Well, it's hard for me to argue with Ted Ross (or even you, an
experienced user and engraver) but I am perfectly at ease with
continuous curves on slurs. A perfectly flat line might take on the
aspect of a staff line, second ending bracket, or some sort of
extension line instead of the expected curve of a slur. Understand I am
not usually writing for publication, though, so take my opinion with
all the weight they deserve.
However, have you tried making the inset value for very long slurs a
very small value, like 2%, 1% or even zero? This makes the endpoints
curl more (like dragging the control points to each end of the slur)
and might be more to your liking, though of course you still won't get
the flat section you want in the middle. I have made my slur tips
generally a little blunter than the default so that this shows up
better, as the extremely fine tapers don't read well to my eye.
Christopher
On Mar 16, 2006, at 12:22 AM, Mark D Lew wrote:
On Mar 15, 2006, at 7:52 PM, Christopher Smith wrote:
I agree with this. Slurs are so easy to adjust now that they can be
made to lie quite flat and keep an uncluttered look without much
effort.
Is there a new development I'm unaware of? Last I heard, no matter
how many new tools they give you for slur adjustment it's still by
definition required to be a Bezier curve, yes? If so, then it's
mathematically impossible to get a slur that has the nice rounded
curves you want on the ends with a big long straight part in the
middle, as, say, Ross recommends. Sure, you can flatten it, but then
it's too flat at the endpoints, or if your try to pick them up by the
control points, then the curve is too sharp.
I know that it's impractical for Finale to completely change how slurs
are defined internally, but I would like to see them add an additional
variable which essentially interpolates a straight line of length X to
the midpoint of the slur. It would be the digital equivalent of using
your curve template to draw each half of the slur at a distance and a
straight edge to connect them. Presumably this could be tacked on to
the current definition by adding one new piece of information while
leaving the rest alone, so that all old slurs just have a distance of
zero in the middle (as indeed you would want for most slurs).
mdl
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