Finale Forum

When I open a file created in Finale 2014.5 in which I moved the staccato dots manually to the stem side of the notes: it comes up like this in Finale 25: Clicking on the dot restores it to the correct position, but a screen redraw moves it back out of position again.

The staccato dot is set to "always on note side" because most are on the note head side. Perhaps I should have entered these dots set to manual, but there was no apparent issue with moving them manually in Finale 2014.5 and they stay put on screen redraws and printing.

I don't want to track down and move all the staccato dots since this is part of a large project. Am I therefore prevented from using Finale 25?

To me, this looks like a font annotation problem. What you might want to try is to temporarily replace the annotation file in Finale 25 with a copy of the same file from your 2014.5 installation. The right annotation file is for whatever font you're using for the staccatos. Move the file from Finale 25 to the desktop and replace it with a copy of the 2014.5 file. That way, you can restore the 25 file if this doesn't fix the problem.

My personal rule of thumb is to never manually reposition the common articulations, especially those appearing in the staff. If the placement on any is off, I make a copy and set it so it does position correctly. The ones that moved in your file should probably been set to appear on the stem side.

Anyway, good luck. I hope you find a solution.

N.

Isn't this the problem we've been having for years? In measures with more than one layer, flipped articulations sometimes have a mind of their own and even move contrarily to the arrow direction, forcing one to place the articulation by trial-and-error. There's a good chance that MM has solved this problem with v. 26. That would be a welcome albeit long overdue improvement.

BTW, do you by any chance have music spacing set to take articulations into account? In your example it looks as though Finale is spacing [unnecessarily] for the accents, thereby allotting too much space to the first of each group of 16ths.

If it is possible to post an actual Finale file, it would be good to use that to do some testing of the behavior.

Zuill

P.S.: I just ran a test with a file created in 2014.5 that I opened in v25, and the manually moved dots stayed put. So, there's something else that is in that file. That's why we need to test an actual file to get to the bottom of things.

Thanks, N. I tried your first suggestion, but unfortunately that didn't fix the problem. I will try to apply your second suggestion from now on! But unconventional positioning of accents and staccato dots as in the example does sometimes require manual positioning; at least for me.

Vaughan, I guess I haven't run into the jumping articulation problem you mentioned since the early days of Finale. It certainly wasn't an issue in Finale 2014.5. Why it should be so in Finale 25 is curious.

Thanks for pointing out the bad spacing. Turning off articulation collision avoidance improved the spacing in measures in which the accented note was followed by a leap . There was no problem and therefore no change when the notes move stepwise. This I also find curious.

John Ruggero wrote:...Turning off articulation collision avoidance improved the spacing in measures in which the accented note was followed by a leap . There was no problem and therefore no change when the notes move stepwise. This I also find curious.

Indeed! Finale moves in mysterious ways...

Here is the file, Zuill. It is very good of you to take a look.

Here's what it looks like in Finale 2014.5 in Finale 25:

Unfortunately, you are using fonts I don't have, so I can't open the file properly without getting wingdings for some of the items.

I ran a test with the maestro Default file with no problem. It might be a FAN file issue that is causing your problem. Do you have a FAN file for each font you are using?

Zuill

When I change the flag font back to Maestro, the flag looks proper and the dot is below the stem. So, the Vintage font you are using for the flags must be missing the FAN file, or the file is not working properly.

Zuill

Zuill, thanks so much! Changing out the flag font clears up the problem. There is indeed no FAN for the Vintage font. But why does it work in Finale 2014.5 but not Finale 25? There is no Vintage FAN in the font annotation files in both versions.

That is a question I can't answer. Possibly the way Finale handles these things changed in the 64 bit version.

Zuill

In any case, you solved the mystery, and I can use Finale 25 with the Maestro flags. Thanks again, Zuill.

And thank you N. You also solved it, but I hadn't remembered that I was using the Vintage font flags in this file, so my attempt to apply your suggestion via the Maestro FAN file of course didn't work.