Perfect Layout can automatically (re-)create multi-measure rests in parts.
It can do it both on documents where multi-measure rests have already been created and those where they have not been created at all or only partially.

If you want to force your own multi-measure rests independently of expressions and double barlines, you can use visible expressions, but with a hidden text style.
In Perfect Layout Gold it's also possible to break the multi-measure rests with hidden expressions (Option: Allow Hidden Expressions to Break Multi-Measure Rests).
However, this option is deactivated by default.
Note: both solutions are only supported in Perfect Layout v3.0199+ and only work when the expression has the "Break Multi-measure Rest" attribute set.

The more multi-measure rests are created, the more there is a need to reflow the measures across systems.
While in music theatre scores it's common to always have a certain number of measures per line, in classical score it's more common to put more music on a line and on a page. Perfect Layout supports these different needs by giving several measure reflow options as shown in the next images.

Image 1 is the default look before running Perfect Layout.
Images 2-5 use different Perfect Layout multi-measure rest and reflow settings (from Finale's Preferences->Edit->Measure Reflow).

Image 1: A part before running Perfect Layout

Image 2: Preferences-Edit->Reflow Measures->Across Systems (Remove System Locks) activated

Image 3: MMRests->Automatic Reflow If the Number of MM Rests Has Significantls Changed activated, Preferences-Edit->Reflow Measures->Across Systems (Maintain System Locks) or Only Within Systems activated

Image 4: MMRests->Maintain System Breaks activated, Preferences-Edit->Reflow Measures->Across Systems (Maintain System Locks) or Only Within Systems activated

Image 5: MMRests->Maintain System Locks activated, Preferences-Edit->Reflow Measures->Across Systems (Maintain System Locks) or Only Within Systems activated

You can choose to apply the "Classical Look" to multi-measure rests by selecting "Force Classical Look". That means: classical rest symbols and also multi-measure rest symbols in 1-bar measures (see image 6 below). By default this option is unchecked.
If this option is unchecked, the multi-measure rest style will not be changed.


Image 6: Default Look / Classical Look

The measure number range (e.g. [24-34]) below a multi-measure rest can be very helpful for the player. But it should not include unnecessary information either. So it makes sense to not show it on every multi-measure rest, but only on the longer ones and for example after each double barline (Option: "Show Measure Range After Double Barlines").
The number of empty bars for hiding/showing measure ranges can be set twice:

a.) Absolute: "Always Hide Measure Range If Less Than X MMRest Bars". By default it's set to 3.
b.) Relative: "Hide Measure Range If Less than X Adjacent MMRest bars" also takes into account measures before and after this multi-measure rest. By default this is set to 10.
For example two multi-measure rests of 3 and 8 measures each will show the range (3+8=11), but a single 8 measure MMRest will not show the range (see image 7).

The measure range can be activated by selecting "Show Measure Number Range on MM Rests", but it currently can't be hidden if it is already visible.


Image 7: Adaptive Measure Range Visibility on Multi-Measure Rests: Visible if at least 10 adjacent measures and after double barlines.

To faciliate reading you can select to hide tempo alterations in multi-measure rests: select "Hide Tempo Alterations in MM Rests". Depending on the content, this may be appropriate or not. This option is unchecked by default.
The sub-option "dito., But Only If No Notes Follow Until End" allows to hide tempo alterations at the end of the file if no notes follow until end. This is usually "safe" for the player.
This sub-option is activated by default.


Image 8: Some Multi-Measure Rest Settings

Right-aligned tempo marks in the last measure of a multi-measure are typically being swallowed by Finale's multi-measure rest creation algorithm.
Alternatively Finale splits the multi-measure rest and adds an extra empty measure with the tempo mark.While this may be more clear in some cases, it might be easier to read if the symbol was visible at the end of the multi-measure rest (see image 9 last line).To activate this feature select "Show Right-Aligned Tempo Marks on MMRests".
Make sure the expressions are right-aligned, attached near the end of the measure and are set to "Break MM Rest".


Image 9: Tempo Marks at the End of Multi-Measure Rests

For better readability of a conductor's score it's possible to show chord symbols only on selected staves.For example if a jazz band score has chord symbols on the piano, electric guitar, electric bass and vocal staff, it make senses to limit their visibility to the piano and/or e-guitar staff. This will give you more vertical space on the page.
The Perfect Layout plugin offers to show the chords on all staves in the score, or on one or on two (Option: "Show Chords in Score Only on Staff").
This only affects the score. In the parts all chord symbols will be visible.

The chord default position can be automatically changed to "Left"-aligned - recommended for better readability and checked by default.

By default Finale® chords have a horizontal offset of 12 EVPU. This can be changed to any value ("Set All Chords to Horizontal Pos X").Changing this value might improve the look on handwritten/jazz fonts which otherwise might have an odd offset.

Perfect Layout v3 supports automatic baseline alignment of chord symbols.
You can select from three alignment algorithms:

Image 1:

You can also change the vertical order of expressions and chords by using the ABOVECHORD tag in expressions.
This is explained on the "Alignment" page.

By default the plug-in hides group names in parts.
E.g. on a piano part the "Piano" name left to the staff lines (=group name) will be hidden, so that only the part name is visible.
If the part doesn't have a page text object with the part name, the group name will not be hidden.


