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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Macintosh - FORUM HAS MOVED! > EPS file problems - ignored or forgotten? | Forum Quick Jump
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digitalmusicart
Specialist Guitar Engravers
      
Date Joined Jan 1999
Total Posts : 309
| Posted 7/6/2011 5:32 PM (GMT -6) |   | Months ago, I reported two separate issues that were affecting EPS files. I'm saddened to see that these have not been addressed in any maintenance releases. I write this post as a both a "reminder" to the Finale team, but also as a report to others who may not have know about these issues, or seen these issues and were unaware of what was causing them.
ISSUE 1: Break Tablature Lines At Numbers
If you open a Finale 2011 EPS file that uses this functionality in Adobe Illustrator instead of the white rectangles that used to be used to obscure the tablature lines behind numbers, you find only a single "point" where the box is supposed to be. To all intents and purposes this stops further processing of the files in EPS format for me.
ISSUE 2: Redundant Tracking on the final item in a group in EPS files
This may well be affecting many people who are trying to use EPS files in page layout applications such as Adobe InDesign. Basically, tracking is used in Finale EPS generation to space elements such as lyrics and chords. This appears to work well except in one case - tracking of the final item in any group should always be set to zero, after all, when you add tracking to an element it simply pushes the NEXT element further to the right (or left in the case of negative tracking). However, in Finale 2011 the last element in a group often retains the tracking of the previous element. If the last element in group is near the right edge of the page then the "tracking" can extend beyond the edge of the page, and page layout programs such as InDesign interpret this just like any other element. The problem with this is that this changes how pages sizes (and consequently, placement issues) are calculated. Things like finder previews also show inconsistent width, and Apple's own "Preview" application gets the page sizes confused too.
I include an annotated screen capture that highlights both of these issues. [edit: sadly the screengrab doesn't show the dots above and to the left of the tab numbers, finale tech just try it and open an EPS in illustrator to see what I mean!]
Simon Troup
Digital Music Art
United Kingdom
http://www.digitalmusicart.com
If you can twang it, we can engrave it!
Real Time Finale Discussion - FinaleIRC.Com
UK Songwriting Festival - uksongwritingfestival.com
Finale 2011, Apple Mac Pro Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, 6 GB RAM, MacOSX 10.6.4, Focusrite Saffire LE.Post Edited (digitalmusicart) : 7/6/2011 5:37:23 PM (GMT-5)
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Dr. Wiggy
Early music: modern methods
Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 12628
| Posted 7/8/2011 6:39 AM (GMT -6) | | Erik Hagner said...
Thanks Wiggy, but my publisher only takes EPS-files for reasons I'm not aware of.
I would certainly ask what those reasons are. (Are you sure it's not just EPS as opposed to TIFFs?**)
I appreciate that in an ideal world, Finale should make accurate EPSes, but if your publisher is keen on getting trouble-free vector files, then PDFs offer an easy mechanism.
As I say, if they absolutely insist that PDFs are incapable of being used in the same way as EPSes, then you can easily convert PDF files to EPSes in Acrobat or Illustrator. This process could be automated, perhaps using a Folder Action so that any PDF dropped into a folder gets converted to EPS automatically.
**I am often surprised how many people simply follow a specification without knowing anything about why it is specified. I was once asked by someone who claimed to work in Print Production for an advertising agency if I could "convert these JPEGs to Photoshop files, so that the web team can open them in Photoshop". So I charged for the conversion. But I digress....
Finale 2011c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.6
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk | | Back to Top | |
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digitalmusicart
Specialist Guitar Engravers
Date Joined Jan 1999
Total Posts : 309
| Posted 7/8/2011 9:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Wiggy said...digitalmusicart said...
The important thing to bear in mind here is that opening files in illustrator enables the files to be edited at EPS level, which means that all manner of more advanced technical illustrations can be created. You can open PDFs from Finale in Illustrator and edit them in exactly the same way.
We could just get the stupid bug fixed regardless of your preferred file format Wiggy.
I haven't seen a way of exporting individual pages as separate PDF files, which makes it slower for loading the pages into InDesign. If I want to make edits in Illustrator, I have to faff about to resave to multipage PDF, or further process to separate. Given that Finale should just fix this export issue because it's clearly broken, I see no reason to move to PDF other than to work around this long standing bug which is clearly affecting more people than just myself.
Simon Troup
Digital Music Art
United Kingdom
http://www.digitalmusicart.com
If you can twang it, we can engrave it!
