The user dialogs are currently available in English, French, Polish and German. We also working on translations to Japanese, Italian and Spanish.
There are also three files (UserLanguage1English.txt (UTF8-encoded), UserLanguage1German.txt (UTF8-encoded)) and UserLanguage2.txt (ANSI-encoded) which can be edited manually to support other languages.

These language files are installed automatically through the installer and can be edited on Windows in:
c:\Program Files (x86)\Elbsound.studio\Perfect Layout\UserLanguage1.txt
on MacOS in:
/Library/Application Support/Elbsound.studio/Perfect Layout/UserLanguage1.txt

To apply the changes to the plug-in, you just need to restart the plug-in (no need to restart Finale).

Note: Some text messages use variables, these are written within % symbols (e.g. %MEASURE%).
It's allowed to have them in upper or lower case and also to have a blank space after the first % (e.g. % measure% instead of %MEASURE%).
Some translation programs (like Google) automatically convert %MEASURE% to % MEASURE%.
If you have completed a translation and want to share it with other users, please let us know. We can include it as a new language option in the next update.

Known issues:
1.) If you edit the text files, make sure to not change the order of the lines or to add extra line breaks at the end of a line or between two messages. Otherwise the text elements might be used at the wrong position.
2.) Please check that the length of the translated text element matches the available space in the dialog. Should you encounter problems, please contact us, and we might have to change the element width in the dialog.
3.) On Windows UTF8 elements in pop-up dialog elements seem to get a wrong encoding. On MacOS it works fine.

It is recommended to bypass empty staves during processing. This will slightly increase the processing speed. By default this is set to "bypass".

The dialogs and warning messages of the Perfect Layout plug-in can be bypassed for example to allow batch processing.
IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED THOUGH! Especially if one doesn't use the Perfect Layout plug-in on a daily basis, it is very likely that one forgets to do some of the preparations before running the plug-in.

If you have bypassed the main dialog, you can reset it either
1.) by deleting its .ini-file. It is located in the same folder as the Finale® configuration files.
Typically on Windows: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\MakeMusic\Finale,
on macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale
The file is called "JALAYOUG.ini".
Simply delete the JALAYOUG.ini file and restart the plug-in. Then the main dialog will reappear.

or

2.) by changing the value BypassMainDialog in the mentioned .ini-file from true to false.

a.) Bypass the Minimize Windows feature (Windows only)
During the processing the plug-in minimizes the Finale windows and thus reduces the processing time for the many redraw updates of the score.
However, it's not recommended to deactivate this feature as the redrawing requires 20-30% of the processing time.
So, if deactivated, the plug-in would become much slower on Windows.

b.) Bypass the Progress Bar (macOS+Windows)
The external tool that shows the progress of the plug-in can be deactivated with this feature.
However, there is no practical reason for this - unless you find the progress bar annoying.

Windows only:
If you don't want to see the progress bar, you can also kill the AutoHotKey tasks manually in Window's task manager.
The tasks are either called "AutoHotKey Unicode 64-bit" or "ESPerfectLayoutProgressBar" or "ESPerfectLayoutMinimizeFinaleWindows" (see image 1).

Note: You have to maximize the Finale® window manaully if you also kill the Minimize Window task.
And probably you won't notice when the plug-in has finished.


Image 1: The two AutoHotKey tasks created from within the Perfect Layout plug-in

The plug-in creates a log file that includes the current progress of the plug-in and actions that might be interesting to the user (e.g. detected problems, expressions that were moved to a new measure position, etc.).
Usually you don't have to consult this log file. But it may be interesting if you have a corrupt Finale® file and try to repair it with the Perfect Layout plug-in or if you are new to the plug-in and want learn a bit more of what it does.
The option "Open Log File After Processing" is unselected by default.

More about the log file can be found in the FAQ.

The plug-in can automatically check for updates. Though it is recommended, it is deactivated by default for data privacy reasons (GDPR).
You can also check manually by clicking the "Check for Updates Now!" button.