On 25 Feb 2005 at 14:22, shirling & neueweise wrote: > taking the above comments into consideration, can anyone give me an > example of how their work would be _hindered_ or otherwise adversely > affected if the (current) text tool and expression tool were combined > into one tool (with an efficient interface of course)? ...preferably > the response would reflect experience with, or at least an > understanding of, the improvements to the expression tool in > 2004/2005...
The key to your point is the phrase "with an efficient interface of course." Most of the problems I see that people are pointing out about the differences between text handling in text blocks and in text expressions seem to me to be incomplete implementations of UI and capability in the text editing capabilities of expressions. Combining the two functions into a single tool requires you to describe a property that the end user then has to set to indicate which list the item belongs in. Now, if you're talking about functionality added on top of the existing two user interfaces, I've not got a problem, as you would automatically get the appropriate properties set if you created your text from one tool or the other. But if you had only a single tool for both types, then you'd have to set the type on every item, and that would be a major annoyance to me, as I hardly use any text blocks, ever. Other than the title page and the page headers and footers, it is the very rare score that I have even one additional text block (either page- or measure- attached). So, what you're asking for would get in my way in a big way, while not adding any functionality that I'd ever use. To me, the only justification for combining tools is if there is already overlap between them. In the case of note and measure expressions, the pool of expressions was identical between them and the different tools served only to distinguish how they were placed in the score. That was a case of massive overlap that was removed by combining the tools. Of course, as I said in an earlier message, I still find it rather annoying to *not* have the two tools, though I suspect I'm in a minority on that, precisely because I hardly ever use measure expressions (tempo markings are practically the only time). In regard to text expressions and text blocks, there is (in my experience) absolutely no overlap of a single piece of text between the two functions, so there's really no advantage of combining the tools. But, again, I'll repeat: I *do* see utility in having a new tool that allows management of your pool of text fragments, for the purpose of allowing you to apply formatting and layout to groups of them. Again, I'm not sure there'd be overlap here, as I hardly ever use the same fonts/layouts for expressions as I use for text blocks, but as I said, my use of text blocks is extremely narrow. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
