Editing lyric fonts

[Rob M.]

At page 47, the Encore 5 Manual (v2009.3.2) says:

Use the Text menu to set the font, point size, and style for your lyrics. If no lyrics are selected, these changes are global. If lyrics are selected, the changes affect only the selected lyrics, allowing you to mix fonts and styles.

At page 70, it says:

Select a font, size, and style (if desired) from the Text menu. This becomes the font selection for the current line. You can change the font information later for either the entire lyric line or individual syllables.

The statement at page 47 appears to be accurate; the statement at page 70 appears to be inaccurate. A font change made without selecting any part of the text appears to apply globally, not just to the current lyric line.

This raises a question not addressed by the manual (as far as I can see): how does one select an entire line of the lyrics?

When the manual is revised, perhaps it could also state the permitted range of font sizes. It would also be helpful if the manual stated that fractional font sizes are not permitted, and that the selected font size must be an integer, though an integer that does not appear in the drop-down size list will be accepted if it is within the acceptable range of font sizes -- whatever that range is. (For example: E502W did not permit me to set a font size of 12.5, but did permit me to set the font size at 13 points. Above 10 points, only even-numbered font sizes are shown in the drop-down list in the font dialogue.)

[Andre]

The statement at page 47 appears to be accurate; the statement at page 70 appears to be inaccurate. A font change made without selecting any part of the text appears to apply globally, not just to the current lyric line.

This is not my experience. A change of font without a syllable selected changes the "current lyric line" only, and I wasn't able to change all lines without doing one by one. Not saying I'm unhappy with that.

However, changing the font for one line (or one lyric element) also changes the font used by the "lyric pencil" (undefined term, but I think it will be understood). Which means that if you select the font before entering the lyrics, the font selection indeed applies to all lines.
I'm not sure this makes me happy. If I have adjusted fonts by line (eg asking for italics for line 2 out of three) and still need text corrections, it's easily messed up.

[commnthings]

...the acceptable range of font sizes -- whatever that range is.

Rob,

I don't know what the maximum font size is (I did 144 point), but on the minimum side I was able to get down to 1 point. You can't even read 1 point with 400x Zoom.

It would be sporting for GVOX to mention these "limits" in the manual.

Regards,

Bob

[Rob M.]

The statement at page 47 appears to be accurate; the statement at page 70 appears to be inaccurate. A font change made without selecting any part of the text appears to apply globally, not just to the current lyric line.

This is not my experience. A change of font without a syllable selected changes the "current lyric line" only, and I wasn't able to change all lines without doing one by one. Not saying I'm unhappy with that.

Thanks for the observation, Andre.

I wonder if this is one of those places where the Windows version of Encore differs from the Mac version. Perhaps my observation applies only to E502W. (Or perhaps it applies only to my installation of E502W?)

Which version of Encore are you using, Andre?

[Denkster]

Hi André, Rob,
This specification may fit the observations of you both:

when in Lyrics mode, with no Lyric Particle selected, the font chosen applies to all lyrics entered after that, until a new font is chosen.

Does it?

Regarding the font size limits: which sizes are available depends on the (True Type) font chosen.
Some fonts can't be scaled outside certain limits, so it seems to me.
Please test this in another application?

Kind regards
Eveline

[Andre]

Hi André, Rob,
This specification may fit the observations of you both:

when in Lyrics mode, with no Lyric Particle selected, the font chosen applies to all lyrics entered after that, until a new font is chosen.

Does it?

Yes it does (for me) but still something is missing. I would add

when in Lyrics mode, with no Lyric Particle selected, the font chosen applies to the lyrics already present in the current "lyric line", and to all lyrics entered after that (in any line), until a new font is chosen.

[Denkster]

when in Lyrics mode, with no Lyric Particle selected, the font chosen applies to the lyrics already present in the current "lyric line", and to all lyrics entered after that (in any line), until a new font is chosen.

Aha!
Thanks for correcting me, this is quite a difference.

Eveline

[Rob M.]

Hi André, Rob,
This specification may fit the observations of you both:

when in Lyrics mode, with no Lyric Particle selected, the font chosen applies to all lyrics entered after that, until a new font is chosen.

Does it?

Not in my case (E502 running on Windows XP SP2).

I went into Lyrics-entry mode on the first system of the 7th (last) page, and selected a lyric line by clicking on the first note in that line. I did not click on or select any part of the lyrics in that line. I changed the size of the font. The new size was applied only to the first word in that line, i.e., the lyric particle associated with the note I had clicked on to select the lyric line. The lyrics in the following system were unaffected.

I reverted to the saved version of the file, and selected a lyric line by clicking at the beginning of one staff on the 6th page of the document. I did not click on any note, or anywhere in the lyric line. Then I changed the font size. The size change was applied globally, i.e., to all lyrics in the document, in all staves, both before and after the line selected for the change.