Image 1: Hide group names in parts

For better readability group brackets are can be automatically added to staff groups with at least three staves (Option: "Add Group Brackets on Groups with at Least 3 Staves").
The plugin makes sure that these groups don't interfere with other groups or other group brackets and in doubt it won't add a bracket.


Image 2: Add group brackets to groups of at least three staves

When importing old or MusicXML documents, the repeat brackets and repeat text elements often show up on every staff.
It usually looks better if only placed on the top staff or only few staves. The "Show Repeat Brackets and Texts" option solves this.

The Perfect Layout has two algorithms for placement of tempo and rehearsal expressions above the staff:
a.) Align each expressions individually (closest to the staff)
b.) Align all expressions per system on the line of best fit (above all other objects)
c.) Align all text expressions on the line of best fit, but keep rehearsal marks close to the staff (Option "Per System/Skip Rehearsal Marks")

This option can selected differently for the score and the parts.
Individual alignment gives more vertical space for other objects and works better in narrow part pages.Alignment per system is usually better readable, but requires more space.


Image 1:
Top (a): Individual alignment (close to the note/staff)
Middle (b): Alignment on the best line of best fit
Bottom (c): Alignment of the text expressions. Rehearsal marks are close to the notes/staff.

If you add the word ABOVECHORD to the description field of an expression or the name of an expression category in Perfect Layout v3+, it will place the expression above chord symbols or even above other "normal" expressions.
On top are still always tempo and rehearsal marks.
"Normal" expressions (i.e. no ABOVECHORD tag and not rehearsal or tempo expressions) are always placed below chord symbols.
Like this it's easy to generate a vertical priority of four symbols:


Image 2: The ABOVECHORD tag

Still it's highly recommended to use multi-line expressions if you want rehearsal/tempo marks that span multiple lines vertically aligned in a user-defined way.
The same goes for wide horizontal tempo marks:
Don't put "Allegro" and the tempo mark "q=120" into two separate expressions, but use them in one expression.

You can download the test file used in the image above to check the expressions settings.

Some general options for expression, articulation and hairpin alignment can be set on this tab:
An "Extra Vertical Collision Offset" can be set here (Default: 5 EVPU). This value is added to all vertical offsets on the expression, articulation and hairpin tab and makes it easy to generally increase the vertical distances of two objects. Don't forget to also adjust the "Below Staff Baseline Position" and/or the "Vertical Entry Offset" on the "Optimize" tab in order to adjust the general placement of dynamics and expressive text.
The Silver edition has eight predefined values (-9, -6, -3, 0, 5, 10, 15 or 20 EVPU), while the Gold edition is fully flexible.


Image 3: Extra Vertical Collision Offset: -2, +5 and +15 EVPU
Note: If there is enough space before the fff in measure 1 and the fff would be placed below the "Express.->Very Low Note Threshold Below Staff Line" value, Perfect Layout will automatically move it before the first note (not below).

The "Harmonize Offsets and Aligment of Rehearsal and Tempo Marks" option harmonizes the offsets in the Rehearsal Marks, Tempo Marks and Tempo Alteration categories which improves their horizontal and vertical alignment.

The overall vertical alignment of hairpins, dynamics and expressive text on a system is done in a complex algorithm which takes into account many vertical and horizontal positions and distances and tries to create a visually balanced and pleasing look.
The options for the algorithm are:
a.) Vertically Align Dynamic Expressions Only If Connected by Hairpins: self-explanatory (see image 4 below)
b.) Even out Vertical Alignment of Hairpins and Dynamic Expressions: If selected, the vertical alignment algorithm is run twice. This usually leads to more hairpins and dynamics being on the same vertical position and thus look smoother.

In the parts where there is usually more vertical space available and where readability is much improved by dynamics and hairpins being on the same vertical position, it makes sense to align close dynamics also if unconnected and to even out the vertical alignment.
In the score these options usually are selected the other way round. These are also the default settings.
Single dynamics on very low notes are usually not taken into account for overall vertical alignment (see the fff and the ff in image 3 above).


Image 4:
Top: All dynamics are aligned, also if unconnected.
Bottom: Only those dynamics are aligned that are connected by a hairpin.

While dynamics and hairpins and single staves are aligned with a certain distance to the lowest object above them, on two staff groups like in piano notation they are usually centered between the lowest object from above and the highest object from below.As is single staves they still have to be connected to adjacent dynamics/hairpins in a musical and visually balanced way.
The Perfect Layout offers vertically staff-centered alignment of dynamics and hairpins in combination with automatic best staff distance calculation.
To activate this feature check "Center Dynamics and Hairpins Between Two-Staff Groups".
The feature is still in beta state, but already delivers very good results most of the time - even if there is not much vertical space available.

In order to avoid collisions of rehearsal marks and measure numbers, you can easily select their placement in "Place Rehearsal Marks at Start of System" and "Place Measure Numbers at Start of System".Of course, it is also possible to keep the original position.
Don't forget to uncheck "Hide Measure Numbers" in the rehearsal mark expression to actually see measure numbers next to rehearsal marks.
To fine-tune the placement of measure numbers, you can also change the horizontal and vertical offsets at system start manually. By default these values are created automatically ("Automatically Set Measure Number Offsets at Start of System").

