What a great question!
I think there is a better way that gives you more consistent and
controllable results. It takes a bit of work to set up the first
time, but the result does copy between files. This has been working
for me from Finale 3.x to 2008.
The short answer is to make your shapes in the chord tool!
You can take font characters from a variety of fonts and place them
precisely by using the chord definition subtool within the Chord
Tool. You have to turn off playback and italics and all those other
options, but the advantage is that once you've built a graphic shape
that you like (such as those moveable repeat brackets) you can assign
them to a meta tool and every time you use one, it will be placed
precisely on the staff where you need it.
If you want playback of the bracketed section, you can enter the
notes in another layer and blank them out.
I will post to a web page a Finale file with examples of these
graphic shapes made using the chord tool. People can use them or make
their own based on these tricks.
I'm tied up right now, but I'll let this list know about the link in
a day or so.
-Randolph Peters
A-NO-NE Music wrote:
This is kinda yet another graphic problem. I am currently on
FinMac2008a on OSX10.5.2.
I often write a pattern for an instrument,
place repeat signs graphically to bracket the pattern,
then draw an arrow to the right to indicate infinity loop till cue.
This used to work very well back in Fin3.7-FinMac97 days but not
anymore. Shape designer gives totally unexpected results, like the
object I created appears in a wrong place with handle misplaced far from
I clicked. And it is almost impossible to align it to where I want to.
EPS import from Illustrator CS3 gives weird white block background to
cover music if I used Maestro font. TIF import is better but, again,
placing and resizing will never work especially zooming won't work with
these imported images. I can only resize in Shape Designer (correct?)
but it jumps all over the places when I touch it. Trial and error,
trial and error. Frustrating.
Is there any better way?
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