At 6:02 AM 09/24/02, David H. Bailey wrote: >I think the biggest thing they could do to improve the documentation is >to bring back (either in print or as a PDF file) the old Encyclopedia >volume of the 3-volume documentation they had back with version 3.
Yes, yes! Bring back the old manual! The three-volume arrangement was a beautiful idea, which they never should have abandoned. I would add, however, that all the volumes should return, not just the Encyclopedia. I used the Encyclopedia and the Reference Manual about equally, frequently starting in one and moving to the other. The advantage of the latter was that it dispensed with all the introductory tutorial discussion (vol 1) as well as the discussion of what musical context might call for such an action (vol 2), and focused exclusively on exactly how the various program functions behave (ie, "how to get there" and "what it does"). It had plenty of detailed information which was absent in the encyclopedia and absent from the current manual. With the three-volume set-up, I could choose a book depending on what sort of information I need. The current manual blurs them all together with the result that it doesn't satisfactorily meet any of the goals -- too much information and repetition for a tutorial, too poorly organized for an encyclopedia, and not enough details for a reference manual. I still keep my v3.0 manuals on the shelf. Out of date as they are, they still occasional offer clues which are missing from the current OLD. Incidentally, am I the only one who wishes it were still an actual book? I can't stand reading the manual on the screen. I did, of course, print out the whole manual (minus some chapters on features I don't use) and put the pages in notebooks. Even so, the organization and layout has been compromised by the need to push everything into a tidy Acrobat hierarchy with screen-sized pieces. Also, all the cross-references are lacking page numbers because it's assumed you'll click the link instead. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
