Christopher Smith wrote:
On Sep 17, 2005, at 10:03 AM, Andrew Stiller wrote:
Well if that's the tack we're taking, then the elimination of
percussion maps has to go at the top of the list. Just last week I had
a long back-and-forth w. someone at MakeMusic who had the greatest
difficulty even imagining the idea that someone might want to enter
percussion notes on a plain old ordinary staff and have them play back
properly based on instrument names placed in the score as note
expressions or staff names, without the user having to configure a
balky, rebarbative, and entirely counterintuitive database behind the
scenes.
Part of the idea of the percussion staff is that you CAN enter a note,
either through Speedy/Simple Entry or a MIDI file (that presumably is
already playing a sound mapped onto a synth or sampler) and have it
appear on the correct staff line, with the correct note head, and have
it play back correctly. Because there are so many standards out there
for all three of those criteria, they supply a few common ones and leave
the rest up to us.
I agree that the UI could be improved, especially the way type-in boxes
react, but the basic idea is sound, IMHO. (I also don't like the
JazzPerc font, so I have turned that off, losing certain noteheads that
might prove useful, but that is another issue.)
One aspect of the Percussion Map UI that should be changed (and it would
be extremely easy to do so, in my non-programmer's opinion) is that if
you edit anything for a particular note the "Notes To Use" check box for
that note automatically gets checked by the program. Why would anybody
edit it if they weren't going to use it? And if they change their mind,
they can uncheck it.
One other aspect of this is that when you are in the edit dialog (at
least on the windows platform) for a percussion map, the red X that
usually means "close this window" doesn't work. You have to click DONE
to close that window. Why have the red X appear if it doesn't work?
I agree that the whole percussion aspect of Finale needs a good rewrite.
Will we get it? Probably not -- it's not glamorous, it isn't a
marketable bell or whistle, it doesn't make good sales copy.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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