Collisions of accidentals with notes in other layers

[mark carlson]

I'm having trouble that I don't remember having for many years:

Accidentals in one layer are colliding with notes in another; notes in one layer are colliding with dots (as in adding value dots) in another. I've checked my settings in Document Options, and they look correct to me, but I must be doing something wrong.

I'm attaching this score-in-process in case someone can see what is causing this. There are examples in the right hand in measures 25, 33, 57, and in the left hand in mm. 26, 34--and other places.

Thanks for your help!

Mark Carlson

Mac OS 10.11.6
Finale 2014.5

[zuill]

I think it has to do with your Spacing Width setting. You might want to try playing with that.

Zuill

[motet]

Pretty unattractive accidental placement from Finale. I guess it spaces them as if they were solid rectangles.

[John Ruggero]

You also have a lot of music (considering the many accidentals) on the offending system 4. If you move the last measure or two to the next line the conflicts go away. But as Motet says, Finale does not kern accidentals, so sometimes hand adjustment is necessary to bring them closer to each other.

[mark carlson]

Thank you, all. I will play around with your suggestions.

One thing that is puzzling/bothering me is that I have never had this problem before--at least not in my modern history--and I have been copying music on Finale since 1989. Does anyone have an idea what makes this different?

Also, I just decided finally to open and start using Finale 25, which I bought in November. I thought that might help with this weird spacing of accidentals and the collisions I'm getting. Alas, it isn't making any difference.

Mark

[Vaughan]

If you have the full TGTools plugins, there's one which helps accidental kerning. It certainly would be nice if Finale did this properly. It's interesting to notice how much attention the makers of Dorico have spent on notational aspects like these; FWIW, Dorico does this very well.

[Paul Inwood]

Another peculiarity of Finale 25 is that if you have a hidden note with an accidental in another layer on the same beat as a normal note with an accidental, Finale shifts the normal accidental back, as if the hidden accidental were visible. The only way to deal with that seems to be to remove the accidental from the hidden note.