Michael, thank you for addressing my concerns, in this question and the others I posted. I notice this particular one is marked "Answered" rather than "Planned." Does that mean that we WON'T be seeing a fix in the next two to five years?

I was about to post a new thread when I discovered that this one already existed. To me, this is a glaring flaw in the program. Creating a new part from an existing one and choosing "Specify voicing" destroys spacing. And still worse, you can’t correct the spacing! I really don’t want to have to extract parts and save multiple files every time I do a big score since linked parts are so much more elegant.

I found threads of people complaining about this on other forums. Someone said this has been reported to MakeMusic many times and has gone ignored for 10 years. Any chance this could be addressed in soon version 25?

Matt, the more people complain, the more likely it will be that it will be fixed. There is an upvote feature on this forum for bug reports you agree with, but hardly anyone uses it, so I am sure that dozens (if not hundreds!) of supporting opinions never get noted.

Ten years is long enough, I think.

Hi all:

Duly noted. Yes, the upvote feature of this Feature Request Community is helpful in gauging the interest of a given request. Again, I know grace note spacing is a significant issue and look forward to addressing it in the future.

Cheers,

Michael Johnson

VP, Professional Notation

MakeMusic

What is the immediate solution to this problem? I have Finale 25.4 on the Mac.

John, read my original post. The workaround is stated explicitly.

I seem to remember posting about this before, but I will just add to this thread. That is not the only workaround, but it is probably the most straightforward one and will require less thinking.

What I do (because I don't want random extra finale files floating around – would much rather 1 file from which I print all PDFs/parts/scores from) is when I am cleaning up that part that has specified voicing and grace notes, is change the spacing of grace notes in document options before printing that one. If I nearly double the default value, it at least makes it readable, but does not look as it should and will still clash with other notes before it.

How do you upvote a feature request (however, I wouldn't call this a "feature")?

Alex, the problem with that is that it would open up the spacing on ALL grace notes, not just the ones in voiced, linked parts. Unvoiced parts with grace notes would then have their grace notes way too far away. I think extracting voiced parts separately is the only solution for now.

I don't leave it that way. I change the spacing only when I'm editing the linked part that has specified voicing. I don't print all at once, rather I print each part after I'm satisfied with the layout, and then it's on to the next part for cleanup. If the next part does not have specified voicing, I replace the original value of grace note spacing. Once you know what value works on voiced parts, this is a pretty quick extra step.

But that is aside from the point. Neither of these methods are "solutions" proper; they are compromises for a bug that needs fixing.

Hi Alex:

I completely agree that we need to fix how grace notes are handled!

Cheers,

Michael Johnson

Hi Miichael,

Eleven years, and the feature still doesn't work as planned. Don't the bosses think this is long enough for a crippling bug like this?

Glad we are on the same page, Michael.

I'm using Finale 26 on MacOS and the problem is still here... Any issue ?

Jean-Philippe, I am assuming you mean "any way to avoid this problem?"

Nothing has changed in fifteen years (!) on this bug. The best solution I know of is to extract the affected parts. Fortunately, you can do most of the layout before extracting, using tools like JW Copy Part Layout, and then apply music spacing to the extracted part to make the grace notes correct.

Christopher, thanks for the plug-in recommendation! I will have to try it out.