Real Time Finale Discussion - FinaleIRC.Com
UK Songwriting Festival - uksongwritingfestival.com
Finale 2011, Apple Mac Pro Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, 6 GB RAM, MacOSX 10.6.4, Focusrite Saffire LE. | | Back to Top | |
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digitalmusicart
Specialist Guitar Engravers
Date Joined Jan 1999
Total Posts : 309
| Posted 7/8/2011 10:29 AM (GMT -6) | | wiggy said...
If there is some reason why EPS files are essential (which I can't think of)...
wiggy said...digitalmusicart said...
I see no reason to move to PDF. Bend like the willow, or snap like the oak. 
What I mean is, beyond longer workarounds for Finale's broken functionality, there is no need to reinvent my, or my publishers, workflows, especially when it contains further automation steps. By writing direct to EPS I have files that work perfectly in InDesign and Illustrator without the need to deal with all the import/export options. Given that there is no requirement for the whole "Portable" thing (I know exactly the environments that the files will be used in) all those "smarter" and "more advanced" options (according to Adobe) are completely irrelevant.
I'm surprised though, that individual PDF page export is not available as a graphic export option under GRAPHICS > EXPORT PAGE in Finale. That would cut out an entire step.
However, even if this were possible there's still no point to bother with PDF if you're only planning to use the files in InDesign.
Simon Troup
Digital Music Art
United Kingdom
http://www.digitalmusicart.com
If you can twang it, we can engrave it!
Real Time Finale Discussion - FinaleIRC.Com
UK Songwriting Festival - uksongwritingfestival.com
Finale 2011, Apple Mac Pro Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, 6 GB RAM, MacOSX 10.6.4, Focusrite Saffire LE.Post Edited (digitalmusicart) : 7/8/2011 10:38:36 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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digitalmusicart
Specialist Guitar Engravers
Date Joined Jan 1999
Total Posts : 309
| Posted 7/8/2011 11:12 AM (GMT -6) | | Like you said, export to PDF from finale. open acrobat, open the file, extract pages. That's another program, more file open/save/close/delete original file stuff.
What I don't want is anyone to think there is a simple or fast alternative that means not fixing the bug can wait. Those extra steps can get very dull and very time consuming exceptionally quickly when you're dealing with large numbers of files. I know all about automation, my workflow includes illustrator applescripting, automator, php, quickeys, distiller and all manner of file syncing and status reporting software. Recreating this to work in a PDF based workflow would be very, very costly in time and testing, and for what? No improvement in quality, which is what it is the bottom line. If I didn't care about quality and only how long something took to knock out I might consider using sibelius.
The workaround tips are awesome if you've got a couple of files to do, what I want however (as the thread starter, I don't have any objection to discussing all of this stuff obviously, but I guess you can see what I was after from the topic title) is to get the damn bug fixed. You've no idea how frustrated I am that this has remained unresolved despite reporting it many, many months ago.
Speaking of automation, I don't recall seeing this excellent book mentioned on here before. Probably getting a bit out of date but enables some awesome batch EPS operations. This made me wonder if individual page PDF file export might be possible using Finalescript - must look into that if I get a moment.
[edited to fix broken URL]
Simon Troup
Digital Music Art
United Kingdom
http://www.digitalmusicart.com
If you can twang it, we can engrave it!
Real Time Finale Discussion - FinaleIRC.Com
UK Songwriting Festival - uksongwritingfestival.com
Finale 2011, Apple Mac Pro Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, 6 GB RAM, MacOSX 10.6.4, Focusrite Saffire LE.Post Edited (digitalmusicart) : 7/8/2011 11:26:23 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Peter Thomsen
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 8331
| Posted 7/8/2011 12:07 PM (GMT -6) | | digitalmusicart said...
Like you said, export to PDF from finale. open Acrobat, open the file, extract pages. That's another program, more file open/save/close/delete original file stuff...
Actually, that is not what Wiggy said, but it could have been put more clearly:
Wiggy said...
...You can just Save as a PDF, specifying a single page range. No different from the EPS export options process...
What Wiggy said, means
1) Command-P to open the Print dialog box,
2) specify a single page range,
3) choose "Save as PDF..." in the PDF pop up menu.
You use a different dialog box (the Print dialog instead of the Graphics Tool's Export dialog), but the number of steps is no different.
Mac Finale, 2011b, Dolet 5 plug-in, Mac OS X 10.6.7, iMac Intel Core i7, 2.93 GHz, 16 GB RAM | | Back to Top | |
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