Hi Lillie,
Thanks for the reply. everything you write makes sense.
I seem to have needs/desires that most people don’t require when it comes to spacing. I find the flow system really excellent for putting together tune folios because it means that I can put more than one tune on a single page, or design a two-page spread that has three tunes on it.
With our work, though, we often have textual elements that need to go on the page as well, and because the text, music, and layout are all evolving as the folio gets put together, it’s not practical for us to wait until the “very end” to do the layout. Layout is itself part of the design process and we need to be able to iterate on the layout as we work toward the final product.
As a result we’re just having to do a substantial amount of hand work because there’s no way to make changes that are durable if another element moves. I understand that this is extremely complicated technical/coding stuff that leads to all of this layout in the first place (and that music is much, much more complicated than text) but it is just really frustrating to have this lamborghini or an engraving program, but having to do workarounds and kludges to get it to do what we need it to do.
With regard to the system fullness indicator, can I make a function request to have the option to toggle it off?? I don’t remember seeing it that much before (thanks for confirming that) and now it’s there all the time in engraving mode and I just find it super distracting when I’m trying to work on visual layout. there are so many things on the screen in that mode that it really difficult to get a sense of what the page will look like as I’m adjusting different elements.
In graphics programs like InDesign, you can toggle views right from the page you’re working on (e.g. not like shifting to the print tab) so that you can see your work more like it will appear on the printed/screen page. In this case some of the options are “overprint preview” and “presentaiton mode” (among others).
It would be helpful to have some kind of option like this in the engraving mode as a global feature — particularly if the choice is made to keep the system fullness indicator visible at all times.
While we’re speaking of graphic design features, I’ve noticed that there is no way to adjust “tracking” which is the common term of art for adjusting line height between lines of text. This would not be necessary/useful for most applications in music engraving, but it is really important for blocks of text – say, for example, chunks of lyrics that you put down at the bottom of a page. I might like to use 12pt text and adjust the line height (tracking) to 16pt, or something like that to give the text the chance to breathe a bit.