After wrestling with EPS output in MacFinale 2008 for three days
straight, this is all I have to say: Sheesh! (sorry for the strong
language, but I am getting a little frustrated.)
Apparently, there are some things that don't embed in exported EPS
still, and cause problems. One thing is my painstakingly-created
custom arrowhead (if you have ever used the Shape Designer I'm sure
you feel my pain. The tip of the arrowhead has to start at EXACTLY
h=0 and v=0 or it won't stay attached to the line!). I made a
somewhat plumper triangle for a bolder kind of arrow than is the
default, and happily stuck it in everywhere in my musical examples. I
was proud of that arrow! But it caused my EPS export to break in the
usual way, that is, my printer ignored it when I tried to print it
from inside AppleWorks or Word. Remove the arrow, it works. Put the
arrow back in, it breaks.
OK, I thought, maybe it is custom shapes that EPS doesn't like. I'll
try a CHARACTER as an arrowhead. I found one in Zapf Dingbats that
didn't depend on Unicode (MAN are they hard to find!), but it didn't
work when I typed it in as a character in the Shape Designer (it
looked good in the score, but EPS broke on it in the usual way.)
I tried it as Right End text, but I couldn't get it to rotate along
with the arrow body unless it was the CENTRE text, which of course
defeats the whole purpose. I wanted an arrowhead at the END of my
line, not the middle! (Where does it say in the manual that only
centre full and centre abbreviated text rotates?) I kludged an arrow
using Centre text anyway by adjusting the position of the arrowhead
character (sliding it to the end of the line), but it would only work
within a very narrow range of lengths before the line and head
separated. Congratulating myself on my ingenuity, I popped out a
sample EPS. DANG! The tilting element (text or shape) is what breaks
EPS! Extracting my computer from the shards of broken windshield on
the back seat of my neighbour's car across the street, I went back to
attack the problem a different way.
Finally I just used some character arrows I found in Zapf Dingbats.
(Arrows that point south-west are VERY rare!) The ones I have look
kind of stupid and aren't long enough, but I've about had it.
MakeMusic tech support sent me a terse little note after two days of
silence following my first inquiry saying they have to check with the
researchers about this question and thanking me for my patience. In
the same vein of thanking someone for something nonexistent, I would
like to thank MakeMusic for the fine job they did with this release.
Christopher
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