To avoid collisions with group brackets, you can check "Extra Vertical Offset for Curved Group Brackets". It moves measure numbers on top of a group bracket slightly upwards and below the bracket slightly downwards.

Image 5: Extra vertical offset for curved group brackets

Note: If you have a score with linked parts, you need at least Finale 27.3 to make full use of all measure number placement features of Perfect Layout.
Previous Finale versions didn't allow individual placement of measure numbers in all linked parts through plug-ins.

In general it is recommended to use narrow fonts for measure numbers at system start (e.g. Arial Narrow) - especially when the piece has more than 100 measures (i.e. 3 digits). Other recommended serif fonts for measure numbers are available here.

Here are some of the options:

Image 6:
1: Reh.Mark: Left Edge, Left-Aligned   /   Measure Number: Left Edge, Left-Aligned, Above
2: Reh.Mark: Left Edge, Centered   /   Measure Number: Centered over Clef
3: Reh.Mark: Centered over Clef   /   Measure Number: Left Edge, Right-Aligned, Below
4: Reh.Mark: Centered over Time-Signature   /   Measure Number: Centered over Clef
Other options are "At Music Start" and "After Time Signature".

Perfect Layout v3+ can do a few auto-corrections on measure numbers below the staff that collide with other objects.

a) Measure numbers below the barline are shifted down when colliding with ties or slurs that span from the previous measure to next measure (see image 7).
If the measure number has to be shifted very low (more than 35 EVPU), then the distance to the colliding object will be reduced by 6 EVPU.The maximum distance that the measure number will be shifted down is 23 plus the selected offset (14 EVPU by default) plus the "Extra Collision Offset" (5 EVPU by default) resulting 23+14+5-6=36 EVPU by default.

If the default placement of your measure numbers below barline is as in image 7, you will have hardly any collisions with measure numbers when using the "Loose Spacing" preset in Perfect Layout.


Image 7: Shifting colliding measure numbers down (m.22, m.30) or deciding to maintain their placement (m.68)

b) Measure numbers in the score on each measure below the bottom staff are shifted down when colliding with symbols (see image 8). This is done consistently over the whole score: they will all get the new vertical distance.

In the Gold edition the distance can be adjusted with the option "Alignment->Measuren Numbers->On Collisions with Other Objects Below Bottom Staff Shift Down by" plus the value of "Alignment->Extra Collision Offset".
In the Silver edition the distance is only handled indirectly with the "Alignment->Extra Collision Offset" value. The default distance is 19 EVPU (=14 EVPU Vert. Distance + 5 EVPU Extra Offset).

Note: if there is no collision because the measure numbers are already very far below the staff, then they will keep their position. They will not be shifted upwards.


Image 8: Vertical alignment of measure numbers below staff

Perfect Layout supports automatic vertical alignment of lyrics below the staff in relation to the lowest notes, articulations, slurs or ties.
Tuplet brackets on lyric staves are automatically shifted onto the top of the staff to avoid collisions (measure 1).

Some best practices:
-Make sure to have your lyrics aligned below the staff where you want to have them placed: i.e. not above the staff and not below another staff.
Use the Finale lyrics baseline to move the lyrics below the staff.
-If possible, reduce the number of lyrics verses to a minimum. If Perfect Layout has to align multiple verses, the order of the verses must be clear.
I.e. avoid verse 1 being the top lyrics line in the first system, but the bottom lyrics line in the second system.
-For best ledgibility it is recommended to place any dynamics on lyrics above the staff.

If you have two (or more) lyrics staves and the dynamics are valid for both staves, you can also place them below the lyrics of the top staff together with hairpins.
In this case make sure to set the hairpin alignment to "Move Hairpins Below Lyrics" (see below)

It is not recommended, but also possible to place the dynamics left to the notes, but above the lyrics. But this may already be difficult to read and can easily lead to collisions which Perfect Layout will not handle.

The adjustable vertical distance options are:
Vertical Distance to Lowest Note
Distance Between Multiple Lyrics Lines
Distance to Bottom Staff Line (if all notes are only above the bottom staff line)

If you have hairpins below the staff, there are also four options for handling lyrics collisions with hairpins:
1.) Keep HP Position / Allow Collision with Lyrics
2.) Keep HP Position / Move Lyrics Down
3.) Move Hairpins Below Lyrics
4.) Move Hairpins Below Notes
On the Perfect Layout Gold version these options are available on the Hairpins tab.


Image 9: Automatic Multi-Verse Alignment with the Perfect Layout Plugin

Perfect Layout can do a few auto-corrections on horizontal accidental placement with the option "Horizontal Alignment of Multiple Accidentals":
a.) Accidentals are moved closer together if there is sufficient vertical space. This depends on the accidental shape and also included parentheses (Image 11).
The amount of overlap can be controlled with "Horizontal Distance of Several Non-Colliding of Parenthesized Accidentals".
b.) Gaps between notes and accidentals on chords with seconds will be reduced (Image 12 - supported from Perfect Layout v2.42)

Make sure to have "Accidentals->Use cross-layer accidental positioning" in Finale's document options activated (see Quickstart: How to use).
In PL v3/RGP Lua Accidentals->Use cross-layer accidental positioning is automatically activated.


