Finale's Missing Character Display

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guitarsean
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Post by guitarsean » Mon Jan 09, 2017 6:26 pm

Does anyone know how to make Finale 25 not show the big question marks in boxes as shown on the attached image. I have a client I'm trying to upgrade from Finale 2012 to Finale 25. Because of some quirks of the in-house font, which I don't think can be fixed without great expense, some notation things are done in a non-standard way, ie some time sigs are blank in the tool, and I use text expressions for the displayed time. The "empty" real time sigs used to just be blank, but now there's the big ugly boxes. If I can't get rid of those, there will be no upgrade. Thanks, and I'm also glad to find many of the former forum.makemusic crew over here.
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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Jan 09, 2017 6:49 pm

Looks like a font problem. Someone with a Mac will be along with a solution, I'm sure--a very common issue.

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N Grossingink
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Post by N Grossingink » Mon Jan 09, 2017 6:50 pm

Hi Sean,

Go to Document Options > Time Signatures and type a ridiculously high number in both the upper and lower number adjustments, like 30 inches. That gets rid of the numbers - they're still displaying, but off screen, up near the ceiling. I think that affects the display of the 4/4 character, but you can put that in as expression text if you need it.

N.
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guitarsean
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Post by guitarsean » Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:04 pm

Thanks N, should have figured you would know
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MikeHalloran
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Post by MikeHalloran » Mon Jan 09, 2017 9:26 pm

If that doesn't work, I have something else to try.
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guitarsean
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Post by guitarsean » Mon Jan 09, 2017 9:32 pm

Since it looks like a workaround will be the fix rather than an actual function or setting I'm not seeing, I'm willing to try all the tricks.
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MikeHalloran
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Post by MikeHalloran » Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:48 pm

This is a common problem with longtime Finale users. Old, sometimes ancient versions of the fonts remain installed that don't have all the characters you need. The newer installers often don't recognize the old code to replace the old fonts.

You can install any font by right-clicking on the application, and click on Show Package Contents. I recommend that you organize the folder by Kind. This will show all of your font files together. Go to Contents/Resources and scroll down till you find all the fonts (.ttf).

If you want to do a clean reinstall of your Finale fonts, this will take a few minutes but it's worth it. Using the above list as a guide, open Font Book.app and delete every Finale font. It will take a few minutes after you delete till they disappear -- no need to wait, you can keep going to the next one.

Now shift-click on all the Finale fonts in the Resources folder to Open all the font Windows. You will see Install Font in the lower right hand corner. Click on it. With most, you will get an Apple error saying that the file has major problems—don't worry about it, continue with the install. When all of the Windows are closed, you are done. BTW, the font files remain in your Resources folder so don't worry that you might be deleting something irreplaceable.

I had to do this when installing Finale 2014. Some of my Finale fonts had 1995 build dates on them so I went ahead and removed every Finale font manually in Font Book.app. Fixed a lot of problems. I did it again for 25 just to make certain it still worked.
Mike Halloran

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guitarsean
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Post by guitarsean » Mon Jan 09, 2017 11:12 pm

Thanks Mike, I'll give it a go
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Post by MikeHalloran » Mon Jan 09, 2017 11:24 pm

Finale 25 for Mac:

Here's a list of all 37 fonts in Applications/Finale/Contents/Resources. You can check this against Font Book.app/All Fonts

Some of these are part of larger font families (suitcases for those of use who remember Macs before OS X) and will not show up separately. That's ok, delete the entire family and empty Trash if doing a clean install of the fonts.

BroadwayCopyist.ttf
BroadwayCopyistPerc.ttf
BroadwayCopyistText.ttf
BroadwayCopyistTextExt.ttf
Chaconne.ttf
EngraverFontExtras.ttf
EngraverFontSet.ttf
EngraverTextH.ttf
EngraverTextNCS.ttf
EngraverTextT.ttf
EngraverTime.ttf
Finale AlphaNotes.ttf
Finale Copyist Text Ext.ttf
Finale Copyist Text.ttf
Finale Lyrics Bold.ttf
Finale Lyrics Italic.ttf
Finale Mallets.ttf
Finale Numerics.ttf
Finale Percussion.ttf
Jazz.ttf
JazzCord.ttf
JazzPerc.ttf
JazzText Extended.ttf
JazzText.ttf
Kousaku Percussion.ttf
Kousaku.ttf
Maestro Percussion.ttf
Maestro Wide.ttf
Maestro.ttf
MaestroTimes Bold Italic.ttf
MaestroTimes Bold.ttf
MaestroTimes Italic.ttf
MaestroTimes.ttf
Petrucci.ttf
Rentaro.ttf
Seville.ttf
Tamburo.ttf
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Tue Jan 10, 2017 9:30 am

Am I right that this is a custom, in-house music font, not MM's fonts? I'm confused about the implementation: the font has "blank" characters that are used for time sigs? Why not just hide the time sig and put extra space in front of the measure? (Or some other blank character, like an articulation, that spaces out the music.)
MikeHalloran wrote:Old, sometimes ancient versions of the fonts remain installed that don't have all the characters you need. The newer installers often don't recognize the old code to replace the old fonts.

