Part of the problem is that there ISN'T a standardised way of writing chord symbols. For instance, CM7, depending on where you live, could mean major or minor 7, while C+7 could mean dom7(#5) or major 7. While Finale DOES have a couple of more-or-less consistent libraries included in some common systems, there are many missing symbols and some common systems are entirely missing. Band In A Box doesn't have to worry about fonts, kerning, or positioning, so its job is a little easier, but that doesn't excuse Finale for not being able to do this better. After the Shape Designer, chords are the worst aspect of Finale right now.
I would say that creating your own library and loading it into your default document is the only way to go. Delete the ones that are there first, though. BTW, there are problems with certain libraries when loaded into documents with different default music fonts. When you load the Arial library into a Jazz document, all the parentheses change to Jazz, which have different baselines than Arial so they are not only in the wrong font, they are also the wrong vertical position. The same problem occurs when you load a JazzCord library into a Maestro document, in reverse. You can edit them manually, but this is a huge job I would rather not do every time I load a frickin' chord library. I edited them once in my default document, and leave it alone now. Christopher On Sat May 17, at SaturdayMay 17 7:12 AM, Craig Parmerlee wrote: > I use chord symbols on almost every project I do, and Finale drives me > nuts every time. For me, the spacing is the least of my problems > (although I agree spacing is not great). To me, it is a lot more > basic. Every chord I want to enter, Finale doesn't seem to recognize, > and it doesn't seem to follow any common nomenclature system consistently. > > I suppose after all these years, I should have dug into it and crated my > own library, but I haven't. How is it that if you use a program like > Band-in-a-box, it knows what I mean in about 95% of the cases, but > Finale doesn't seem to recognize the most basic suffixes? > > Is this solvable by developing a better library or are the problems > endemic in the software instead? If it is a library issue, maybe a > group can collaborate to develop a library that actually works. > > > On 5/15/2014 5:26 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: >> Once you get a nice library set up (with that tiny little un-resizeable edit >> window where the nudge buttons don't work!) it is pretty painless. I have >> many, many issues with the chord tool, though. >> >> Christopher > > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > > To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: > finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu