Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Darcy James Argue wrote: Quite apart from the fact that Finale ignores OS X conventions here, it's an incredible pain in the ass when you open up a set of 18 parts and have to maximize 17 of them. So are you saying that the Maximize check box in Program Options/New isn't functional? Or doesn't the OSX version include that option? Best regards, Jari Williamsson ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Darcy James Argue: Quite apart from the fact that Finale ignores OS X conventions here, it's an incredible pain in the ass when you open up a set of 18 parts and have to maximize 17 of them. Jari Williamsson: So are you saying that the Maximize check box in Program Options/New isn't functional? Or doesn't the OSX version include that option? Correct, Maximize doesn't appear in Fin OSX Program Options/New. -- Simon Troup Digital Music Art - Finale IRC channel server: irc.chatspike.net port: 6667 channel: #Finale - ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On 03 Mar 2005, at 7:28 AM, Jari Williamsson wrote: Darcy James Argue wrote: Quite apart from the fact that Finale ignores OS X conventions here, it's an incredible pain in the ass when you open up a set of 18 parts and have to maximize 17 of them. So are you saying that the Maximize check box in Program Options/New isn't functional? Or doesn't the OSX version include that option? There is no such option in the Mac version. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On Mar 2, 2005, at 9:01 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote: Hi Chris, Presumably the Zoom button in AppleWorks doesn't zoom to an 8.5x11 page if you have a different page size selected for the active document? If not, that's a bug. With Safari, the zoom button takes you to the minimum width specified by the web page, and the minimum height needed to display the site's entire contents (or full-screen height if, as with most websites, you need to scroll down to read it all). If you click it again, it will normally toggle back to wherever it was before you hit the zoom button. If any portion of the window has been dragged off-screen, the zoom button will also reposition the window so that it fits entirely on the screen. You can test all of this on a web page that has a relatively narrow width and short height, like, for instance, the home page of: http://davedouglas.com/ There's a good example of my confusion. The window goes to the minimum width, good. However, the height is about half of my screen, with a scroll bar appearing on the right, even though I am able to manually resize the window so that the entire contents appear WITHOUT a scroll bar. This does not appear to be the minimum height to display the page's contents? I don't find this confusing at all. Moreover, the behavior in OS X is for the most part extremely similar to the way the zoom button in Mac OS has always worked. The widget *looks* different now (green circle instead of a square inside a box) but the behavior is virtually identical. It's certainly identical behavior in Finale -- the zoom button works exactly the same in OS X as it did in OS 9 and earlier. Yes, in Finale. Just not in AppleWorks, nor in a couple of other apps used often by me. I guess I was assuming that it would always work identically. You'll notice that if you click the Zoom button in Mail, it always maximizes the window. That's because modern plain-text emails don't have a fixed width -- they wrap to the user's window width. Finale's behavior is similar -- it always maximizes when you click the Zoom button, because in scroll view, there's no fixed width, and Finale's programmers didn't want the Zoom button to behave differently depending on whether you are in scroll view or page view. I'm fine with that, because all of my Finale windows are maximized all of the time. What *is* broken is that Finale doesn't follow OS X conventions for remembering window placement, and for stacking (not cascading) new windows when the current (or default) window is maximized. Quite apart from the fact that Finale ignores OS X conventions here, it's an incredible pain in the ass when you open up a set of 18 parts and have to maximize 17 of them. I agree. There isn't a keyboard command for Maximise, is there? Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Hi Chris, There's a good example of my confusion. The window goes to the minimum width, good. However, the height is about half of my screen, with a scroll bar appearing on the right, even though I am able to manually resize the window so that the entire contents appear WITHOUT a scroll bar. This does not appear to be the minimum height to display the page's contents? What version of Safari/OS X are you using? What's your window position and size before you click the Zoom button? I don't get the behavior you describe. For me, clicking the zoom button on this page causes the window to resize so that no scroll bars are visible. I agree. There isn't a keyboard command for Maximise, is there? No -- you can program one in iKey, and iKey supposedly has a Zoom All feature, but it doesn't work in Finale. I don't find this confusing at all. Moreover, the behavior in OS X is for the most part extremely similar to the way the zoom button in Mac OS has always worked. The widget *looks* different now (green circle instead of a square inside a box) but the behavior is virtually identical. It's certainly identical behavior in Finale -- the zoom button works exactly the same in OS X as it did in OS 9 and earlier. Yes, in Finale. And in the Finder, and in MS Word, and in iTunes, and in most instances I can think of... - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On Mar 3, 2005, at 8:38 AM, Darcy