At 03:58 PM 9/18/02 -0800, Mark D. Lew wrote: >If it seems like I'm defensive of the system, it's because I'm a little >miffed to see a person who, by his own admission, a week ago had no idea >how lyrics work, and by the evidence of his posts still doesn't really >understand it, nevertheless has the audacity to come along and tell us how >the program ought to work.
I'm gonna defend David on this one, because although I've used Finale for nearly 11 years, I despise using lyrics and find the whole system distasteful and regressive. When lyrics are not considered simple straight text as the default state, but rather some sort of 'objects', then you're in geek mode. I think that's just not acceptable behavior, and that anyone has adapted to it is only a statement of their flexibility, not Finale's inherently nonsensical implementation. In other words, David's freshes view is very likely the one to return to in order to re-evaluate how it should be done for the next update. Lyrics are not notes or expressions. To treat them as such (and Finale is not alone in this; Graphire does it as well) is programmer mentality, something that should gradually vanish from all software that is not about itself. Lyrics should be more like text and less like symlinks, even if those features can be enabled. I have avoided the whole lyrics nonsense by taking advantage of my typing speed and entering everything always separately, no matter how many times the same words are used. That's the only reliable way to be sure that what you see is what you get. In fact -- because the software is so abysmally poor at indicating ownership -- I try to avoid most of Finale's "invisible" features like note mirrors and lyrics clones. I'm still waiting for the day when rubber band connections are shown for all expressions, and lyrics have identifying shadows when they are copies/clones/mirrors -- along with a way to detach such connections easily from their origins and reconnect them, make them independent, or simply 'float' them as needed. But that's a whole 'nother discussion. It's just that lyrics nightmares remind me of how much psychological energy and time I've invested in this program -- probably more than it took me to learn notation in the first place! Dennis ======================================================== Malted/Media http://maltedmedia.com/ Equestrian Music http://equestrianmusic.com/ ======================================================== Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar http://kalvos.org/ NonPop International Network http://nonpopradio.com/ Ought-One Festival http://ought-one.com/ ZipThree Festival http://zipthree.com/ Erzsebet The Vampire Opera http://bathory.org/ ======================================================== Accessibility Reports http://orbitaccess.com/ The Transitive Empire http://maltedmedia.com/empire/ ======================================================== My Resume http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/bathres.html My Music on MP3.com http://www.mp3.com/bathory/ My Downloadable Scores http://maltedmedia.com/scores/ Buy "Detritus of Mating" http://www.cdbaby.com/bathory/ ======================================================== The Middle-Aged Hiker http://maltedmedia.com/books/mah/ ======================================================== _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
