shirling & neueweise wrote:
I thought the PDF files worked just fine for Finale's On-Line
Documentation, and am bewildered as to why they would change.
much easier to edit/update and to encode the massive amount of links and
cross references, not to mention the ease with which you can control
styles.
it doesn't sound like a bug at all, but a design decision. each
browser "reads" the html differently (IE being the worst, refusing to
follow much of the standard html protocol), but designers usually create
different style sheets that are selected automatically by the user's
browser so that everything appears more or less corectly in the various
browsers; i would have expected that MM would do this and not actually
decide which browser reads their files, that is really abnormal practice.
According to Daniel from Sibelius, if it's the same program that
MakeMusic is using which Sibelius abandoned, the program does all of
that, not MakeMusic's programmers or manual writers. It sounds as if
they essentially just create the text and graphics as they always have
and then run it through the HTML creation program rather than through
the PDF creation program, instead of creating their own style sheets and
HTML code themselves. The HTML creation program decides which browsers
can read the files, not the company using the product.
On the other hand, the "ease with which you can control styles" would
imply that MakeMusic would like to have the ability to change the
appearance of their manual, something which hasn't happened in how many
new versions' manuals since they went to OLD instead of the printed
manuals? They could have changed the styles with each new version, or
released interim updated files for download, simply by using Word or
some other page layout program which allows for some form of style sheet
to create the content that would be put into the PDF files. And with
PDF it looks the same on all computers everywhere without forcing
anybody to use a browser which they don't want to use. There are other
programs which will read PDF files besides Acrobat, so there is always a
choice there but the files always look the same (corporate control over
image). To force customers to use inferior products simply because
their OLD creation tool can't handle other browsers definitely seems a
step backwards, not forwards.
And MakeMusic may well not be using the same program Sibelius used, it
just seems too big a coincidence to be the random actions of two
different HTML creation programs.
It will be interesting to see if MakeMusic really can add the
user-option to select the browser in an interim update patch as was
mentioned in the original message complaining about it on this list a
couple of days ago.
One thing that poster didn't mention (I'll check it out when my copy of
Fin2008 arrives on Tuesday) is whether by opening one's browser of
choice and then using the File/Open command, one can use Mozilla or
FireFox or Opera or whatever and still be able to open the file, even if
trying to access the file from within Finale forces Safari or IE to open.
But time will see if they can come through and allow us browser choice
for their documentation.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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