James Argue wrote: Hi Chris, There's a good example of my confusion. The window goes to the minimum width, good. However, the height is about half of my screen, with a scroll bar appearing on the right, even though I am able to manually resize the window so that the entire contents appear WITHOUT a scroll bar. This does not appear to be the minimum height to display the page's contents? What version of Safari/OS X are you using? What's your window position and size before you click the Zoom button? I don't get the behavior you describe. For me, clicking the zoom button on this page causes the window to resize so that no scroll bars are visible. Starting from a window larger than the page, clicking the green button makes the page smaller than the content. Starting from a window manually resized to be smaller than the content makes the zoom behave as expected. I am using the latest updates of both OS and Safari. I don't find this confusing at all. Moreover, the behavior in OS X is for the most part extremely similar to the way the zoom button in Mac OS has always worked. The widget *looks* different now (green circle instead of a square inside a box) but the behavior is virtually identical. It's certainly identical behavior in Finale -- the zoom button works exactly the same in OS X as it did in OS 9 and earlier. Yes, in Finale. And in the Finder, and in MS Word, and in iTunes, and in most instances I can think of... I guess I just don't find myself maximising windows in those situations. Probably because once I set the windows to a size I like, the app remembers them for the next time. 8-( Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
At 03:33 AM 3/2/05 +, Simon Troup wrote: Professional applications don't need multiple choices of icons types, or different desktop choices. One simple, well designed set of icons would suffice. The whole rosewood desktop and vellum paper idea borrowed from sibelius is totally unnecessary and just bloats the app. I think it actually 'cheapens' the application. You don't see options like these in Photoshop or ProTools. [...] Customising should be about ergonomics, not style. I agree about the kind of 'look' or skinning issues, and think Sibelius looks hokey (I have the version 3 demo). For me, the interface becomes very personal. 10+ hours per day has made me very productive in my Windows environment. But programs such as Photoshop slow me down with their different implementation of context menus, floating-only toolbars, etc., so most of my work is done in the compliant Paint Shop Pro until I actually need Photoshop for something. My first Finale was 2.2, which was so un-Windows-like that I would have dumped it had Finale not been the only game in town back then. There are many interface improvements that could be made to Finale, but I come at it with a Windows-only perspective, and am efficient using its mouse actions and especially standard keystrokes. I know F5 will refresh my screen (but Finale is CTL-D), CTL-TAB will switch between a program's child windows (okay in Finale), ALT-TAB between programs, etc. I know Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, and the arrows will work as advertised. (One of the worst for me is PageMaker's usurpation for other commands of the longstanding toggles of italic, underscore and bold CTL-I, U, B. I've wrecked many a document because I type along without looking at the screen!) Distractions make me crazy, so only the current application appears on my desktop, maximized with child windows also maximized, and border lines reduced to zero. There's no edge clutter, as my Windows taskbar auto-hides. The colors of background and active inactive window bars, the scrollbar widths, font sizes, etc., are all set for my eyes and attention. Icons are reduced in size, or where they cannot be reduced (as in some browsers), eliminated in favor of text. (Some Adobe products ignore the font size I have chosen for user interface elements as well as the open-maximized setting.) I have no idea if most users heavily personalize their workspace while depending on the operating system's common actions. I do. Where a program deviates from the environment's repertoire of behaviors while refusing to respect the environment's customizations, it very much gets in my way. Alas, where a program attempts the virtuous goal of cross-platform compatibility, it tends to break the standard expectations and slows me down. My same frustration, though, is visible in the eyes of Mac users or even my Linux-devotee stepson when they try to operate my machine, with its Dennis-centric interface, left-handed trackball, right-handed tablet, and two monitors. But my hands fly. :) Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
I have no idea if most users heavily personalize their workspace while depending on the operating system's common actions. Much of what you say makes sense to me as what you are attempting to do is maximise workspace. I'm not sure about Adobe applications on Windows but to me the Mac versions are state of the art - minimal, can be arranged to suit the user (they even have the ability to save in sets to suit the type of work you're doing), and have great auto hide and palette well features. It seems to me that Photoshop and Indesign are good analogies to Finale because of the depth of the feature set, I know they're very different applications to Finale but in their respective fields all are very complete. If I had the time I'd love to take screenshots of Photoshop and Finale and mockup a pic of what Finale would look like with a photoshop like interface! Mercifully two children, a dealine and a bad cold stop me from descending into such geekdom. -- Simon Troup Digital Music Art - Finale IRC channel server: irc.chatspike.net port: 6667 channel: #Finale - ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