This has been said a few times, but I've yet to see some evidence that installers are not installing, or that MM's fonts don't have all the characters needed.

The MakeMusic fonts have not been "updated" since the tremolo char was fixed in Maestro about 10 years. A newer creation date on a particular font doesn't necessarily mean it's actually any different.

All Mac versions of Finale from 25 back to 2007 have installed a Truetype font called Maestro.suit, Version 001.000, size 46,448 bytes. The creation dates vary widely, but even Finale 25 installs fonts with creation dates from 2010 to 2012. It would be a significant finding if Finale's installer was not installing fonts.

It's true that the fonts in the app bundle are version 1.2, have 2016 dates and different file sizes. However, these fonts do not contain any more characters. The purpose of these fonts is as a resource for MM's fonts to be exported into ebooks, and they are merely in a slightly more cross-platform format.

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guitarsean
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Post by guitarsean » Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:29 pm

Yes, this is an in-house font. It's along story, but briefly, the appearance of certain things was never right according to the people in charge, so some of the time sigs are expressions, some are within the font like they are in Maestro. 4/4, 6/8 are there, but not 2/4 and 3/4. It's not worth knowing why, but this and a few other things are like this when using this font. It's never been a problem until F2014 came along and stuck placeholders where the missing characters used to just be blank.

I could do the extra space as you suggested, and I considered it, but I need to make templates. I don't want to have separate templates for every time signature. Also, there are a number of people writing music for this client who know just enough about Finale to be dangerous, so any workarounds that are necessary should be a simple as possible. I think N's initial fix is the easiest to do and to explain to others.

I'd like this in-house font to be perfected, but that would likely mean redesigning some of the font look, and calling in a music font design specialist. The cost of that isn't something this client is probably able to cover.
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Post by MikeHalloran » Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:50 pm

BuonTempi wrote:Am I right that this is a custom, in-house music font, not MM's fonts? I'm confused about the implementation: the font has "blank" characters that are used for time sigs? Why not just hide the time sig and put extra space in front of the measure? (Or some other blank character, like an articulation, that spaces out the music.)
MikeHalloran wrote:Old, sometimes ancient versions of the fonts remain installed that don't have all the characters you need. The newer installers often don't recognize the old code to replace the old fonts.

This has been said a few times, but I've yet to see some evidence that installers are not installing, or that MM's fonts don't have all the characters needed.

.
Old fonts compiled before 2012 (or later, ignoring Apple's 2012 guidelines) are most likely to exhibit these issues. If you think that MM has done nothing with their fonts to make them compatible with the new guidelines, you are quite mistaken.

I have a small side business that services and maintains a number of Macs, many of them used by music creators. I like to solve problems when they arise and have helped many users over the last few years with this issue including myself. The first time you solve a similar problem with a clean install of the fonts, you will have learned something.

In this case, we now know that it's an in-house font. Switching to the current MM fonts is likely the quick solution.
Mike Halloran

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guitarsean
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Post by guitarsean » Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:59 pm

Switching to MMs font, or any other font, is not an option. This in-house font is part of the look of this client's products.
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Tue Jan 10, 2017 6:06 pm

MikeHalloran wrote:Old fonts compiled before 2012 (or later, ignoring Apple's 2012 guidelines) are most likely to exhibit these issues. If you think that MM has done nothing with their fonts to make them compatible with the new guidelines, you are quite mistaken.
That's interesting, considering that the TrueType Maestro installed by Finale 25 has a creation date of 30 September 2011. What has MM done to their fonts? And which Apple guidelines are you referring to?
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guitarsean
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Post by guitarsean » Tue Jan 10, 2017 7:27 pm

MikeHalloran wrote: If you want to do a clean reinstall of your Finale fonts, this will take a few minutes but it's worth it. Using the above list as a guide, open Font Book.app and delete every Finale font. It will take a few minutes after you delete till they disappear -- no need to wait, you can keep going to the next one.

Now shift-click on all the Finale fonts in the Resources folder to Open all the font Windows. You will see Install Font in the lower right hand corner. Click on it. With most, you will get an Apple error saying that the file has major problems—don't worry about it, continue with the install. When all of the Windows are closed, you are done. BTW, the font files remain in your Resources folder so don't worry that you might be deleting something irreplaceable.

I had to do this when installing Finale 2014. Some of my Finale fonts had 1995 build dates on them so I went ahead and removed every Finale font manually in Font Book.app. Fixed a lot of problems. I did it again for 25 just to make certain it still worked.
Mike, is this Finale's "font cache"? I clean my font caches, but I have seen other programs keep caches in places a program like Onyx doesn't see, and can't clean. Quark used to do that.
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:58 am

Guitarsean,

Finale doesn't have its own font cache. The only apps that do are those with their own font rendering engines (Quark, Adobe, etc). However, realistically, you are going to have to get the font fixed. It shouldn't be too expensive/difficult: just open the font in a font editor and add 'empty' glyphs to those number positions, with widths set.
To be honest, that's probably your cheapest option.

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