MakeMusic Forum

Home | Log In | Register | Search | Help

MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > FinaleScript - FORUM HAS MOVED! > Your SUGGESTIONS for future version(s) of FinaleScript

Forum Quick Jump

39 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2

[ << Previous Thread | Next Thread >> | Show Newest Post First ]

Robert P.
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 1691

Posted 11/26/2004 2:29 PM (GMT -6)

Feel free to post your suggestions for improvements and new features. The ball is your court!

Robert

Post Edited (Robert Piéchaud) : 11/28/2004 10:39:47 AM GMT

Bill Stevens
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 5408

Posted 11/26/2004 2:48 PM (GMT -6)

I'd like to see clearer documentation.

Bill Stevens
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 5408

Posted 11/26/2004 2:55 PM (GMT -6)

Maybe this can already be done, but how about a script that does selective copying:

Copy entry items chords and lyrics
Copy measure items smart shapes and measure widths

Bill

Richard N.
Musician

Date Joined May 2001
Total Posts : 1424

Posted 11/27/2004 4:19 AM (GMT -6)

Robert,

I know I've mentioned this before, bu twith the growing number of people using GPO, it would be great to have a quick way of changing all of the MIDI out settings, to make it easier to switch between a setup for GPO and a setup for normal soundcard or other midi devices.

Richard N.

Hardware = Athlon XP 2200 ~ 1.5 Gb RAM ~ Audigy Sound Card

Software = F2k5 ~ Garritan GPO ~ Cakewalk ~ Cubasis ~ WinXP Home SP1

Real Instruments = Bach Strad LT16MG, LT36G, 42B + B&H Soveriegn Tenor Trombones ~ Holton 181 Bass Trombone ~ Getzen Bass Trumpet ~ B&H Euphonium ~ Roland MIDI controller & SoundCanvas

Leisure stuff = ST:TNG ~ Kronenbourg ~ Italian Red Wine ~ Curry

All posts spellchecked using a very unreliable beta version of GreyMatter^® ver. 1.01

Dave Hage
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 406

Posted 11/27/2004 7:34 AM (GMT -6)

Hi Robert,

Conditional branching we be great.
More printing control (page setup)
Attach script to Key Command or have a script "menu"
For Mac users interegration with Applescript

Regards

Dave Hage
Dakota Music Ltd

Bart Visser
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1999
Total Posts : 90

Posted 11/28/2004 3:29 AM (GMT -6)

Export Graphics with Finale Script (and/or print to PDF)
Special Part Extraction
Move/Copy Layers

Dave Hage said...

Attach script to Key Command or have a script "menu"
For Mac users interegration with Applescript

Amen to that!

Bart

Ansgar Krause
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 1999
Total Posts : 416

Posted 11/28/2004 7:02 AM (GMT -6)

There are so many useful mass mover commands that need so many clicks to apply.
e.g. change noteheads
delete only text, articulations, expressions, chords etc. out of a selected region...

Would be wonderful if we could have more metatools (or finalescript-macros) for those actions.
BTW:
Why does mass mover only allow so few user-defineable shortcuts?

Ansgar Krause

Mac 1GHz G4/OSX.3.4/22 inch Cinema display and PowerBook 15"
Finale 2004c
Roland D-10/Kawai GMega
MIDIMAN 2x2 interface

Fonts:
http://www.ansgarkrause.de/finalfonts.htm

Peter Thomsen
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 8331

Posted 11/28/2004 7:49 AM (GMT -6)

Dave Hage said...
...Attach script to Key Command or have a script "menu"...

There is a user interface problem here:
How can you best access your scripts if you have 50 scripts?

A script palette?

A script menu with submenus?

Having to remember 50 different hot keys for 50 different scripts is not realistic, at least for some users.

Peter

Mac Finale 2004c & 2005, Mac OS X 10.3.6, iMac G4 1.25 GHz, 1 GB RAM

Robert P.
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 1691

Posted 11/28/2004 9:07 AM (GMT -6)

There is a user interface problem here:
How can you best access your scripts if you have 50 scripts?

I guess one could have the choice of showing/hiding a given script in the menu, and whether or not to equip it with a shortcut...

Robert

Dave Hage
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 406

Posted 11/28/2004 11:04 AM (GMT -6)

Hi Peter/Robert,

How about a menu with submenus with the option of assgning key commands. You could give the user control of the hierachy in the same way as the plug-in menu.

