Changing time signature of a selected region or bar

[TonyEastwood]

I'm confused by the operation of the type signature tool.

• If I select a number of bars (with shift down and mouse), continue to hold the shift key down and then double click in the last selected bar the time signature tool will pop up with the correct measures preselected - and I can choose a new time signature for those measures.
  
  If select just one bar and double click in that bar then it offers to change the sign signature for all bars to the next time signature change, not just the one bar, I have selected.

(I've experimented with control, alt (command) and shift keys just in case these modifiers might help. But haven't found any 'magic' combinations that help.

I think haven't understood how double click is really intended to work in the time signature tool. Where do I find documentation that explains this clearly? I'd expect these docs to explain how double click in the last bar of a selected region does work (as explained above) and what else we can do.

many thanks

[Peter Thomsen]

… and then double click in the last selected bar …

Actually you can double click anywhere in the selected region.
You do not have to double click the last selected measure.

[motet]

No need to hold down shift when double-clicking, either.

Single measures are special. To change only a single measure, you need to select the first Measure Region item in the Time Signature dialog.

[TonyEastwood]

Thank you for your helpful replies, I think I've sorted it.

After I restart Finale the time signature tool works exactly as you both describe (correctly).

However, after 20-30 minutes extensive editing, (using many other tools including articulation, expression etc) the time signature behaviour gradually deteriorates to what I first described above. It becomes increasingly difficult to get the Time Signature dialog to pop up no matter how/where I click

(Restarting when it does not behave correctly is not a problem for me)

[motet]

A "virtual stick key"? Sometimes Finale thinks a key is pressed when it isn't, especially Shift, Alt, or Ctrl.

[TonyEastwood]

RE: virtual stick key

Yes I've had stuck keys, not just in Finale but in Windows 11 (!)

[motet]

When that happens, you might try pressing and releasing all those keys, which might save you having to relaunch.

I've only used Finale 27 to help people here, my workhorse version being 2014.5, but I've gotten virtually stuck keys a number of times in Finale 27, and almost never in 2014.5 (Windows 10). It seems like it may be related to switching windows with Alt+Tab, but I can't be sure. I may write an "all keys up" macro in Autohotkey, but MakeMusic really needs to get their act together and hire some people with serious technical chops.

[miker]

MakeMusic really needs to get their act together and hire some people with serious technical chops.

And wouldn’t that be a wondrous thing?

[TonyEastwood]

As retired professional programmer I can tell you that low level bugs will be in the toolkits used to build Finale or in Windows itself. Microsoft seems to 'delight' in breaking underlying functionality.

A classic example is Finale in scroll view. The measure box has an accelerator key of alt-U. In Windows 11 pressing alt-U (often ) no longer selects that box!!! On those days my AHK macro that would have scrolled to the left or right by two bars no longer works. The only way I can scroll a couple of bars is to most awkwardly navigate with my mouse to that box and then adjust the number by hand. On a 4K Monitor the measure box is very small.

If there is a better work round please tell me.

[motet]

In my case Finale 2014.5 is fine and Finale 27 is not on Windows 10, which would suggest it's not a Windows problem, but you never know.

What's curious is that sometimes that U in Measure is underlined and sometimes it's not. And pressing the Alt key by itself is supposed to toggle the underlines in the display--it does for those in the menu bar, but not in Measure, which either stays underlined all the time or is never underlined. I have to suspect this is a Finale glitch.

For your problem, since you are using Autohotkey, you can have it move the cursor to that box to do what you want to do, or perhaps better, have click twice on the scroll arrows.

[TonyEastwood]

On my laptop, just right now, alt-U correctly focusses on the measure box. This morning it did not. I'm not insane. Such intermittent behavior started with Windows 11.

When alt-U works one can have a very simple script like :

;===== Scrolling in landscape mode
^+PgUp::
SetKeyDelay (50)
Send, {Esc}
Send, {Esc}
Send !u{Down}{Enter}
Send !u{Down}{Enter}
Return

But direct scrolling may be possible according to this AHK link:
https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/ ... ny-script/.

Scrolling two bars to left or right is very useful musically as you can scroll about without losing the musical context. I have asked the Finale "official help" folks for them to implement <shift-control-pageup> and <shift-control-pagedown> directly.

[motet]

I do this to move one measure (left and right). It doesn't seem to require a key delay.

+PgUp::Send !u{Down}{Enter}
+PgDn::Send !u{Up}{Enter}

As I said, if Alt+U doesn't work reliably, you can likely replace it with a mouse move, unless you're in the habit of resizing your Finale window often. There's a way in AHK to move the mouse, do what you want, then move it back to where it was.