For me then, the comments on page 47 of the manual are accurate; those on page 70 are not. I was not able to apply a font change to other than explicitly-selected parts of the lyric line unless that change was global. However, it seems that the comments on page 70 are accurate for at least one other user. I think the manual is going to need to state the circumstances under which each comment is applicable.

In whatever comments are developed in the manual to apply to a local font change, the manual might indicate how best to select an entire line (and multiple lines) of lyrics for application of a font change. Drag-selection doesn't work when in lyrics-editing mode.

[Denkster]

Thank you Rob M.,
For your clear and detailed description!
The behavior you describe seems quite different from the one André experienced.
I am in the dark again.

I suppose the programmer at GVox needs to study both your descriptions and the code before useful documentation can be made.
For the user is entitled to correct documentation.

Eveline

[commnthings]

...the comments on page 47 of the manual are accurate; those on page 70 are not.

Rob,

I don't agree that the comments on p 70 are incorrect. I did something like what you did (but to a shorter score). It had four lyric lines. It was originally created in E4.5.5W but recently saved in E5.0.2W. Global font size was Arial 8. First, I clicked the Lyric Tool without selecting anything or even placing the cursor anywhere. I changed the font size using the icon in the Toolbar to 10 pt and the lyric font for Lyric Line 1 changed globally to Times New Roman 10 (more about that in a different forum). I then selected Lyric Line 3 and changed the font size, this time using the Text Menu. Same thing - the change was global. I then placed the cursor on the third staff but did not select any note and changed a font size. Same result - global size change.

I then selected a single lyric particle (by double-clicking it) in Lyric Line 2 and changed its font size. Worked fine - only that particle changed.

This appears to be exactly what the manual suggests on p 70.

On the other hand, Encore (E502W) did NOT recognize any of these font size changes as CHANGES. That is, I could not UNDO them and the <Revert to Saved> menu item remained greyed out. Is this a BUG or just a design choice by GVOX?

Regards,

Bob

[Rob M.]

...the comments on page 47 of the manual are accurate; those on page 70 are not.

I then selected a single lyric particle (by double-clicking it) in Lyric Line 2 and changed its font size. Worked fine - only that particle changed.

This appears to be exactly what the manual suggests on p 70.

That's not the way I read the manual's statement on page 70. The statement there is "This becomes the font selection for the current line." Bob's experience was the same as mine: only the selected lyric particle was changed, not the whole line.

On the other hand, Encore (E502W) did NOT recognize any of these font size changes as CHANGES. That is, I could not UNDO them and the <Revert to Saved> menu item remained greyed out. Is this a BUG or just a design choice by GVOX?

I ran across that bug too -- but decided to leave it for another thread after I had figured out what was going on. When that bug surfaced, I closed the document without saving changes, and reloaded it to make the next test.

[Andre]

Thank you Rob M.,
For your clear and detailed description!
The behavior you describe seems quite different from the one André experienced.
I am in the dark again.

I don't see how Rob's experience would not confirm the "rule" (Note: I started writing this before Rob's append right above).

When in Lyrics mode, with no Lyric Particle selected, the font chosen applies to the lyrics already present in the current "lyric line", and to all lyrics entered after that (in any line), until a new font is chosen.

Of course, "entered after that" must be understood on the time scale (later on) and not as reading sequence (further right).

I would rate the sentence on p. 70 as correct, though not complete. But I understand that this paragraph applies to "creating lyrics" while the explanation on modifying afterwards are on p. 71:

Changing lyric font
To change the font information for all lyrics on one line, select the lyric tool and select the lyric line on the Lyric Positioning arrow. Go to the TextMenu/Fonts and select the desired font. The font selected for line 1 will be the assigned font for the other lines unless specified otherwise.
To change a single syllable or multiple syllables, select the word or syllables you wish to change. When lyrics have been selected, font changes will be applied only to the selected text.

The issue here is there is no selection mechanism on lyric words/syllables - which is a pity. Currently, one has to "lyric select" a note, then a new font/size, then click on the note heads corresponding to the particles one wants to change (but I'm afraid I still forget something).

This matter is difficult to document. The "note" on the next page confuses also. But I feel that the implementation itself is not consistent enough, and partially inappropriate. We talk of the manual here, not of the operation. But describing correctly an unwanted behaviour is an extremely difficult exercise, and is it worth?



While we are at that page, the next sentence:
[quote]To define a new font for an entire line, select the lyric line you want to change using the voice indicator (...) ./quote]
has a residual of the former implementation (voice indicator) instead of the "line selector".




Last element: when jumping to a page, as Rob did, the "cursor" remains where it was, and entering lyric mode causes the "line selecion arrow" to show on another page. And selecting a note or particle just to make it visible on the new page may cause an unwanted font change. The (already described) invisibility of the lyric cursor when entering lyric mode makes this even worse.