Stave height

General notation questions, including advanced notation, formatting, etc., go here.

Moderators: Peter Thomsen, miker

User avatar
David Ward
Posts: 814
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 4:48 pm
Finale Version: F 25.5 & 26.3
Operating System: Mac

Post by David Ward » Thu May 06, 2021 11:02 am

I still seem to find this confusing, although I've had it all explained to me here in the past (by Peter, I think).

For the A4 specified in the dialogue (screenshot), is the stave height 73% of 4.8 mm or something different? What height would it be if printed to B4? And if printed to A3?

The current A4 stave height is perfectly acceptable for a ‘study score’ professionally laser printed. However, the conductor will need at least B4 and maybe A3, hence my questions.

(The piece is for 6 singers & 23 instruments with a maximum of 30 staves in a system - most with fewer - and is 315 pages of music when laid out with up to five systems to a page, although quite often there is only one system on a page. It all needs to be bound in a single volume.)
Attachments
Untitled.jpg
Finale 25.5 & 26.3
Mac 10.13.6 & 10.14.6


User avatar
Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6601
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu May 06, 2021 3:02 pm

David Ward wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 11:02 am
… For the A4 specified in the dialogue (screenshot), is the stave height 73% of 4.8 mm or something different? What height would it be if printed to B4? And if printed to A3? …
In the dialog box {Page Format for Score} there is a {Units} pop up menu for (Measurement Units).
If you, in the pop up menu {Units}, change to other Measurement Units, Finale will automatically, dynamically, recalculate all the values in the new Units.

In your particular situation it might help to change the Units to small units, like EVPUs or Points - since Finale’s layout calculations are based on those small units.
Font sizes - e. g. - are in Points.

In the screen shot, if you change the Units to Points, you will see that the value for Staff Height changes from 0.48066 (Centimeters) to 13.625 (Points).

Here comes the secret:
100 % Staff Height is 24 Points (and the size of the document’s Default Music Font is - probably - 24 Points, too).
24 Points = 0.84667 Centimeters

The same measurements in EVPUs:
0.48066 Centimeters = 13.625 Points = 54.5 EVPUs (or, in “Finale shorthand”: 0.48066c = 13.625pt = 54.5e)
100 % Staff Height is 96 EVPUs.

Hence:
The “percent size” of the Staff Height is 13.625/24 = 54.5/96 = 56.77083333… %

When the system is scaled to 73 %, the resulting “percent size” is 0.73 * 54.5/96 = 41.4427083333… %.
Which is what Finale tells you in the screen shot:
Resulting System Scaling: 41 %

Since you need to know the “absolute” Staff Height in Centimeters, the conversion calculation goes like this:
0.84667 Centimeters * 41.4427083333… % = 35.088… Centimeters

1) When you change the paper size from A4 to A3, the measurement is multiplied by the square root of 2:
35.088… Centimeters * 1,4142… = 49.6223… Centimeters

2) When you change the paper size from A4 to B4, the measurement is multiplied by the fourth root of 2:
35.088… Centimeters * 1,1892… = 41.72725… Centimeters

Geddit?
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

User avatar
David Ward
Posts: 814
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 4:48 pm
Finale Version: F 25.5 & 26.3
Operating System: Mac

Post by David Ward » Thu May 06, 2021 4:20 pm

Peter Thomsen wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 3:02 pm

Geddit?
Sort of - IF I've understood, I need to multiply the absolute stave height of 24 points by the Resulting System Scaling to get the figure in points for the stave size for A4, and to multiply this result by the square root of 2 for A3 or by the 4th root of 2 for B4. To convert the points of the result to centimetres, I then multiply by 0.0353 (or I suspect quicker, use an online conversion table such as https://www.unitconverters.net/length/p ... imeter.htm ).

I'm not expecting this to happen, but the dialogue box I'd like to see in Finale would do all this arithmetic for me… (How does it work in Dorico et al?)
Finale 25.5 & 26.3
Mac 10.13.6 & 10.14.6

User avatar
zuill
Posts: 4418
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2016 9:35 pm
Finale Version: Finale 2011-v26.3.1
Operating System: Windows

Post by zuill » Thu May 06, 2021 4:31 pm

Peter Thomsen wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 3:02 pm
1) When you change the paper size from A4 to A3, the measurement is multiplied by the square root of 2:
35.088… Centimeters * 1,4142… = 49.6223… Centimeters

2) When you change the paper size from A4 to B4, the measurement is multiplied by the fourth root of 2:
35.088… Centimeters * 1,4142… = 41.72725… Centimeters

Geddit?
It looks like you used the square root of 2 for both calculations, but with different results.