Image 11: Overlapping accidentals


Image 12: Reduced gaps on chords with seconds

If your document uses linked parts with "Specify Vocing" and "Selected Notes Only", please activate the option in the Perfect Layout dialog.
Unfortunately JW Lua can't read these settings automatically. In these cases Perfect Layout runs slightly slower as it is more difficult to detect which notes appear in which part.

The plug-in can move all notes that were accidentally inserted in upper layers to layer 1. It doesn't do it when the layer has different playback attributes or if it contains resized notes (probably cue notes).
The option "Remove Unnecessary Use of Layers 2-4" is checked by default.

The following before/after images give an overview of Perfect Layout's cue text and cue note features (Image 1: score look, images 2-5: part look).
The Finale documents of these cue examples can be downloaded from the example page (Example 5).

Image 1: Cue texts and cue notes in the score before/after applying Perfect Layout.


Image 2: Timpani part: A two-layer cue with non-fixed lyrics size text font on layer 4 and melody cue on layer 3.


Image 3: Glockenspiel part: a single layer cue with fixed lyrics font size on layer 3.


Image 4: Perucssion part: a single layer cue with melody only, hairpin will be hidden for simplification.


Image 5: Drum Set part: cue text only which automatically breaks the multi-measure rest in the part as it was part of the "cue" expression category.

All cue options in detail

The Perfect Layout plug-in has a few functions dedicated to cue notes and cue texts.During initalization of the plug-in it tries automatically detect the "Cue Note Layer" and, if used, a "Cue Lyrics Layer w/Hidden Notes" (which some use for lyrics scaling).
If no cue notes were found, then these options ("Dedicated Cue Note/Lyrics Layer") cannot be set.
If you want to deactivate the cue functionality (i.e. keep all cue notes in the score), set the two Dedicated Cue Note Layers to "Not Used".
If the cue text expressions shouldn't be changed either, then keep the field "Keyword for Categories with Cue Expressions" empty.

The plug-in processes cue texts created with Finale's "Add Cue Notes" plug-in like "Fl." or "Trb.1" if they are placed in a dedicated expression category. To detect this expression category it looks if the category names include the keyword listed in the option "Keyword for Categories with Cue Expressions" (set to "cue" by default).


Image 6: Cue expressions category
If the option "Scale Cue Expression with Note Entry" is selected, then the cue expression will get be reduced like the note entry (activated by default).

It's possible to let Perfect Layout hide some symbols in cue measures: hairpins and custom lines are hidden by default (Option: "Hide Hairpins and Custom Lines In Cue Measures").In the Gold edition you can also automatically hide trills (Option: "Hide Trills in Cue Note Measures", deactivated by default).

The following before/after images give an overview of Perfect Layout's tuplet features.
The Finale documents of these tuplet examples can be downloaded from the example page (Example 4).

Image 1: Before applying Perfect Layout

Image 2: After applying Perfect Layout

Image 3a: Tuplet brackets before applying Perfect Layout

Image 3b: Tuplet brackets added on ambiguous beamed notation with the default settings of Perfect Layout (v2.023)

Tuplet options in detail

"Put Tuplet Brackets on Ambiguous Tuplets" adds tuplet brackets on beamed notes when the tuplet doesn't start on the first note of the beamed group and thus is difficult to read.

Image 4: Left: Original, Right: Added Brackets

Another tuplet feature which can't be unselected is automatic secondary beam break insertion as in image 5:

Image 5: Left: Original, Right: Added secondary beam break

"Put Tuplet Brackets on Unsymmetrics Tuplets" adds tuplet brackets to unsymmetrics tuplets (i.e. if the duration of the notes is different from left to right than from right to left).In these cases it might be difficult to decipher the reference duration of the tuplet.

Image 6: Left: Original, Right: Added brackets only to unsymmetric tuplet to not mix it up with a 16th note tuplet

"Increase Tuplet Number If Max. Note Duration Is Shorter" changes the tuplet number for better readability if it doesn't match the note durations.I.e. six 16th notes with a "3" tuplet number would be transformed into a "6".

Image 7: Left: A five 8th note tuplet with 16th notes becomes a ten 16th notes tuplet

For better readability tuplets on extreme low or high notes can get their brackets on the note side (instead of the stem side).
Check "Put Tuplet Brackets on Notes Above Staff Position X on Top" for that feature. X is the minimum note position where this feature is activated:
1 means the first ledger line, 2 the space between the first and the second ledger line, 3 the second ledger line and so on.
By default this option is selected and affects notes on the second ledger line and above.
This feature always works on tuplets above and below the staff.
To switch off this feature, set the value to a very high value (e.g. 30 instead 3).

Image 8:
Left: Original, Right: Tuplets on extreme notes are put on the note side and get brackets (X=3)

For better readability Perfect Layout can simplify or even remove tuplets in case of duplets:
"Remove Tuplet Symbols From Duplets" removes the tuplet bracket/number from duplets and converts the note durations (see measures 1 and 3 in image 9).
"Simplify "Half" Duplets" removes one half of a tuplet if the remaining note would be "one half of a duplet" and the other half would be easier to read (see measures 4 and 5 in image 9).
Note: On the Silver edition of Perfect Layout these two options are available as one combined option only.


