Unable to place accents where I want them

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mark carlson
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Post by mark carlson » Sun Apr 25, 2021 1:19 am

In the attached excerpt, measures 6-11, flute and clarinet, the accents are ridiculously way above the notes. I try to drag them to be right above the notes, but they either won't move or flip to below the staff. Why am I unable to place them where I want them to be: close to the notehead but just outside the slur?

Thanks,

Mark

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Attachments
super-detached accents.musx
(158.97 KiB) Downloaded 90 times


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miker
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Post by miker » Sun Apr 25, 2021 2:16 am

Did you attach the correct file? I don't see any accents!
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Bill Stevens
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Post by Bill Stevens » Sun Apr 25, 2021 3:40 pm

Like Mike, I didn't see any accents in the measures you mentioned, but I scrolled ahead to the end of the piece and saw some examples on the last page. If you change the shape of the slur so it is above the accent by lifting the right handle, the accent will pop down to where I assume you want it.

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sun Apr 25, 2021 6:44 pm

It took me a while to figure out what was making the accent so high above the staff. I then Generated parts. In the part, it was fine. Then it hit me: the Score has the staff reduced to 80%. This is not the first time we've seen odd behavior in the placement of things when staves are reduced in size. I am going to say that this is an undesired behavior. Possibly a bug.

Zuill

P.S.: Here's a short sample to show what I mean.
Attachments
Articulation Interaction With Slurs on Reduced Sized Staff.jpg
Articulation Interaction With Slurs on Reduced Sized Staff.musx
(100.9 KiB) Downloaded 78 times
Last edited by zuill on Sun Apr 25, 2021 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Apr 25, 2021 7:06 pm

They are mostly OK in 2014.5 after removing manual placement. This is probably a result of the new articulation paradigm, which I suspect is not well thought-out (perhaps the offsets are not scaled along with everything else) and that they typically neglected to test very rigorously.

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sun Apr 25, 2021 7:08 pm

See the picture I added to my last post. Definitely something they failed to fully test.

Zuill

P.S.: I just submitted a Support Ticket. A very unfortunate programming flaw. So, what's new?
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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Apr 25, 2021 7:58 pm

What happens if you turn off the "stacking" flag or whatever it's called in the accent definition? I have yet to install V26, but I'm wondering if that's a way around this poorly-implemented new feature which to me confers little advantage.

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sun Apr 25, 2021 8:12 pm

The cause is the "Slur Interaction" setting. If I choose Ignore, then I can get the articulation to move closer to the note/staff. If I choose one of the Automatic settings, on the reduced staff, if I try to move the articulation closer to the staff, it jumps below the staff. Manual adjustment is wonky and impossible to accomplish. Unchecking the stacking option doesn't help when on a reduced staff. Without the slur, no problem. It is adding the slur that causes the extremely bad behavior. I hope the powers that be spend more time over here (the dark side, I guess) to learn the findings of real users to help improve the product. I hope they can get this fixed. if it is not fixable, then their new stacking paradigm needs overhauling. It's a kind of magnetic layout, but gone awry.

Zuill
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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Apr 25, 2021 9:29 pm

You'd think that manual adjustments should be able to override whatever settings you've made.

The full TGTools has a Modify Slurs that resolves collisions with articulations and works well. It can move accents outside the slur tip. If I can disable the new broken Finale features I'm happy to stick with using TGTools to fix the collisions.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if MM's employees read here. I guess I've seen Michael Good here in the past, though.

mark carlson
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Post by mark carlson » Sun Apr 25, 2021 9:43 pm

Thank you, all, for your comments. Yes, Zuill is right: if I put the slur interaction thing on "ignore", I'm able to move the accents to where I want them. Alas, that means having to move every single one of them by hand, but that's better than having them stuck far above the noteheads.

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sun Apr 25, 2021 11:55 pm

I created a duplicate with Ignore set for just those places where they were needed. Maybe you have a lot of those. the JW Change plugin might be helpful in fine tuning the position of these. I am not sure if the plugin is able to modify the definition according to the new paradigm. As I recall, it doesn't include the new options that are in the definition of articulations ala the new stacking paradigm.

Zuill
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zuill
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Post by zuill » Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:58 pm

I already heard back from MM on this. They have been aware of the issue from the testing stage of v26, and are working to find a solution.

Let's see.

Zuill
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mark carlson
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Post by mark carlson » Mon Apr 26, 2021 6:37 pm

zuill wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:58 pm
I already heard back from MM on this. They have been aware of the issue from the testing stage of v26, and are working to find a solution.

Let's see.

Zuill
Thank you, Zuill! When I come across problems, I just assume it's because I don't know what I am doing, so I am reassured that, at least in this case, it really is a problem with Finale!

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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Apr 26, 2021 6:45 pm

If they couldn't fix it during the testing stage, I don't know if there's much hope.

mark carlson
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Post by mark carlson » Mon Dec 20, 2021 11:33 pm

Does anyone know if this problem with accents improved with v. 27? I'm still having trouble with it in v. 26, and if they did fix it in v. 27, it would be a very good reason to upgrade. It's really irritating.

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miker
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Post by miker » Tue Dec 21, 2021 12:47 am

Why not download the demo? That way, you could be sure it worked on your machine.
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mark carlson
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Post by mark carlson » Tue Dec 21, 2021 1:28 am

miker wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 12:47 am
Why not download the demo? That way, you could be sure it worked on your machine.
Aha. I didn't know there was a demo.

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miker
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Post by miker » Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:01 am

Go here: https://www.finalemusic.com/products/finale/

and press the Free Trial button. It's fully functional (except for the Garritan sounds, I believe) for 30 days.
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Hector Pascal
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Post by Hector Pascal » Thu Dec 23, 2021 4:20 am

I experienced misplacement of some accents in my score, due to the slur avoidance feature. Some were way too high. Some were fine. So, I duplicated the default articulation then tweaked the duplicate by turning off the stacking and making it ignore slurs. I then used the duplicate where necessary. However, I then discovered another problem...

I used the graphic tool to export to PDF. In the PDF:
• All of my duplicate articulation instances remained well positioned in the PDF. However:
• SOME of the default accents (with slur avoidance and stacking) that looked well-positioned on the Finale score screen were too high in the PDF! They were fine in Finale but had moved in the PDF process! I couldn't understand this.

I printed the PDF and then with a pencil, I circled the misplaced accents that had sprouted in the graphic tool export PDF process and went back into Finale to replace them with my duplicate articulation, even though they did look perfectly positioned on Finale's screen. It felt like fixing something that wasn't broke. When I completed that task, I exported a new PDF and was happy with it.

In a nutshell, I think the articulation's slur avoidance feature is not to be trusted even if it looks like its working on Finale's screen.

I plan to avoid this crazy situation next time by making sure I set the articulations to ignore slurs. (Like zuill mentions). It means manual positioning of the accents, but at least I will be more confident that they will survive the graphic tool export to PDF process.
Anyway, that was my experience :) I am about to start having a bit of a holiday now :)

Wishing you all the best at this time of year, by the way :)
Cheers,
Hector.

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