At 3:33 + 2/03/2005, Simon Troup wrote: Professional applications don't need multiple choices of icons types, or different desktop choices. One simple, well designed set of icons would suffice. The whole rosewood desktop and vellum paper idea borrowed from sibelius is totally unnecessary and just bloats the app. I think it actually 'cheapens' the application. You don't see options like these in Photoshop or ProTools. How right you are. Here Finale gives me the possibility of customizing something I don't need to customize (I still use the traditional icons because they're the only ones that remind me which layer I'm in by showing the whole Simple palette in the layer colour). I'm still waiting for really useful custom interface options such as a palette or toolbar where I can put a selection of expressions or articulations. Here's what Jef Raskin (who sadly died a few days ago) had to say about customizable interfaces: My take-away on this issue is that if we are competent user interface designers so that our interface is already nearly optimal, most personalizations can only make the interface worse. Therefore, we must be sparing and deliberate in offering user customizations. If a user can, by a few judicious choices, really improve the interface, we probably have done a poor job. Anyone involved with designing user interfaces should take some time to read Raskin's words of wisdom on the subject. Have a look at http://www.jefraskin.com : it's worth the visit anyway, being packed full of fascinating reflections on all sorts of subjects. Michael Cook ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On 2 Mar 2005, at 14:24, Michael Cook wrote: How right you are. Here Finale gives me the possibility of customizing something I don't need to customize (I still use the traditional icons because they're the only ones that remind me which layer I'm in by showing the whole Simple palette in the layer colour). Thanks Michael for that tip -- I will now always keep the Simple palette open for that one reason. John ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Simon Troup / 05.3.2 / 10:33 PM wrote: I don't know how many of you have used Indesign - I've been using it a lot recently and every time I go back to Finale the whole interface feels ... well ... 1980's! I don't usually do 'me to' but this one is very true. One thing Finale really bothers me is how window is open. It gets behind tool bar. Page new is not centered, etc, etc. Why do I have to resize window every time I open, is the one frustrates me most. At least you should be able to control how window is open by setting up the default file. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
I generally agree with what Simon said. I wish Finale would take the palette icons from the Globe set (is that Mac only?), which are by far the best-designed palette icons currently available, and make the following changes: 1) Make them all grayscale -- with an option to override that with the item and/or current layer color (i.e., the way the Traditional palette works). 2) Remove the chintzy globe effect. 3) Tighten the grouping -- make the boxes squares again and pack them closer together, so that the palette is roughly the same size as the Traditional set. 4) Improve the current tool highlighting effect so it looks more like the effect used in the palettes in Adobe applications. 5) Add an option to dock the palette in the Mac version. (The Mac version of Microsoft Office actually does an excellent job of letting you dock tool palettes [or toolbars as they call them] anywhere you like.) As you can see, basically I just want them to replace the antiquated, ugly icons in the Traditional set with the much more professional-looking icons in the Globe set, but stripped of the actual globe highlight effect. I actually end up using the Globe icons, despite all its shortcomings (needlessly increased size, etc), because the icons in the traditional set are so ugly, they hurt my eyes. The palettes in Finale have been going steadily downhill ever since they introduced color to them. Coda really needs to take a look at the interface design for InDesign CS for OS X and just emulate that. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY On 01 Mar 2005, at 10:33 PM, Simon Troup wrote: I have a particular view on the interface, I'm wondering how much empathy there is out there for the same ideas. I'll just say what I think, feel free to disagree. Professional applications don't need multiple choices of icons types, or different desktop choices. One simple, well designed set of icons would suffice. The whole rosewood desktop and vellum paper idea borrowed from sibelius is totally unnecessary and just bloats the app. I think it actually 'cheapens' the application. You don't see options like these in Photoshop or ProTools. The finale interface is just too big, the palettes could be a lot smaller. I'd like to see some effort go into some of the ideas used by Adobe - clickable palettese drawers that zoom back to just tabs on the screen, palettese wells that can hold clusters of paletteses that expand on mouse-over. Docking paletteses. All this would add to screen real estate and make the application more useable rather than merely customisable. If I set up all the current icons on screen they take up a massive amount of space! Customising should be about ergonomics, not style. I don't know how many of you have used Indesign - I've been using it a lot recently and every time I go back to Finale the whole interface feels ... well ... 