On Mar 3, 2005, at 6:40 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
Do you currently have to define default vertical spacing for systems on a per-system basis? No, of course not -- there are default settings already. The default setting for the system I describe would be that the default vertical spacing for a measure would be equal to the system margins. If you reduced the vertical spacing for all the measures in a system, the system margins could then automatically contract. If you increased the vertical spacing for a selected block of measures, it would cause the system margins to expand to accommodate it.
I don't understand this paragraph. The default vertical spacing for any system is the global positions set up in scroll view (ie, what I think of as the "unoptimized' spacing). I have no idea what you mean by "system margins". Maybe I do things differently, or maybe this is another semantic thing.
Say you had only one measure in a system that needed expanded vertical space. In the current situation, you adjust the vertical spacing for the system to accommodate the measure that is the extreme case. If that measure gets moved to another system, you have to start over, changing two systems. If, on the other hand, you set the vertical spacing for that one measure, if it got moved to another system, the target system would then expand accordingly, and the original system would contract back to the defaults (or to the next smallest setting in the measures in that system).
OK, that makes sense. I'm in the habit of doing all my layout adjustments only after layout is set, so the change wouldn't really benefit me much, but I can see how it would be a great help to people who make large changes to a piece after layout has already been set.
I doubt that Finale would want to have that AND the ability to adjust by system. If so, and the change is made, then whenever I have page-specific adjustments I'd have to do them indirectly by simply selecting all the measures in that system and adjusting accordingly. But that would be all right. At that point, I won't be changing the layout anyway, so it all comes out the same.
You have a very strange definition of the word. Optimization means REMOVING BLANK SYSTEMS. Read the optimization dialog box -- it says nothing about vertical spacing of staves within systems.
I'm using Fin Mac 2k2. My optimization dialog box says this:
<< Optimizing can remove empty staves from Page View AND/OR make staves in specified systems independently adjustable. >>
In other words, Finale thinks that both functions are part of optimization. In fact, the "AND/OR" is not quite accurate. While it is possible to optimize without removing empty staves, it is not possible to optimize without making staves independently adjustable.
I've quoted verbatim from the dialog box. If your version of Finale says something different, that could explain our disagreement about the meaning of the term.
I believe this would satisfy both us, yes?
Pretty much. But I still like the idea of vertical spacing travelling with the measure, not being permanently anchored to an absolute system position.
I'd be OK with that. Aside from the matter of what to call it, it looks like you and I are in agreement on this.
I just don't see why it is conceptually any different than what we have now with the way system margins live inside page margins.
I still don't understand what you mean by "system margins".
. . . Then again, I don't trust Finale to do a decent job of horizontal spacing for any music that includes lyrics, either, which is why I'm always tweaking them. . . .
Does it do an OK job for music *without* lyrics? I don't do lyrics all that often, so defaults that got it right on the first try without lyrics would greatly speed up my work.
I've got a lot of little minor complaints, but on the general question of how beat spacing lays out the beat chart, I'm mostly pretty happy. I'll occasionally tweak a measure here and there, but most of the time I'm reasonably satisfied with the default music spacing in all but exceptional cases.
That's not the case with lyrics, where I find that unattractive spacing is the rule rather than the exception. Unless the accompaniment is consistently denser than the syllables, or the entire layout ends up loose, I just assume that I'm going to end up tweaking a whole lot of beat charts.
Mind you, I don't mean this as a criticism of Finale. I think that good spacing of music with lyrics just doesn't lend itself nicely to algorithmic treatment. The TG plug-in makes a good run at it, and it's definitely an improvement over Finale's default, but it still fails to deliver spacing I would consider particularly good.
Why would I *ever* suggest taking away the fine control that Finale has always offered?
I know you well enough to know that you wouldn't want that. But you did say:
I think it's crazy that the optimization information is stored with the absolute system rather than as a global setting that automatically updates the optimization when conditions change to warrant it.
By either definition of optimization, that suggests change from system-by-system control to a single global control, which in turn implies loss of control at the system level. I was just clarifying that some of us prefer not to lose that control -- so that, for instance, you could still make a blank staff appear when you want it, without having to resort to the real-whole-rest kludge.
I'm simply trying to come up with ways that make Finale behave in a more "common sense" fashion. Finale allows the fine control, but has no common sense (defaults are usually wrong), whereas Sibelius has well-chosen common sense defaults, but then restricts to those results with inadequate ability to tweak things that aren't correct. Granted, I much prefer the Finale way, but if we're talking about the kinds of things that make Finale seem obtuse to new users (i.e., the people we need buying Finale so that Makemusic stays in business to supply new versions of Finale for those of who have been using it for 15 years), then I think optimization is one of those things that doesn't really work the way it ought to. Suggesting that it work better by default in no way implies the elimination of the control of non-default behavior.
Thanks for spelling that out again. I agree that in order to keep Finale in business it's important to clean up behavior which seems obtuse to new users. But for me, it only matters so long as we maintain all the fine controls. If Finale just turns into Sibelius where you can't tweak anything, then I don't care if it goes out of business.
I definitely agree that something ought to be done so that a new user doesn't end up in a position where he feels a chunk of music has mysteriously disappeared on him.
mdl
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