Yes, I would also appreciate this changement! I was also often in same situations, described above.

Dear Mr. Johnson, I had the same experience for many years, not only with other customers. When one starts setting a score the AMS is really helpful, but when the layout of a full score is coming to an end, you don't the AMS activated. So if you could incorporate this as a document option in a new Finale version it would help a lot.. Thank you and with best wishes, Chris Abelen - the Netherlands

Duly noted Chris. Thank you

Cheers,
Michael Johnson
VP, Professional Notation
MakeMusic

If you move it from program to doc options, it still needs to be accessible by plugins.

Hi Robert:

Yes, indeed we must maintain existing functionality in one way or another.

Cheers,

Michael Johnson

VP, Professional Notation

MakeMusic

Hi Chris:
There has long been desire to respect local overrides of user edits. I envision a way to both respect changes you've made regardless of how AMS is set as well as a way to manual "lock" a system from further edits. Finale needs more granularity with regards to when and what to space.

Cheers,

Michael Johnson

VP, Professional Notation

MakeMusic

Again I had a heart chilling experience with Automatic Music Spacing. I was switching between two works, one needing AMS, one which shouldn't have come near ìt. As it was, I had a backup, and lost just about one hour's work, because I noticed the error in time. This time. It could have been really much worse. 
I'm aware that Michael Johnson has answered favourably and kindly to this request, but if this improvement is not in the next update/upgrade of Finale I'm losing hope.

Anders said

... an established music publisher I'm sorry to say, who opened and made proof reading changes in carefully polished musx. files without turning off Automatic Music Spacing. The result was that the printed and published score looked rather awkward and amateurish....

I'd tell the publisher, "You broke it: you buy it!"

FWIW: The next version of Patterson Plugins will include the ability to copy music spacing from one doc to another. So in this case you might be able to use it to restore the spacing from the original version. Finale Copy/Paste can also do this, maybe even between docs. The only advantage my plugin brings is not having to do a full stack selection to do it.

J Adrian, I wouldn't tell my client that, even in a bad day.
Thank you, Robert, but I would prefer it to be a selectable preset within the document as explained before.

Anders, I fear for your lack of a sense of humor.

Anders,

I offer the plugin option only as a solution available now. I agree a document level option would be better.

But having said that, if you really care about spacing, have you considered turning Automatic Music Spacing off entirely? Personally I never use it. I have never used it because it destroys carefully spaced measures within any given document as you work. (A document level option does not help this issue.)

Now, however, I doubly don't use it. I use my "Note Spacing" plugin to invoke note spacing when I want it. The plugin has the following advantages over the built in spacing command:

* Additional spacing options for ledger lines and upstem flags

* Ability to skip manually spaced measures (by marking them with a hidden expression)

* Ability to have different spacing options in different regions of the file (which can be automatically linked to measure number regions)

* Ability to link the reference duration to whatever the beat value is.

The result is I find myself hardly ever doing any manual spacing any more. For really complicated spacing like overlapping tuplets of different sizes, the latest version of my Mass Copy plugin can copy spacing from one beat to another. (An improved version of this will be available in v5.12 of the plugins to be released soon.)

But under no circumstances, no never, not ever, not even hardly ever, really never do I turn on Automatic Music Spacing. It is and always has been anathema to me.

(ymmv)

Dear Robert,

I just read your reply about your Note spacing plugin. For some time I also don't use the Automatic Music Spacing any more (too many risks, as described earlier in this threat by others and me).

Your plug-in is exactly what I need and it works great, thank you very much for this, I will start using it right away.

best wishes, chris abelen

Dear Robert,

Thanks for your tip and offer! I think I very much would like to try your plug-in - where could I find it?

My way of doing things is pretty much the usual, I would think - in the very first stage I keep the AMS activated, to see what I'm entering (fx. in a measure filled with 32nds). Then I only have to leave the Speedy frame to have the blur cleared. A little slower is when using Caps lock to produce a measure filled with fx. sixteenth sixtuplets - when you leave the frame you have to designate the sixtuplets again (no big problem though). When going on to layout work, I turn AMS off, that is, when I don't forget it, switching from one job to another.

We had a discussion about spacing between layers in another thread here:

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115008528348-Finale-spacing-problems

Robert, does yor plug-in adress these issues as well? Even if not so, I would really like to try it.

All the best

Anders

Anders,

You can find out about my plugins at my website. (A fully-functional 30-day trial is included.)

The Note Spacing plugin does not address inter-layer spacing, unfortunately. To give you an idea how it works, it chunks the file (or selected region) based on the plugin settings. It then alters the Music Spacing document settings and selected region for that chunk and invokes Apply Note Spacing to Current Part/Score from the Finale menu. It then modifies the spacing settings and selected region for the next chunk and invokes the menu option again, etc. At the end it restores the original document settings when the plugin was invoked and restores the selected region to what it was. (One additional improvement over Finale is that you can invoke the plugin without a selected region and it will space the whole document.)

I was able to add support for ledger lines and upstem flags because Finale's built-in spacing takes into account the length of ledger lines and the horizontal positioning of the upstem flag character. By temporarily modifying these settings, you can get tighter or looser spacing around them. The plugin of course restores the original settings upon completion.

I have the Note Spacing plugin attached to a keyboard macro for instant spacing. (It also has an option to suppress the dialog.)

J A V, please don't fear. There are worse things.