1980's! -- Simon Troup Digital Music Art - Finale IRC channel server: irc.chatspike.net port: 6667 channel: #Finale - ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On 2 Mar 2005 at 13:42, A-NO-NE Music wrote: One thing Finale really bothers me is how window is open. It gets behind tool bar. Page new is not centered, etc, etc. Why do I have to resize window every time I open, is the one frustrates me most. At least you should be able to control how window is open by setting up the default file. I don't understand people who don't work with child windows maximized. Why would you want all that blank space in the parent window? Of course, the Mac works completely differently from the MDI on Windows, so maybe you're a Mac user and complaining about something different. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Most programs nowadays let you download skins and stuff as an option if you don't like the default visual items. Yet some of them can be easily made by anyone who knows how (they're usually png images). Maybe people at Finale can make things like icons, wallpapers or even cursors optionally customizable thru internet downloads. Rafael Junchaya ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On 2 Mar 2005 at 14:37, Rafael L. Junchaya wrote: Most programs nowadays . . . Most? *boggle* I have three programs on my computer that have skins (Mozilla, Firefox (which is really one program in a certain sense, but their skins are not cross-compatible because of completely different UI architectures), and Winamp). I don't use anything but the default skins because: I DON'T CARE. Who has the time to test out various skins? And my experience with Winamp skins showed that they aren't just cosmetic -- they can crash the program. . . . let you download skins and stuff as an option if you don't like the default visual items. Yet some of them can be easily made by anyone who knows how (they're usually png images). Maybe people at Finale can make things like icons, wallpapers or even cursors optionally customizable thru internet downloads. I hope no one at Makemusic considers wasting even one minute of time on skinning Finale. What a complete and worthless waste of time that would be. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Maybe people at Finale can make things like icons, wallpapers or even cursors optionally customizable thru internet downloads. This is the sort of thing I'd want to avoid. This isn't a lightweight instant messaging application, or an MP3 player - it's supposed to be the finest music engraving application money can buy, a top line professional application. To my mind Finale is (huge development budget aside) the Adobe Photoshop of music notation. The problem is the chintzy (thankyou Darcy!) interface makes it look more like CoolKidz PhotoBodger. All this customisation is a reaction to Sibelius, and to my mind development in the wrong direction. I want a modern interface, not net curtains and fancy lamp shades. -- Simon Troup Digital Music Art - Finale IRC channel server: irc.chatspike.net port: 6667 channel: #Finale - ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Maybe I am on my own here, but quite honestly I couldn't care less about the look of the Finale palettes. I still use the Traditional set, simply because it is the smallest. I hope MM is going to repair all the other bugs before they start yet again to change the look of palettes and spend all that time on new icons. Johannes Darcy James Argue wrote: I generally agree with what Simon said. I wish Finale would take the palette icons from the Globe set (is that Mac only?), which are by far the best-designed palette icons currently available, and make the following changes: 1) Make them all grayscale -- with an option to override that with the item and/or current layer color (i.e., the way the Traditional palette works). 2) Remove the chintzy globe effect. 3) Tighten the grouping -- make the boxes squares again and pack them closer together, so that the palette is roughly the same size as the Traditional set. 4) Improve the current tool highlighting effect so it looks more like the effect used in the palettes in Adobe applications. 5) Add an option to dock the palette in the Mac version. (The Mac version of Microsoft Office actually does an excellent job of letting you dock tool palettes [or toolbars as they call them] anywhere you like.) As you can see, basically I just want them to replace the antiquated, ugly icons in the Traditional set with the much more professional-looking icons in the Globe set, but stripped of the actual globe highlight effect. I actually end up using the Globe icons, despite all its shortcomings (needlessly increased size, etc), because the icons in the traditional set are so ugly, they hurt my eyes. The palettes in Finale have been going steadily downhill ever since they introduced color to them. Coda really needs to take a look at the interface design for InDesign CS for OS X and just emulate that. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY On 01 Mar 2005, at 10:33 PM, Simon Troup wrote: I have a particular view on the interface, I'm wondering how much empathy there is out there for the same ideas. I'll just say what I think, feel free to disagree. Professional applications don't need multiple choices of icons types, or different desktop choices. One simple, well designed set of icons would suffice. The whole rosewood desktop and vellum paper idea borrowed from sibelius is totally unnecessary and just bloats the app. I think it actually 'cheapens' the application. You don't see options like these in Photoshop or ProTools. The finale interface is just too big, the palettes could be a lot smaller. I'd like to see some effort go into some of the ideas used by Adobe - clickable palettese drawers that zoom back to just tabs on the screen, palettese wells that can hold clusters of paletteses that expand on mouse-over. Docking paletteses. All this would add to screen real estate and make the application more useable rather than merely customisable. If I set up all the current icons on screen they take up a massive amount of space! Customising should be about ergonomics, not style. I don't know how many of you have used Indesign - I've been using it a lot recently and every time I go back to Finale the whole interface feels ... well ... 