Image 9:
Top: Duplets before applying Perfect Layout
Bottom: After Perfect Layout m.1 and m.3 were converted through the Remove Tuplet Symbols From Duplets option.
Measure 4 and 5 were converted through the Simplify "Half" Duplets option.
Measure 2 has not been changed, because it wouldn't have been much easier to read without the tuplet symbols.

On tuplets that start or end with rests Finale often creates angular tuplet brackets which not always look so pleasing.
Perfect Layout offers several options to flatten these tuplet brackets:
a) Keep as it is
b) Flatten if Above Minimum Angle
c) Flatten if Above Minimum Angle or All Outbound Tuplets
d) Flatten All Tuplets that Start or End with Rests
The minimum angle is adjustable (6° by default).
Outbound tuplets means all tuplet brackets that have their highest offset over the starting or ending rest

All of these flattening options are showcased in this video:

There are many scenarios where multiple expressions on the same measure position or colliding horizontally can occur. Perfect Layout can handle many, but not all of these cases yet.
The following two images show a before/after Perfect Layout look demonstrating some multi-expression cases (created with v2.023).
It's also available as a real-time video and as a Finale document for download.

Image 1: Handling Multiple Expressions (before Perfect Layout)

Image 2: Handling Multiple Expressions (after Perfect Layout)

To prevent expression collisions please note:
1.) If possible, don't stack more than two Rehearsal/Tempo expressions (see m.10 in image 2).
Workaround: Create a mulit-line expression instead of several single line expressions (as in m.4).

2.) Be careful when you use several Technique Text expressions on the same side of the staff (see m.1 beat 4 and m.2 beat 1).
If the expressions don't overlap, the top expression is kept at that position (m.1 beat 4, supported in PL v3.0177+).
Otherwise the expression with the smaller expression ID is put on top (m.2 beat 1, supported in PL v3.0177+).
Or, you could put one expression below and one above the staff (m.2 beat 2) or attach them to different measure positions.

3.) If you put Technique Text expressions after or onto a dynamic expression, make sure it is still clear to the reader on which beat the technique is to be applied (see con sord. m.10-15).
If placed after the dynamic on short notes (m.15), it may be unclear. In this case it might look better, if placed above the staff.
You could also add ALLOWSHIFTRIGHT to the expression's description text: in that case the text expression would automatically be shifted to the right of the dynamic (see description here).

4.) As an exception of 3.) PL moves text expressions with an italic font style behind dynamics as it assumes that these are actually Expressive Text expressions which are clear enough to the read, even if placed after the dynamics.

5.) If 1.), 2.), 3.) and 4.) is not possible, then place your expression manually before running the plug-in and add EXCLUDE to its description text in the Expression Designer dialog.
Perfect Layout will then omit the expression. Beware that this also may affect other occurences of the expression in the score.
In this case: duplicate the expression and create one expression with and one without the EXCLUDE mark.
More about the EXCLUDE and INCLUDE tag can be found in the "How to use"-document.

6.) If a Rehearsal/Tempo Mark mark on beat 1 collides with a rehearsal letter in the next measure, Perfect Layout can broaden the measure and even move other measures to the next system (see m.3 for broadening and m.6 for moving to the next system).
Make sure to have "Preferences->Edit->Reflow Measures->Across Systems" and maybe even "Across Pages" activated, otherwise this feature might not work properly if there is not sufficient free space for broadening the measure.

7.) Tempo Alteration expressions attached after beat 1 may collide with rehearsal letters/mark in the next measure (see m.8/9).
Perfect Layout doesn't remove this collision by default (by shifting the the rehearsal letter up), because a manual/individual solution looks better in most of these cases.
Nevertheless this feature (Shift Rehearsal Letters Up on Tempo Expression Collisions) can be activated on the "Alignment"-tab (as of PL v2.023).

8.) Two dynamic expressions "f" and "p" on the same measure position are horizontally aligned to "fp" (m.8).
If you require the rarely used "pf", please create it as a single expression.

9.) Dynamics together with "expressive text"-custom smart lines (e.g. "f" + "cresc. - - - - - - -") are currently not aligned automatically by Perfect Layout yet.
Workaround: Use expressive text expressions ("cresc.") instead.
This is on our to do-list for on one of the upcoming updates.

10.) When running Perfect Layout on an old or MusicXML-imported Finale documents, make sure to apply it at least the first time to the full document.
Perfect Layout optimizes many expression default positions, especially in old/MusicXML documents.
But this function is only activated when running the plug-in on the full document as otherwise inconsistencies may occur.
"Old" means in this case created before Finale 2014.

To get the best results with the Perfect Layout plug-in it's important to use Finale®'s expression categories correctly.
The same goes for Finale®'s other default categories:
1.) Dynamics/Niente Circle: Keep dynamics only in a category with the keyword "Dynamics" (or Dynamik or dynamiques or dinamiche from the international editions of Finale). It's also possible to combine words like "Percussion dynamics" or "Above Staff Dynamics" - as long as the main keyword is found.
2.) Expressive Text: Expressive text expressions are partially taken into account in alignment. Especially in combination with dynamics or hairpins on the same measure position the expression will be aligned horizontally and/or vertically.
3.) Rehearsal Marks/Tempo Marks/Tempo Alterations: Elements in these categories are taken into account for vertical and horizontal alignment above the staff. Rehearsal Marks can also be placed at different positions at the beginning of a staff (see alignment tab).
4.) Technique Text: Expressions in this category are not vertically/horizontally aligned!
5.) "Cue"-Keyword (user-defined): see Layer/Cues tab.
6.) "In Parts Only"-Keyword (user-defined): see Reset/Hide tab.

