Finale Forum

I was working with a score made in an earlier version of Finale, and there the opening hairpin issue was there, clearly. Maybe MM has fixed this without telling us...

motet wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 16, 2020 3:30 pm

Ah, I understand your picture now. So the print is wrong whether you print from PDF or Finale? Can you attach a file with the "pp <"? It might have to do with how the smart shape is drawn.

Motet, thank you for your time.

Anders, I took your examples above and resized them to be the same. I really can't see any difference except tiny ones that are likely due to aliasing. Please tell me what I'm missing. (I do see the "Graphics Export" problem, but I never use that, so no experience there.)

boldest106, I printed your file to CutePDF with both Finale 2011 and Finale 2014.5, and printed each to two printers, an HP 5000 and a Brother inkjet. All four were identical and match what Finale shows on the screen. CutePDF uses Adobe Reader to render and print.
(I didn't try Finale's PDF export, which is known to have problems.)

My guess would be that if your print from PDF doesn't match what the PDF reader shows you on the screen, the problem lies either with your printer or its driver rather than Finale.

Anders,

I tried Graphics/Export Pages with Finale 2014.5 (Finale 2011 doesn't export PDF) and couldn't reproduce the problem. I've attached the file I created if you want to try it. Perhaps our dynamics placement is different.

motet wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:46 pm

boldest106, I printed your file to CutePDF with both Finale 2011 and Finale 2014.5, and printed each to two printers, an HP 5000 and a Brother inkjet. All four were identical and match what Finale shows on the screen. CutePDF uses Adobe Reader to render and print.
(I didn't try Finale's PDF export, which is known to have problems.)

Again, thanks you so much for your time and test.
For me when I produce the PDF with Print (Print Menu) / Printer: Adobe PDF or Graphics / Export Pages I don't have problems either way. I see it clearly and correct from my pc (display). Sorry for my bad english!

motet wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:46 pm

My guess would be that if your print from PDF doesn't match what the PDF reader shows you on the screen, the problem lies either with your printer or its driver rather than Finale.

Thank you for this observation.

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure your printer driver is up to date.

Thanks for giving of your time for this, motet. I tried your file, and I couldn't detect any displacements in the Adobe PDF - when leaving the expression positioning as it was. Still, when changing that under Edit Categories, no problem - but when making manual changes to the positioning, there they were again, the tiny, but all the same too big, displacements. I usually make manual changes to the positioning of practically all expressions, so I have a hard time with either Finale, or Adobe Acrobat Pro DC not being able to handle that.

And, just to check, I made a PDF from your file with Finale's Graphics Tool. I didn't change your file in any way, just added a horizontal line below the expressions: I'm not kidding.

BTW, can you explain the meaning of 'aliasing'?

Anders Hedelin wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:40 am

I'm not a expert but I want to try to help you. I apologize if I'm wrong.

You check: Expression Selection / Dynamics (Ex: 2 fff) / Edit (Expression Designer) / Positioning / Justification / Center

By "aliasing" I meant when I enlarged one of your samples to match the other, things were slightly off because of sampling to display the image in a finite number of pixels (you'll notice the thickness of staff lines doesn't match, for example).

If fact, now that you describe the problem more, a version of this could be what's going on when you make manual adjustments. When you nudge something manually, depending on both zoom level and the resolution of your display, things might appear slightly different than they actually are. That is, at a certain zoom level, Finale might decide that one arrow-key nudge moves the dynamic by a certain distance, but the number of pixels in your display can't exactly render it. Or, Finale might be rounding the amount at certain zoom levels. These would be small differences, though, but it might explain your problems with fine tuning.

The drastic horizontal shift Graphics tool thing is strange, though. Looks like it only happens to fff, ff, pp, and ppp. Perhaps something broken between Finale 2014.5 (my version) and Finale 26 (yours). Maybe someone else with F26 on Windows can try it. Since print-to-PDF doesn't do this, though, one can just avoid using the Graphics tool to create PDF.

motet wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 17, 2020 4:14 pm

Maybe someone else with F26 on Windows can try it.

