On 1 Jun 2010 at 7:42, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > This is a typical hammer-nail problem > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument> and, to return to > the original topic, restricts beaming to time signature rules and > reveals the gap between practice and its representation.
I still think that Finale's beaming rules, however much they are improved over what they were 10 years ago, could use substantial work. Back then, before we had classic 8ths, I argued for beaming maps. Now, that doesn't begin to address the whole range of your understandable objections to Finale's frame-based orientation (i.e., measure-based), but it would at least make it possible do get complete control of beaming according to rules that corresponded to time signatures. Implementing such beaming maps for conventional meters would enable their use for the non-conventional meters as well, and could solve a lot of the problems that present require manual beaming to address. I still don't understand why anybody thinks that anyone wants 8 16ths beamed together in, say, 2/2, and even if you do, surely you'd want secondary beam breaks for groups of 4? That's the kind of thing that bugs me, that they can't even get things right for predictable, conventional notation (to get correct beaming of 16ths in 2/2, you have to use 4/4 as your meter and display 2/2 instead!). These are small things in terms of the bigger picture of what modern notation packages lack from your point of view, but they could so easily be solved in a way that serves the needs of both conventional notation and, oh, I dunno, even the notation of 100 years ago! -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