If you use expressions with numbers only, the plug-in can move them into the Rehearsal Marks category, if these options are checked.Numbers with rectangular expressions can be automatically moved (Option "Move Number Expressions with Non-Circular Enclosure to Rehearsal Mark Category"). Numbers with circular enclosures are typically fingerings and will not be moved automatically.
Measure number expressions can also be moved automatically: the plug-in compares the expression number with the measure that the expression is used in and if it fits, it will be moved (Option "Move Measure Number Expressions to Rehearsal Marks Category").

Note 1:
For best alignment use as few expressions in one measure position as possible.
E.g. "più f" or "pp sub." should be a single expression. The horizontal alignment (not centered as in standard dynamics, but left- or right-aligned) is automatically applied in these cases.
The same goes for tempo marks and rehearsal texts:
If you have for example the four above staff lines "M" (=Letter M), "Andante", "q=100" and "Verse" don't use four expressions on top of each other, but only two: use the rehearsal mark M plus a single expression for the text.
The Perfect Layout plug-in has a few cases where multiple expressions are aligned correctly, but it becomes difficult if it is more than two of the same type.

Note 2:
If you have imported a document through MusicXML, it performs an automatic category assignment if the whole score is processed with the Perfect Layout plug-in:If the plug-in detects typical keywords, it suggests to move the expressions to the corresponding category.
This works very good with dynamic expressions and also with a few standard expressions from the other categories. But especially if you use less common or foreign texts, the automatic category detection does not work.In this case it is important that you move the expressions to the correct category before applying the plug-in. Otherwise not all features will work.

Compound dynamics like poco pp, sub ff. or molto f require extra attention because they are often so wide that their placement may be ambiguous (image 3).

Image 3: Ambiguous dynamics - does it start on beat 1 or beat 2?

Note: For subito expressions it is recommended to always use "f sub." instead of "sub. f" or "subito f" which usually makes it more clear in the score by default.
More examples of non-recommended subito use are in m.3 in image 5 further down.

Image 4: sub. f and subito f are difficult to read; f sub. is clear

Perfect Layout offers three options for horizontal placement of these compound dynamics (for examples see image 5 below).
In PL Gold you find this option on the Expressions tab, in PL Silver on the Alignment tab.

1.) Align to the Center of the Dynamics Symbol (default option)
Based on the suggestions by Gould in Behind Bars this algorithm always centers the expression under the dynamics symbol if the expression starts with a text (like poco, molto, sub.).On barline collisions an opaque background is automatically added.

Note: Make sure to have any expression in the expression dialog that already uses any enclosure.
In Finale enclosures/opaque backgrounds can only be copied and modified from existing expressions, but not created automatically if no expression uses an enclosure.There will be a warning message if Perfect Layout hasn't found any expression with an enclosure.

2.) Align to the Center of the Full Expression and Don't Break Barlines
This option prefers align to the center of the full expression and prevents barline collisions by shfiting the expression away from the barline.
Although this style has been frequently used in previous centuries and handwritten scores it often leads to ambiguous placement of dynamics (see m.2 below in image 5).Please use this option with care or switch to option 3 ("Flexible") which prevents ambiguous placement in most cases.

3.) Align: Flexible
This option is a combination of 1. and 2. It allows crossing barlines by adding opaque backgrounds to prevent ambiguous placement.
If the bar is not ambiguous (e.g. a wide dynamics under a whole note, m.6 in image 5), then it will be shifted away from the barline.
If there is enough space, it will align to the center of the dynamics symbol (e.g. m.4 in image 5).
Otherwise it will align to the center of the full expression.


Image 5: Overview of the options for compound dynamics placement

You can remove the opaque background from rehearsal and tempo marks/alterations with the option "Remove 'Opaque' from Reh./Tempo Marks".
Note: in PL v3 only expressions with no border are taken into account. Opaque background on expressions with a line width above 0 are kept as they are.
Usually the opaque feature is not required for rehearsal marks after applying PL, as the plug-in will remove all collisions anyway. Nevertheless it's possible to fine-tune this feature by the selection list which includes
"Don't Remove",
"Remove If Most Expressions Are Opaque" and
"Always Remove".

If the lowest element on a measure or staff is above the lowest baseline, the dynamic expressions can be shifted upwards (Option: "Shift Dyn. Epxressions Up by XXX If Lowest Element is Staff Line").By default Perfect Layout will search the whole system for the lowest element. If "For Lowest Element Only Look at Expression's Measure" is selected, it will only analyze the measure of the expression for the lowest element.

Also check "Alignment->Align Dynamic Expressions Only If Connected by Hairpins". If this is not activated (which is by default in parts), it may lead to dynamics being vertically aligned which override the "Shift up" value.


Image 6:
Left Measure: Default placement of dynamics at baseline
Right Measure: "Shift up by 6 EVPU" and "For Lowest Element Only Look at Expression's Measure" activated

You can set the vertical distance of dynamic expressions to many other notation elements.
To optimize the look some dynamic symbols (mf, sf, rf, f) can get reduced offsets which better fits their skyline.