Regards

Dave Hage
Dakota Music Ltd

Bill Stevens
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 5408

Posted 11/28/2004 9:45 PM (GMT -6)

Reply to Ansgar:

>> There are so many useful mass mover commands that need so many clicks to apply.
e.g. ... delete only text, articulations, expressions, chords etc. out of a selected region...

If you mean you want to delete lyrics you can do it with a script that says that: "delete lyrics".

It's my very favorite and most-used Finale Script.

I tried "delete smartshapes" and that worked. I tried "delete chords" and that worked.

I tried "delete articulations" and it (yikes!) deleted measures. Ditto for "delete expressions".

Oh well...

Bill

Allen J. Fisher
Engraver

Date Joined May 2004
Total Posts : 653

Posted 11/29/2004 10:04 AM (GMT -6)

Dave Hage said...

For Mac users interegration with Applescript

How would you want this done? Most of the scripting that I do has commands called "doAsAppleScript" and "doAppleScript"

DoAsAppleScript means that the code that follows is AppleScript and the script interpreter is smart enough to parse the next lines out as AppleScript. DoAppleScript <scriptname> simply calls the named script on your system.

Dave Hage
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 406

Posted 11/29/2004 10:24 AM (GMT -6)

Hi Allen,

Never thought there would be a choice! Both would be nice, I am guessing that "doApplescript" is easier to implement, but "doAsApplescript" would be very powerful. I guess for most people the first option would suffice as a start.

Regards

Dave Hage
Dakota Music Service

Robert P.
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 1691

Posted 11/29/2004 10:44 AM (GMT -6)

Dave and Allen,

In the case of "doApplescript", how FS would know the location of the script file? (either compiled or text)

Robert

Dave Hage
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 406

Posted 11/29/2004 11:39 AM (GMT -6)

Dear Allen and Robert,

I would think a "set" location within the Finale folder similar to the plug-ins folder. In our case the Applescripts would almost certainly reside on a "local" drive. Or maybe "set" the folder or script location at the start of the Finalescript, or a Finalescript user preference.

Regards

Dave Hage
Dakota Music Ltd

Allen J. Fisher
Engraver

Date Joined May 2004
Total Posts : 653

Posted 11/29/2004 12:07 PM (GMT -6)

Robert Piéchaud said...
Dave and Allen,

In the case of "doApplescript", how FS would know the location of the script file? (either compiled or text)

Robert

I would think you'd specify the path, no? ie

run AppleScript "dir/subdir/MyCoolScript"

I also noticed that the scripting language I use for testing has dropped the ability to simply call a script, since they can compile appleScript code as well as their own language:

do acquireDataScript as AppleScrip
tput "Eggplant" into app -- name of the app we want to leave showing
do AppleScript merge of {{
tell application "Finder"
activate
set visible of every process whose name is not "[[app]]" to false
end tell}}
put doAppleScript(merge("get [[A]] + []")) into sumDoneTheHardWay

None-the-less I think the ability to call a script would be quite useful.

Allen

Post Edited (Allen J. Fisher) : 11/29/2004 5:21:38 PM GMT

Dave Hage
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 406

Posted 11/29/2004 12:20 PM (GMT -6)

Hi Guys,

From and end user, non programmer point of view, we would need a drag and drop or "simple" file selection dialogue method to specify the path.
In my experience a considerable amount of Mac users find the /Library and ~/Library paths confusing in OS X

Regards

Dave Hage
Dakota Music Ltd

Robert P.
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 1691

Posted 11/29/2004 12:25 PM (GMT -6)

From and end user, non programmer point of view, we would need a drag and drop or "simple" file selection dialogue method to specify the path.

Interesting, noted.

Robert

Bart Visser
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1999
Total Posts : 90

Posted 12/1/2004 12:44 AM (GMT -6)

Is it possiblie to do the AppleScript part the other way around? Make it possible to call a FinaleScript from AppleScript. So from an AppleScript I say:

tell app "Finale 2006"
do FinaleScript "Script name"
do FinaleScriptCommand "select all" (or something like that)
end tell

This, in my eyes, would be the most powerful implementation of AppleScript because you can create an AppleScript that works together with FinaleScript to get the job done. You could use AppleScript to manipulate a Finale file without adding real AppleScript-support to Finale (which would be a far better option, but I'm afraid it's one I'll allways have to keep dreaming of).