Zuill
Windows 10, Finale 2011-v26.3.1
"When all is said and done, more is said than done."

User avatar
David Ward
Posts: 814
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 4:48 pm
Finale Version: F 25.5 & 26.3
Operating System: Mac

Post by David Ward » Thu May 06, 2021 4:51 pm

zuill wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 4:31 pm
Peter Thomsen wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 3:02 pm
… … …
It looks like you used the square root of 2 for both calculations, but with different results.

Zuill
I suspect he may have done square root of square root for 4th root.
Finale 25.5 & 26.3
Mac 10.13.6 & 10.14.6

User avatar
Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6601
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu May 06, 2021 5:45 pm

Oops, sorry!
That was a copy/paste error.

I have corrected my previous post.

The fourth root of 2 is 1,1892…
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

User avatar
Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6601
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu May 06, 2021 6:04 pm

David Ward wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 4:20 pm
… Sort of - IF I've understood, I need to multiply the absolute stave height of 24 points by the Resulting System Scaling to get the figure in points for the stave size for A4, and to multiply this result by the square root of 2 for A3 or by the 4th root of 2 for B4. To convert the points of the result to centimetres, I then multiply by 0.0353 (or I suspect quicker, use an online conversion table such as https://www.unitconverters.net/length/p ... imeter.htm ) …
In the online manual there is a conversion table that explains the size of the various Measurement Units available in Finale.


David Ward wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 4:20 pm
… I'm not expecting this to happen, but the dialogue box I'd like to see in Finale would do all this arithmetic for me …
Indeed that would be nice.
- Excellent for a feature request.

But …
Perhaps you do not need to make the layout calculations so complicated?

1) You could use Points instead of Centimeters.
After all, font sizes are always in Points.

2) You may not need to use multiple scaling factors.
You could, to Keep It Simple,
- set Staff Height to 100 % (= 24 Points),
- set System Scaling to 100 %,
- use only Page Scaling to get the desired size of 41 %.

These steps will make the layout calculations much simpler.
The flip side is that you have to adjust the font size in page attached text blocks.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

User avatar
David Ward
Posts: 814
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 4:48 pm
Finale Version: F 25.5 & 26.3
Operating System: Mac

Post by David Ward » Fri May 07, 2021 12:37 pm

Peter Thomsen wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 6:04 pm
David Ward wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 4:20 pm
… I'm not expecting this to happen, but the dialogue box I'd like to see in Finale would do all this arithmetic for me …
Indeed that would be nice.
- Excellent for a feature request.
This seems to be a relevant dialogue in Dorico:
Attachments
Screenshot 2021-05-07 at 13.29.32.png
Finale 25.5 & 26.3
Mac 10.13.6 & 10.14.6

BuonTempi
Posts: 1297
Joined: Fri Aug 20, 2010 8:59 am
Finale Version: Finale 27
Operating System: Mac

Post by BuonTempi » Sun May 09, 2021 3:07 pm

Finale has two fields to set the staff size only for reasons of ancient history. In truth, it only needs one. Why define a scaling % of an arbitrary value?

And then, once you've set up the Page Format dialog as you want it, and pressed OK, nothing happens until you go to the Page Layout Tool, and Redefine All Pages.

The Redefine Pages submenu contains four page range options, and a fifth menu item that brings up a dialog, which contains those very same options....

At the very least, the Redefine Pages dialog should be accessed from the Page Format dialog.

Back in Page Format Tool, we've also got an incoherent set of options for adjusting those settings found in Page Format, when you could just have one "Change Page Format" command. It could be essentially the same as the Page Format dialog itself -- the only difference being that one has the default values, and one makes changes to a range.

This is just one example of a myriad things MM could do to reduce the Byzantine complexity, improve user's productivity, and make the app more appealing to newcomers.

The last significant revision of the interface for productivity was the Staff Tool in 2011 - a decade ago; with Expressions and the Selection Tool before that. Each new version of Finale should be making similar changes, if it's to stay in the game.

It's nearly a year since 26.3 was released, and 2.5 years since the last 'paid-for' release.

Post Reply