You can set the vertical distance of expressive text expressions to slurs and ties.

The vertical distances of articulations to other articulations (=stacked), to tuplet brackets and tuplet numbers and to slurs can be set in this dialog tab.In the Express. tab it's also possible to set the articluation to expression distances.

The Perfect Layout plug-in can automatically create "inside slur"-articulations - if otherwise the aticulation would be placed far above a slur.The "inside slur" articulation will be created if the vertical articulation offset exceeds the value from "Vertical Offset Before Articulation is Always Shifted Inside Slur" (default: 45 EVPU).

Image 1: "Inside steep slur"-articulations

On tuplet brackets it's possible to automatically place ornament articulations outside tuplet brackets (Option: "Place Ornaments Ouside Tuplet Brackets").
While standard note articulations (staccato, accent, dot, tenuto, etc.) are automatically placed inside the tuplet bracket, fermatas and bow marks are automatically placed outside.

Image 2: Before and after the Perfect Layout plug-in (ornaments outside tuplet brackets)

The Perfect Layout plug-in differentiates between the actual end connection of a "hairpin over the barline" and the visual connection.
You can select a connectiona) to measure position 0 in the next measure or
b) to the end of the previous measure.

Solution a) is optimized for playback, but has the drawback that hairpins over systems can't be separated from the end of system barline.
Solution b) is visually optimized, but doesn't work fully optimized with Finale's cresc./diminuendo playback.

In solution b) the hairpins ALWAYS end before the barline.
If solution a) is selected, it's possible to specify where the hairpins should visually end: to avoid/allow collisions with the barline.
This selection can be made for the parts, for the score and for piano (two staff) groups.

Hairpins can either start directly after a starting dynamics or after the expressive text expression (see image 2).
Option: "Shift Hairpins on Dynamics with Express. Text After Dynamics/After Expressive Text".
Expressive text expressions that start somewhere in the middle of the hairpin are moved below the hairpin (e.g. "molto" in image 3).

Image 2: The hairpin connection options

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Image 3: Hairpin and "molto" text (with end hairpin before barline option)

If hairpins are connected on a measure position, you can specify the gap between them (Option: "Gap Between Connected Hairpins").
Image 4: A gap between connected or overlapping hairpins is automatically inserted (width: 33 EVPU by default)
(Note: the niente circle has been automatically shifted to the end of the note)

If a hairpin is connected over a rest to an end note, it's possible to keep it or to have it reduced to the end of the previous note (see image 5).
It's also possible to only keep it, if it is connected to a final dynamic expression (image 5c).
The same option is available for start notes.


Image 5: Hairpins and rests at the end

The automatic connection of expontential and niente expressions with hairpins is supported.

For niente hairpins create an expression in the Dynamics category and use an O, 0, o, ° from a text font or an 0 or o from any of the supported music fonts as the symbol.Make sure to activate the "Enclosure" property. You don't need to fine-tune the enclosure - the plug-in will do this for you. Unfortunately JW Lua doesn't allow the activation of the Enclosure field, so this needs to be done manually. If you use PL v3 and RGP Lua, the enclosure will be created automatically.
The opaque enclosure is required to make sure that there is no tip of the hairpin visible after the niente.
Instead of the "o" symbol you can also use the music symbol "n" or the text "niente" or "quasi niente".

For exponential hairpins the symbols from the November2, VintageGHMA, VintageECP1 and the DSE Music Symbols fonts are supported.PL v3 also supports Opus Special, Opus Special Std and Norfolk Special Std.
Again create an expression with these symbols and place it in the Dynamics category.
Don't activate the "Enclosure" property for exponential expressions!

This video shows how it looks in the score:

In standard notation hairpins usually end at the last note or rest before the empty measure.
In contemporary notation however there may be situations where hairpins should occur in "empty" measures, especially if it's a graphical or other note-less notation.In this case you should uncheck "Shorten Right End of Hairpins If They End On An Empty Measure".
In the Silver Edition this option is on the "Alignment" tab.


Image 6: Option "Shorten Right End of Hairpins If They End on an Empty Measure"

The exact start and end offset of an hairpin on a note or a rest is automatically calculated by the plug-in (see image 7).


Image 7: Hairpin start and end points after applying the plug-in (with end hairpin before barline option)

If the start/end of the hairpin is further away from the next note, it depends on the context whether the plug-in snaps the hairpin to the closest note.Only if the plug-in is sure that this is what was originally intended and if "Allow Snap To Closest Note, Rest or End of Measure" is checked, then it might snap.
The plug-in takes into account the horizontal distance between the objects, dynamics and also hairpins on other staves in the same measure, so that, if possible, all hairpin are treated equally.
In doubt the hairpin will not be changed. So when entering the hairpin, it is best to not create ambiguous layouts as in image 8.


Image 8: Where should the hairpin end on the left image? On beat 3, 4 or even on beat 1 of the next measure?
On the right image it's obvious.

Note: Finale has a problem with the end of the closed side of a hairpin on screen which doesn't match the end position of the hairpin in print (PDF or paper).The plug-in takes this into account and always calculates the offsets for print only. I.e. should there still be a collision of a hairpin with a dynamic on-screen, do a print to PDF or paper first to check if it isn't that bug.
Only in very rare cases the plug-in doesn't solve this bug.