Bart

Dave Hage
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 406

Posted 12/1/2004 2:53 AM (GMT -6)

Hi Bart

Finale for OS X does have a basic Applescript dictionary. I have also had some success with UI scripting, ther is more information at

http://www.apple.com/applescript/uiscripting/

If there was a Finalescript "menu" it would/should be fairly easy to manipulate it with UI Applescripts.

Regards

Dave Hage
Dakota Music Ltd

Bart Visser
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1999
Total Posts : 90

Posted 12/1/2004 9:24 AM (GMT -6)

Hi Dave,

I know Finale has a very basic AppleScript support. I also use GUI-scripting but one of the things I can't get to work is clicking buttons (like: click radio button "This" or click button "That"). This is probably not working because of the old code Finale is written in (I'm not a programmer, just read something about this problem somewhere).

Allthough good GUI-scripting support will do a lot of good, there are some big advantages if it would be possible to use something like "do FinaleScript" and "do FinaleScript Command".

First of all using GUI to click somewhere in within a menu-structure can get the wrong FinaleScript to run. You have to update your AppleScripts every time you update the FinaleScript menu (although using names instead of ID's would greatly reduce this problem). Secondly, in a menu-structure you are not able to send individual commands. You have to run a whole script and thus it's not possible to do something like "Select measure 5 through 10", do a few AppleScript thing, and return to Finale to finish what you where doing there.

So I would love to have better control over Finale with AppleScript. GUI-scripting (working properly) is great. Being able to send a FinaleScript command will create very powerful scripting options.

Cheers,

Bart

Sorry for the bad english. I'm dutch so typing in English does not alway work properly in my head ;-)

dennisc
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 2

Posted 12/31/2004 7:54 AM (GMT -6)

Here are a couple of things I'd like to be able to do with Finalescript:
- Append one file to another, with everything: music, text blocks, layout, etc. to make a unique file out of, say, the four movements of a work.
- Exchange the music between two parts in a selected region (give the violin the flute part and the flute the violin part).

Thanks!

Dennis

Aaron Sherber
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2000
Total Posts : 330

Posted 1/2/2005 1:28 PM (GMT -6)

I'd love for some UI and miscellaneous improvements which I asked Coda for when Finalescript first came out.

1. The Finalescript and Editor windows should remember their size and position between Finale sessions. Currently they both open up in the center of the screen, in an unusably small size.

2. I'm not sure exactly why you decided to code the Finalescript window with a maximum width, but there are ways of doing this that don't cause an annoying flicker every time you try to open it wider.

3. Balloon help on the Finalescript toolbar buttons.

4. Hierarchical storage for Finalescripts. I should be able to arrange these into useful groups, just as I can do with plugins. I have no incentive to create lots of scripts if I have to keep scrolling through a long list to find the one I want.

5. It would be nice if the Editor window had some kind of menubar that would let me create a script without referring to the Command Reference. By clicking through the hierarchical menus, I could find the commands I needed, which would then be inserted into the script, with some kind of placeholder for page numbers, layer numbers, measure numbers, etc. This is the way some HTML editors work, for example.

Thanks,
Aaron.

Bart Visser
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1999
Total Posts : 90

Posted 1/5/2005 4:06 PM (GMT -6)

asherber said...

5. It would be nice if the Editor window had some kind of menubar that would let me create a script without referring to the Command Reference. By clicking through the hierarchical menus, I could find the commands I needed, which would then be inserted into the script, with some kind of placeholder for page numbers, layer numbers, measure numbers, etc. This is the way some HTML editors work, for example.

Great idea! It would also be nice to be able to have more than one script open (editable) at the time. In that way you could copy/paste easily between scripts.

Bart

Aaron Sherber
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2000
Total Posts : 330

Posted 1/11/2005 10:01 AM (GMT -6)

Finalescript allows me to select different tools, but often not to do anything useful with the tool. It would be nice if this were changed.

For example, I can select the measure tool, but I can't edit measure number regions. It seems to me that the following pseudocode would be a perfect candidate for a scripting language, and yet Finalescript doesn't seem to be able to do it:

for each measure_region
change font to [Times] 12

Aaron.

39 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2

Forum Information

Currently it is Tuesday, December 19, 2023 8:00 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 403,820 posts in 58,165 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads

Need Support? | Forum Help Manual