1980's! -- Simon Troup Digital Music Art - Finale IRC channel server: irc.chatspike.net port: 6667 channel: #Finale - ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On 2 Mar 2005 at 21:24, Johannes Gebauer wrote: Maybe I am on my own here, but quite honestly I couldn't care less about the look of the Finale palettes. I still use the Traditional set, simply because it is the smallest. I hope MM is going to repair all the other bugs before they start yet again to change the look of palettes and spend all that time on new icons. I agree with you 100% and also use the traditional icons (the others are just plain ugly). But I would disagree on one point: it's probably *extremely* easy to design icon sets. I'm sure it's something they farm out in terms of graphical design, and the interface for displaying and choosing them is already in place. Adding an icon set probably doesn't even take any programming, and is likely just a matter of updating a list of icon sets available. All that said, it's still a compete waste of time and money as far as I'm concerned, even if it is only a little time and a little money. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Maybe I am on my own here, but quite honestly I couldn't care less about the look of the Finale palettes. I still use the Traditional set, simply because it is the smallest. I hope MM is going to repair all the other bugs before they start yet again to change the look of palettes and spend all that time on new icons. Hi Johannes. I think you're agreeing in part with what I said - getting back what I called screen real estate. The fact that you couldn't care less about the style shows what a waste of development resources those things are, just another menu item that doesn't need to be there. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
David W. Fenton / 05.3.2 / 02:33 PM wrote: I don't understand people who don't work with child windows maximized. Why would you want all that blank space in the parent window? Of course, the Mac works completely differently from the MDI on Windows, so maybe you're a Mac user and complaining about something different. You are right. You don't know Mac. Mac WindowServ is not like Win, no parent frame. For that, there is no child windows a la Windows. It is not a matter of the API. In fact, I think Trakton renders full frame, but I can't use it since it crashes with Waves VST. Now, why I don't want Finale go full screen on my desktop, besides it gets under Toolbar (ack!), is that I print system log as well as vm_stack on my desktop. I keep the bottom part of desktop visible all the time. This way, as soon as system log reports something wrong, such as house clock (in my case DTP) goes south, I would know before something bad happen. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
David W. Fenton / 05.3.2 / 04:31 PM wrote: That's one of the advantages of the Windows approach (and one of its drawbacks, too) -- you can run your parent application at 1/2 the screen and then run your document windows fully maximized within the parent window. OK, I admit. I envy Windows for this and alt+hotkey :-) I do have FinaleWin2005, y'know, but I am more comfortable how Mac GUI look. Same goes to Adobe products. Yes, under MacOS, the window position is supposed to be written to pref file every time an app closes. Why Finale doesn't do that, is beyond me :-( ... Back in System7 era, I often saw a pref 'remember window position' on many apps. I don't see them anymore. Huh! -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
On Mar 2, 2005, at 4:58 PM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: Yes, under MacOS, the window position is supposed to be written to pref file every time an app closes. Why Finale doesn't do that, is beyond me :-( I had a hard time with the new coloured buttons in OSX when I first started. I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do, as they all behaved differently in different applications. Darcy told me that the green button was supposed to maximise the window to the borders of the window contents, but that is not true with the two apps I use most often: Appleworks and Finale. Appleworks always makes the window the size of an 8-1/2 X 11 page, no matter what the contents are or what magnification they are at, and Finale always mazimises to the size of the desktop, no matter what the contents of the window are. Safari seems to depend on what site I am on. No wonder I had trouble at first! Chirstopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Hi Chris, Presumably the Zoom button in AppleWorks doesn't zoom to an 8.5x11 page if you have a different page size selected for the active document? If not, that's a bug. With Safari, the zoom button takes you to the minimum width specified by the web page, and the minimum height needed to display the site's entire contents (or full-screen height if, as with most websites, you need to scroll down to read it all). If you click it again, it will normally toggle back to wherever it was before you hit the zoom button. If any portion of the window has been dragged off-screen, the zoom button will also reposition the window so that it fits entirely on the screen. You can test all of this on a web page that