This is a copy of a note of complaint that I sent off to the
MakeMusic techsupport. Feel free to amplify, add too, and make more
noise about any and all bugs you have bothering you. Most of them are
bugs from 2007 that I previously complained about, which is why some
of them I have noted as fixed.
If there is something here that is just a ID ten-tee problem ( ID10T
in other words) please let me know, too.
Thanks
Christopher
I have just received my copy of Finale 2008 and checked it out, and I
can't adequately express my disappointment that several HUGE bugs
have not been so much as addressed in this upgrade. These are big,
hairy monster bugs from 2007 that hit almost everyone I know who
works with Finale, and it is unconscionable that they haven't been
fixed.
1. Enharmonic "flip" using the 9 key in Speedy Entry does not stick,
nor does it work consistently. It also messes up several other
operations once you have pressed it more than once, including copying
music, transposing music, and explode music (it causes the top line
to take the LOWEST note of the chord instead of the highest, and
drops the top note completely, as well as spelling that note
differently.)
Not only has this not been addressed, but an extra screwup has been
added in 2008 that I have never seen before; ALL THREE top staves
take on the note of the 4th staff sometimes, rather than just the top
staff. This is a GIANT bug, dwarfing all others in my work. Please
don't tell me to switch to Simple, as it would halve my productivity.
The tool is SUPPOSED to work properly.
2. Chord symbols do not transpose when they are assigned to a staff
that uses Chromatic Transposition. This dates back many versions now.
I know the workaround, but it is a mighty pain, especially for
students who might not be very familiar with the ins and outs of the
program.
'Nuff said. With the volume of complaints you must get about this, I
am surprised that you haven't addressed it.
3. Shape expressions with imported graphics have handles that are far
offset from where they are supposed to be (down and to the left) and
this amount changes between score and parts, apparently related to
staff height, though not exactly, so you never know where your
expression is going to be placed or if it will stay there.
Still there. This makes shape expressions essentially unusable.
4. Any note expression entered with the expression tool will be
displaced if the staff has been reduced with the zoom tool.
This one is fixed! At least, the tests I ran didn't reveal it.
5. Hyphens in lyrics disappear when there is still plenty of room for
them. They also don't appear correctly positioned at system breaks.
This, plus the fact that some hyphens that appear onscreen do not
print, makes the lyric tool pretty much unusable for professional
applications. Adding all hyphens in as note expressions is decidedly
counter-productive.
6. Repeat tool - repeat expressions like DS and Coda will not stay
where you place them, if you put them right of the right barline or
left of the left barline. The amount they move also changes between
score and parts, and may be related to staff height (I didn't bother
chasing it down, because these expressions' placements have been
buggy for many versions now and I long ago switched to staff
expressions for these items.)
This seems to be fixed as well, as the tests I ran did not expose any
movement. Congratulations.
7. 2-up printing seems to be broken. At least, I can't get it to work
with my HP 5100.
8. There seem to be problems with the installer on Mac. I can't pin
things down exactly, but some things don't go in the folders they are
supposed to go in (like plugins), and factory libraries won't load
(you get an error message.) Libraries that you save yourself are
fine. I have been in contact with you guys about this, but I am on a
deadline and don't have enough time right now to mess around with
reinstalls and copying my edited documents over...
All went well with the installation of 2008, as far as I can tell.
9. Repeat brackets - when they are placed over a first ending that
ends up containing a multimeasure rest in a part, then the horizontal
bars are too long and they are not selectable in Page View.
well, they aren't too long any more, but there is new devilment. If a
first ending finishes with a multimeasure rest and you have dragged
the right bracket to the left in the score, then it is not selectable
in the parts in page view.
This next comment is more in the range of feature request than bug
report, but there is no reason why the repeat brackets can't be more
like Smart lines, resizing themselves intelligently over rests and
system breaks.
10. Staff Styles, when copied in the score, do not appear properly in
linked parts. You have to select Relink Staff Styles to Score while
in the part to fix it.
Same.
11. Un-selecting "Include in measure numbering" causes strange
problems to crop up, like applying Barline styles to two adjacent
measures at once, among others. Once again, I didn't bother tracking
it down exactly, because I just stopped using the feature as
hopelessly buggy.
I haven't checked this extensively, but my initial problem seems to
be fixed. It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the bug fixes.
12. When you select Barline Styles as something to copy, ONLY the
barline style itself is copied. As far as I can tell, none of the
options (like break multimeasure rest) are copied, meaning that you
THINK you have copied a double barline that breaks a rest, but you
haven't.
Unchanged. Is there ANY way to copy the Measure Attributes options,
like "Break multimeasure rest"?
13. Many plugins don't work on linked parts.
Unchanged.
14. When stems get shortened (in passages with more than one layer in
the same measure) only quarter and half note stems get shortened.
Flagged and beamed stems do not.
Unchanged. This is an important professional engraving aspect that
needs to be addressed.
15. Adding a new staff with Setup Wizard doesn't give you the same
options as if you created a score from scratch with the Setup Wizard,
for instance it doesn't create a new instrument for playback, it
doesn't add a third and fourth trumpet to the existing group of
trumpets (it creates a new group of trumpets numbering from 1 again)
and other minor annoyances. This isn't a bug, but it IS annoying and
reduces the value of an otherwise useful feature.
Unchanged.
16. When new systems get created (say, you add measures to a piece),
they don't have the same staff height as the previous systems. On
linked parts, there is only one way to alter this, which is Page
Layout>Resize Staff System... (the zoom tool appears to think that
the system is already the correct size.)
Haven't seen it yet, but give me time...
17. Check Document Fonts Against System Fonts hasn't worked on my Mac
for several versions now. This is just one of several annoyances with
fonts that I think is Mac-specific.
Still doesn't work.
18. Extraneous beat charts seem to get created for no reason, with no
apparent cause. This causes spacing problems, most noticeable in
measures with Slash Notation staff style applied.
Haven't had a chance to see it yet.
And one more I forgot: Articulations seem to jump around upon
redrawing the screen. This particularly happens when certain
articulations that are set for auto-placement are nudged. Redrawing
the screen makes them move. We need to be able to depend on the
placement we see onscreen. This is unchanged in 2008.
I seriously hope you work on these. I am forced to upgrade because of
my professional work, but I can tell you, I felt like packing it up
and returning it for a refund when I saw how few really large bugs
were still present. Please, no more new features until you can get
the meat-and-potatoes of the program working properly!
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