I downloaded "exporttest.musx" and I opened it with Finale26 / Win. No problems either way (Printer: Adobe PDF or Graphics / Export Pages)

Thanks for trying it.

Anders, are you looking at the Graphics Tool output with Adobe Reader? Maybe try recreating the preferences file. Seems unlikely, but worth a try (save the old one).

I will try some more things tomorrow. Thanks for the ideas.

I trashed the preferences and made a new PDF of motet's file with Finale's Graphics tool. But nothing had changed - the gross horizontal displacements were there still. I think I'll have to keep on to my Adobe Acrobat, since I'm used to it, and as it isn't that difficult to adjust its "tiny" displacements. Thanks anyway for the help, all of you.

The Perfect Layout plug-in fixes the "hairpin distance to dynamics" printing problem by automatically adjusting the hairpin length to what is printed. So after applying the plug-in the distance between the hairpin and the "attached" dynamic may look not optimal in some cases, but when printing it will look fine.

I had analyzed the relation between hairpin length and how they look printed and implemented a function that compensates this.
See https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/ ... #hairpins5

Jan

elbsound wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:55 pm

I had analyzed the relation between hairpin length and how they look printed and implemented a function that compensates this.
See https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/ ... #hairpins5

It's a shame that MM wouldn't consider incorporating your brilliant work into the program. BTW, for us 'programmer nitwits', do you have tutorials to introduce us? I'm used to where things are in Finale, but it seems that you are adding a considerable amount of new places to look in. Nothing wrong with that, on the contrary, but how do we old farts learn how to find our way?

Possibly, I need to explain what I mean. I'm not that keen on letting a plugin, however brilliant, take over my responsibility for the layout. Creating that 'wow effect' is my thing to do: from awful to beautiful. From almost very good to really very good isn't my way.

So, what I want from PL is to be able to use it in the same way as I use the tools, utilities and plugins of the program itself - selectively. In Finale I know where to find pretty much all the granular settings that answer to my needs. A program, or a plugin, that 'does it all for you' - no thanks.

Thanks, Anders, for the clarification. I was indeed a bit unsure what exactly your question was.

If you want the plug-in to do only a few things, just deactivate the functions in the dialog.
The user dialog of the Gold version has more than 200 options.
However some "standard" features can't be deactivted, for example this hairpin/dynamic offset compensation - those features where I don't know any use case where this should not be needed. Should a user still need a certain feature to be deactivated and it also makes sense for other users, I would add additional deactivation buttons.

As the plug-in always saves its last state and you can also load/save/share user-defined settings files, you can create your own scenarios.
Though I expect that most users only have very few parameters that they need to change for each score.
For my own scores I have maybe 2 or 3 parameters that I sometimes have to think about.

The plug-in also has a few "intelligent" algorithms that analyze the score and do automatic adjustments of some parameters, so that you don't have to think too much. The general idea of the PL plug-in is to always get good results without having to think of the many options. I have tried to follow many of Gould's recommendations in "Beyond Bars".

If you want to know more about the details and features of the plug-in, please refer to the manual.
One HTML page: https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/ ... -print.php
PDF: https://elbsound.studio/download.php?f= ... nualEN.pdf

There are also a few video and PDF examples:
https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/examples.php
https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/videos.php

I too have to say: Thanks, Jan, for the clarification.

Next time I have a suitable project, I will look closer into the possibilities you mentioned!

Anders

elbsound wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 23, 2020 4:31 pm

Should a user still need a certain feature to be deactivated and it also makes sense for other users, I would add additional deactivation buttons.

I would say give the options of activating/deactivating all such things for maximum flexibility. I could see wanting to run PL only for one particular thing over a selection, for example.

Of course, this would be possible.
But ... this would make about 800 options. Way too complicated, not enough users interested, too much work testing all options and even more support requests where to find/how to use all the features.

Well, I would be interested, for a start. I think your plugin would be more appealing if it were usable in a completely selective way. I never buy things in bundles if I can avoid it.

Can you give an example of what you would like to switch off that is not possible at the moment?

Possibly we speak at cross purposes, but give me some time, and I will tell you. When I've had the opportunity to really try it out, I'll know more about the selection possibilities of your plugin.