Expression-placement bug

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Jun 03, 2017 5:25 pm

Here's a curious if obscure bug. In the picture below, the bottom staff in measure two has been given an independent time signature of 3/4 displayed as 2/4. The parens are defined to surround the time signature, but as you see, they do not. If you click one of them, it jumps into place, but a screen redraw puts it back.

Paren placement is relative to time signature. If I make them relative to the barline, the problem goes away.
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N Grossingink
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Post by N Grossingink » Sat Jun 03, 2017 7:25 pm

At the bottom of your picture, the 2/4 time has 3 quarters, with offset dashed barlines. It seems to me that independent time would not be necessary in this case. Shouldn't there be 2 quarters per measure for a truly independent time? I guess I'm missing something. However, it comes as no surprise that expression entry is buggy when independent time is used. I stay away from that like the plague.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Jun 03, 2017 7:35 pm

As I said, the bottom staff is still 3/4 but displayed as 2/4 as a way of getting a 2/4 time signature. I guess I could put in a fake time signature instead and put some space at the beginning of the measure. This is probably better anyway, as the left paren is rather squeezed. I'm mainly just documenting the bug here--I can achieve a work-around.

(This situation is that there are two "orchestras," one playing in 3/4 and one playing in 2/4, but with the quarter notes equal. There's only one conductor, beating in 3, so I want to show the 2/4 barlines but leave it basically in three.)

Vaughan
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Post by Vaughan » Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:09 am

I've had this exact problem with Smart Shapes using Independent Time Signatures. They jump around when selected and resort to their original position when redrawing the screen, making editing very difficult. Apparently Finale has problems figuring out where the beats are in a staff with Independent Time Signatures and this affects all objects which are beat-attached, like Smart Shapes and Expressions. It used to be less of a problem with expressions when they could be note-attached. I guess that a solution cold be to define the parentheses as an articulation instead of an expression, as you did with the barlines, as these are note-attached and don't jump around. You can also just use trial-and-error and move the parentheses way off to the left and keep redrawing the screen to check the placement. Thing is, this shouldn't be necessary.
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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Jun 04, 2017 3:44 pm

I've experienced that hairpin problem and it does seem related, but different. In this case, redrawing the screen seems to put them in the wrong place, while clicking sets them right, so that may be backwards from what happens with hairpins. And curiously, if I set the measure attribute to always show time signatures, the problem goes away, though the time signature was already visible on the staff in question. I guess I'll report it.

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