At 9:46 AM 06/06/02, Jari Williamsson wrote: >It is NOT only a document-wide option. Using the contextual menu for the >slur, you can turn Engraver Slurs on/off for each individual slur. >[ ... etc]
I wasn't aware of the contextual menu. I'm glad to know about it; I can see a few things there that could be useful. But as for the issue under discussion, it's not a solution. There's two problems. First, even if it did work, it wouldn't save me any time over what I can already do right now. Second, it doesn't work. Right now, if I want to "lock" an engraver slur in place, I can grab a handle, wiggle it slightly, and it will be locked. All you're telling me is that I can instead control-select it and choose "Engraver slur-off" from the menu. Well, OK, maybe if I want to lock a whole bunch of slurs all at once it saves me a few seconds, but that's about it. For the most part, I'm no better off than I already was tweaking each slur. My whole complaint is that I wish I didn't have to tweak them just to lock them down. Now you're telling me, "you don't have to tweak; you can lock them this other way instead". Big deal. Second, in my brief experimentation with this contextual menu, I find it doesn't really lock the slur properly anyway. Here's what I did. I made several measures of low-high-low. If I draw a slur from low note to low note, three possible results are: a long tall curve (engraver slur with low maximum lift); a short curve that sits way up high far from the low notes (engraver slur with high maximum lift); or a curve that goes from low note to low note drawing through the high note in the middle (non-engraver slur). What I had hoped to do, as a test, is draw an engraver slur with a low maximum lift, then lock it down using your contextual menu, then change my Smart Slur Options to a high maximum lift and see if the slur stays put. But I didn't even get that far, because as soon as I chose "engraver slur-off" from the menu, the slur immediately jumped down and drew through the high note. In other words it didn't lock at all; it just made the slur as if it were drawn non-engraver to begin with. Now admittedly, it's nice to know that option exists -- it's essentially the same thing I get from the nudge bug, which I was afraid I'd lose if I ever got around to installing the patch -- but that's not really the point. The point is that I wish I had an easy and non-laborious way to tell Finale under which rules to draw a slur. Take the three examples I gave above and forget about any other settings for now. What if I could have a metatool for each one? So that if I hold down "1" and draw a slur, it draws it non-engraver style; if I hold down "2" and draw a slur, it draws it engraver with high lift; and if I hold down "3" and draw a slur, it draws it engraver with a low lift. I would LOVE that. And if I could set up even more options with slightly different rules, so much the better. Why does everyone find this so hard to comprehend? I'm actually reasonably happy with the slur situation as it is, so I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. I'm just saying that it could be a lot more efficient in terms of input. Right now I use a lot of gimmicks to tweak everything how I want it. If some sort of metatool-like system existed, I could save a little time. Is there anywhere in Finale where I can tell it globally that I want every slur I draw to be automatically be locked? If I have to lock each and every one after I draw it then it's not worth the bother. But if I could just have them all be that way that's an option I would definitely select. The only way I know to have Finale lock all slurs is to turn Engraver Slurs off entirely, in which case I don't get the benefit of having them drawn well in the first place. I want them to draw well and then stay put. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