has a relatively narrow width and short height, like, for instance, the home page of: http://davedouglas.com/ I don't find this confusing at all. Moreover, the behavior in OS X is for the most part extremely similar to the way the zoom button in Mac OS has always worked. The widget *looks* different now (green circle instead of a square inside a box) but the behavior is virtually identical. It's certainly identical behavior in Finale -- the zoom button works exactly the same in OS X as it did in OS 9 and earlier. You'll notice that if you click the Zoom button in Mail, it always maximizes the window. That's because modern plain-text emails don't have a fixed width -- they wrap to the user's window width. Finale's behavior is similar -- it always maximizes when you click the Zoom button, because in scroll view, there's no fixed width, and Finale's programmers didn't want the Zoom button to behave differently depending on whether you are in scroll view or page view. I'm fine with that, because all of my Finale windows are maximized all of the time. What *is* broken is that Finale doesn't follow OS X conventions for remembering window placement, and for stacking (not cascading) new windows when the current (or default) window is maximized. Quite apart from the fact that Finale ignores OS X conventions here, it's an incredible pain in the ass when you open up a set of 18 parts and have to maximize 17 of them. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY On 02 Mar 2005, at 8:03 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: On Mar 2, 2005, at 4:58 PM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: Yes, under MacOS, the window position is supposed to be written to pref file every time an app closes. Why Finale doesn't do that, is beyond me :-( I had a hard time with the new coloured buttons in OSX when I first started. I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do, as they all behaved differently in different applications. Darcy told me that the green button was supposed to maximise the window to the borders of the window contents, but that is not true with the two apps I use most often: Appleworks and Finale. Appleworks always makes the window the size of an 8-1/2 X 11 page, no matter what the contents are or what magnification they are at, and Finale always mazimises to the size of the desktop, no matter what the contents of the window are. Safari seems to depend on what site I am on. No wonder I had trouble at first! Chirstopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
I have a particular view on the interface, I'm wondering how much empathy there is out there for the same ideas. I'll just say what I think, feel free to disagree. Professional applications don't need multiple choices of icons types, or different desktop choices. One simple, well designed set of icons would suffice. The whole rosewood desktop and vellum paper idea borrowed from sibelius is totally unnecessary and just bloats the app. I think it actually 'cheapens' the application. You don't see options like these in Photoshop or ProTools. The finale interface is just too big, the palettes could be a lot smaller. I'd like to see some effort go into some of the ideas used by Adobe - clickable palettese drawers that zoom back to just tabs on the screen, palettese wells that can hold clusters of paletteses that expand on mouse-over. Docking paletteses. All this would add to screen real estate and make the application more useable rather than merely customisable. If I set up all the current icons on screen they take up a massive amount of space! Customising should be about ergonomics, not style. I don't know how many of you have used Indesign - I've been using it a lot recently and every time I go back to Finale the whole interface feels ... well ... 1980's! -- Simon Troup Digital Music Art - Finale IRC channel server: irc.chatspike.net port: 6667 channel: #Finale - ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Simon Troup wrote: I have a particular view on the interface, I'm wondering how much empathy there is out there for the same ideas. I'll just say what I think, feel free to disagree. Professional applications don't need multiple choices of icons types, or different desktop choices. One simple, well designed set of icons would suffice. The whole rosewood desktop and vellum paper idea borrowed from sibelius is totally unnecessary and just bloats the app. I think it actually 'cheapens' the application. You don't see options like these in Photoshop or ProTools. The finale interface is just too big, the palettes could be a lot smaller. I'd like to see some effort go into some of the ideas used by Adobe - clickable palettese drawers that zoom back to just tabs on the screen, palettese wells that can hold clusters of paletteses that expand on mouse-over. Docking paletteses. All this would add to screen real estate and make the application more useable rather than merely customisable. If I set up all the current icons on screen they take up a massive amount of space! Customising should be about ergonomics, not style. I don't know how many of you have used Indesign - I've been using it a lot recently and every time I go back to Finale the whole interface feels ... well ... 1980's! WHile I generally agree, I can say you should be glad you never had to use any of Kai Krause's applications. Bryce and Kai's Power Tools especially come to mind as being terrible interfaces. cd -- http://www.livejournal.com/users/dershem/# ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale Interface, palettes
Simon Troup wrote: paletteses Ah yes, another wonderful search/replace fiasco :) And, apparently, Gollum's dialogue coach. :) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
