but here they are in an
order of how much they bug me and completely explained. There may be
others, but they don't occur to me right now.
Enharmonic "fllip" using the 9 key in Speedy Entry does not stick,
nor does it work consistently. It also messes up several other
operations once you have pressed it more than once, including copying
music, transposing music, and explode music (it causes the top line
to take the LOWEST note of the chord instead of the highest, and
drops the top note completely, as well as spelling that note
differently.)
Chord symbols do not transpose when they are assigned to a staff that
uses Chromatic Transposition. This dates back many versions now.
Shape expressions with imported graphics have handles that are far
offset from where they are supposed to be (down and to the left) and
this amount changes between score and parts, apparently related to
staff height, though not exactly, so you never know where your
expression is going to be placed or if it will stay there.
Any note expression entered with the expression tool will be
displaced if the staff has been reduced with the zoom tool.
Hyphens. Urrgh, I don't want to get into it. Others have explained it
better in any case.
Repeat tool - repeat expressions like DS and Coda will not stay where
you place them, if you put them right of the right barline or left of
the left barline. The amount they move also changes between score and
parts, and may be related to staff height (I didn't bother chasing it
down, because these expressions have been buggy for many versions now
and I long ago switched to staff expressions for these items.)
2-up printing seems to be broken. At least, I can't get it to work
with my HP 5100.
There seem to be problems with the installer on Mac. I can't pin
things down exactly, but some things don't go in the folders they are
supposed to go in (like plugins), and factory libraries won't load
(you get an error message.) Libraries that you save yourself are fine.
Repeat brackets - when they are placed over a first ending that ends
up containing a multimeasure rest in a part, then the horizontal bars
are too long and they are not selectable in Page View.
Staff Styles, when copied in the score, do not appear properly to
linked parts. You have to select Relink Staff Styles to Score while
in the part to fix it.
Un-selecting "Include in measure numbering" causes strange problems
to crop up, like applying Barline styles to two adjacent measures at
once, among others. Once again, I didn't bother tracking it down
exactly, because I just stopped using the feature as hopelessly buggy.
When you select Barline Styles as something to copy, ONLY the barline
style itself is copied. As far as I can tell, none of the options
(like break multimeasure rest) are copied, meaning that you THINK you
have copied a double barline that breaks a rest, but you haven't.
Many plugins don't work on linked parts.
When stems get shortened (in passages with more than one layer in the
same measure) only beamed stems and quarter and half note stems get
shortened. Flagged stems do not.
Adding a new staff with Setup Wizard doesn't give you the same
options as if you created a score from scratch with the Setup Wizard,
for instance it doesn't create a new instrument for playback, it
doesn't add a third and fourth trumpet to the existing group of
trumpets (it creates a new group of trumpets numbering from 1 again)
and other minor annoyances.
When new systems get created (say, you add measures to a piece), they
don't have the same staff height as the previous systems. On linked
parts, there is only one way to alter this, which is Page
Layout>Resize Staff System... (the zoom tool doesn't work.)
Check Document Fonts Against System Fonts hasn't worked on my Mac for
several versions now. This is just one of several annoyances with
fonts that I think is Mac-specific.
Extraneous beat charts seem to get created for no reason, with no
apparent cause. This causes spacing problems, most noticeable in
measures with Slash Notation staff style applied.
The first thing Tech Support says to do if you report any of the
above bugs, is "re-install Finale" which NEVER does anything except
make you lose all your preferences and edited component files. (Ok,
that one isn't a BUG, but it IS annoying!)
Christopher
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