On 22 Sep 2002 at 15:27, Mark D. Lew wrote: > At 4:11 PM 09/22/02, David W. Fenton wrote: > > >[...] a large part of my dismay came from your recommendation, > >Mark, that I clear all lyrics and start over. That Draconian solution > >was not warranted at all, and you would be better not to offer it so > >soon in such a troubleshooting process. My hysteria would have been > >greatly lessened had you held your tongue a little while! > > Yes, I realized that a while back, and I regret having said what I said.
Well, since I posted that to the list, I've had more hair-raising experiences trying to clean up after the original mess. I had a score that printed out correctly, but I made the mistake of looking at the source text in EDIT LYRICS and saw a lot of excess hyphens, many of them at the *beginning* of syllables. So I was deleting a few and seeing what happened. The first few seemed OK (redundant hyphens should have no effect, right?), so I did some more. Well, everything got hosed again. I finally discovered that using TYPE IN SCORE, when you delete a syllable that was input in TYPE IN SCORE with a typed hyphen, the letters are deleted but the trailing hyphen sometimes? always? occasionally? gets attached to the next syllable. These are the hyphens, I believe, that were causing the problem. So, the difficulty here is all in the UI of TYPE IN SCORE. > Before this discussion I hadn't realized that so many other users are > accustomed to entering lyrics in a way so completely different from mine. Well, Eve's apple, in this case, seems to me to be looking at EDIT LYRICS. Had I not done so, I might never have had any real problems. > You've mentioned that your repairs included using Shift Lyrics to move > syllables one at a time and that you had to apply that to roughly 75% of > the lyrics on a particular staff. The way I operate, individual application > of Shift Lyrics to 75% of the syllables in a verse is already more work > than the entire effort to repaste the text fresh into the Edit Lyrics > window and then reassign them all at once with the multi-click-assignment. But I feel *very* uncomfortable with click assigning the lyrics. One problem is the size of the dialog and the fact that it is tough to tell where you are in repetitive text. But I discovered another problem trying it out today -- the score doesn't automatically update properly, even when you check off the checkbox for that. So, I'd be assigning lyrics, but couldn't see the result onscreen. Because of this, I only did about 5 measures of it, as I just cannot get comfortable with flying blind in something that is so incredibly prone to problems. > Also, I hadn't really absorbed the significance of your having all the > syllables entered in a single verse. If your corruption is in a single > verse, then you just clear out that verse and leave the others alone. (That > is, after all, part of the reason I like to keep the verses separate in the > first place.) As I've said repeatedly, Mozart's Requiem DOES NOT HAVE MULTIPLE VERSES. Yes, I understand the wisdom of your advice to (mis-)use the functionality called "verses" as provided by Coda in order to keep your text organized. But the piece I'm inputting HAS BUT ONE VERSE, so there is absolutely *nothing* intuitive or obvious about putting the lyrics for the separate staves into separate verses. I'm just lucky that the staff that I screwed up, the soprano, was also the last staff to enter at the beginning, because this meant that the lyrics *before* the soprano in EDIT LYRICS were entirely unaffected by the problems that developed in the soprano lyrics. I feel extraordinarly lucky there. If the soprano lyrics had been stored where they should be as far as *I'm* concerned, the whole set of lyrics for all four parts would have been hosed, and it would have been necessary to start over. > For me, to "clear all the lyrics and start over" is a relatively minor fix, > but I see now that that's a consequence of my click-assignment method. . . I simply cannot see how anyone could possibly type in the lyrics for a piece with as much repetition as in the Requiem, and not lose track of where you are in the repetitions. > . . . I > actually still do clear and reassign entire lyrics occasionally. I no > longer encounter perplexing data munges like what you describe, but I might > have a situation where I make a major revision to layout, and it's easier > to clear the lyrics and reassign them than to move them around to match. Or > sometimes I might enter some stray lyrics in an irregular order in the > course of developing a piece, and later in the process I'll go back and > clear them out and re-enter. Well, I'm not about to start using click assignment, because the UI is too scary for me to become comfortable with it. I do know that I should never try deleting lyrics with TYPE IN SCORE if hyphens are involved, because that leads to excess hyphens in the source text stream. Other than that, I can work around it. > This sort of thing generally doesn't arise very often in straight > engraving, where I will usual start out with a clear vision of my goal and > proceed in an orderly fashion, but it might happens from time to time if > I'm composing or arranging. . . . This is straight-out arranging, happening while I do the inputting. Yes, I do the lyrics last, naturally. Actually, I'd think it would be *easier* when you already have a pre- existing text to work from, as you have the repetitions of the text already laid out for you, whereas when you are composing, you don't know beforehand where the text goes. Knowing what I know about lyrics now, should I ever compose a piece with text, I am certain I'll do the text underlay on MS paper before anything goes into the computer. It's obviously *much* too risky to put lyrics in until the point at which everything else is entered, and given that words always drive the musical fabric, during composition, text comes first. That means Finale is utterly useless for that kind of composing, so far as I'm concerned. > . . . For instance, if I'm writing an SATB choral > arrangement I might start out with all voices singing the words > homophonically, but later decide to redo a section so that ATB sing some > pattern of "ooh" and "aah", in which case I'll usually clear out the whole > A T and B lyrics, edit the source texts accordingly, then reassign. I know > that probably sounds crazy to you, but for me (and for Christopher, I > assume) it's very smooth. Finale does not make using lyrics easy. For straight engraving, it is hard enough, requiring quite a bit of planning. But for composing, well, I'm sorry, but it's completely unacceptable. > As I mentioned before, I've found this whole discussion very informative in > spite of the occasional combativeness. Again, I apologize for any extra > frustration I may have caused you along the way. Well, in the end, had the messed up lyrics been at the beginning of the source text stream, your advice, however Draconian it sounded, would have been correct. Given that the corruption was in text 3/4s of the way into the text stream, my efforts to rescue it were the right way to go. BTW, Coda did answer my email 3 days after I'd already solved the problem, and the email was no help whatsoever. I don't even believe the person who answered it actually read everything I said, as I plainly explained the situation and included a screen shot. The reponse basically said that I hadn't provided enough information for them to provide a solution (which I don't believe is true), and that, yes, the lyrics are screwed up. I hope this is a priority for Coda. It is certainly by far the worst part of Finale I have encountered in a long, long time. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