Many distances for optimized hairpin placement can be set. While most options are self-explaining, a few need a note:
a) the vertical position of a hairpin in relation to a connected dynamic is set in "Center of Dyn. Expression" (13 EVPU by default on a hairpin opening width of 28 EVPU).

Image 9: Vertical relation of hairpin and dynamics

b) On very low notes it's possible to have hairpins closer to slurs and ties to save space (Option: "Slur/Tie (Very Low Notes)").
The threshold for very low notes is set in the field below ("Very Low Note Threshold", 80 EVPU by default, i.e. ca. 3 ledger lines below the staff).

Image 10: Hairpins on very low notes can have smaller distances

The Perfect Layout plug-in can automatically extend slurs on tied notes until the end note (see image 1).

Image 1a (Left): Original; 1b (Right): Slur Extension

Case 1b) is standard notation in most cases. Exceptions which should not be extended are for example string staves with very many tied notes or guitar staves where the legato slur might be mixed up with a hammer-on/pull-off slur.These exceptions are deactivated by default.
Notes tied over many measures or with many ties should not be extended either. The default maximum span is three measures or three ties (Option: "Only If Tied Measure Span and Number of Ties is Less or Equal than X Measures").

The plug-in removes 'open' ties (i.e. ties not connected to an end notes, also called 'l.v.' ties) by default unless they belong to an instrument that actually can play 'l.v.' (e.g. harp, cymbals, glockenspiel, etc.).

Image 2a (Left): Original; 2b (Right): Open Tie Removed

To visually emphasize the middle of the bar, Perfect Layout re-ties notes which cross the middle of the bar by default unless there are symbols (articulations, expressions, hairpins, etc.) assigned to the removed measure position which would then become invalid or unclear (e.g. measure 3 in image 3).
There is also the option to only re-tie notes if the first tied note starts after beat 1 (activated by default).
In odd time signatures (e.g. 5/4) there will be no re-tieing.
Note: Perfect Layout never adds extra notes. This means: not all cases of falsely tied notes are corrected (e.g. measure 5 in image 3).

Image 3: The re-tie settings of Perfect Layout
m.1: Only re-tied if "...After Beat 1" is deactivated
m.2: Always re-tied by Perfect Layout
m.3: Never re-tied by Perfect Layout because otherwiese the hairpin on beat 4 would become unclear.
m.4: Always re-tied by Perfect Layout
m.5: Never re-tied by Perfect Layout because otherwiese the hairpin on beat 4 would become unclear.

Glissandi are aligned horizontally and vertically to not collide with notes, note dots and/or accidentals.
Usually glissandi are note-attached smartshapes or tab slides.
By selecting "Handle Solid Lines as Glissando" or "Handle Dashed Lines As Glissando" it's also possible to use measure-attached smartshapes as glissandi.
As this option is unselected by default, it's not available in the Silver edition.

Note: If selected, the algorithm currently assumes that all solid and/or dashed lines are glissandi. So use with caution.
Otherwise for example dashed crescendo lines might be turned into a vertical glissando line.

Trill lines, brackets, ottava lines and custom smart lines that include the hidden keyword "PUTONTOP" are taken into account for vertical collision removal above the staff (not below!).

Perfect Layout (starting with version 3.x/Gold edition only) offers three options for setting the SmartShape distance above the staff:
a) Distance to the Top Staff Line: 25 EVPU by default
b) Distance to the Top Staff Line on 1-Line Staves: 58 EVPU
c) Distance to the Top Note Symbol: 23 EVPU

The keyword "PUTONTOP" can be added to any of the five text fields (Left Start, Left Continuation, etc.) in the Smart Line Designer dialog.Just type in the word (no spaces), then select it and apply the hidden text style (Text->Style->Hidden).
The smart line then might look like in image 3 (dependent on the text fields that you select): no more collision with the tuplet bracket and the slur.

Image 4: Custom Smart Line with Hidden "PUTONTOP" Text


Image 5: "PUTONTOP" in the text dialog

Note:
JW Lua cannot read the fields from the Line Adjustments group in the Smart Line Designer dialog.
Workaround: If possible, don't use these values, as they may lead to collisions.

Distance between Staves:
a.) Two Main Algorithms for Staff Spacing in the Score
b.) Max. Distance between Staves (Default: 470 EVPU)
c.) Standard Distance Between Two-Staff Groups (Default: 280 EVPU)
d.) Sliders: Extra Distance Before/After Staff Groups and Staff/System Distance

Distance between Staff Systems:
e.) Max. Distance Between Staff Systems (Default: deactivated, 800 EVPU)
f.) Minimum Bottom Margin of Staff System and Auto-Suggest 'Parts' Value
g.) Reserve Distance Between Bottom and Next Top Staff System Margin (Default: 70 EVPU)
h.) Min. Vertical Space on Reflow Systems Across Pages (Default: 14 EVPU)

a.) Two Main Algorithms for Staff Spacing in the Score

The Perfect Layout plug-in includes two algorithms for creating a non-colliding and visually balanced look of the staff systems.

While the default algorithm is very flexible and also adds group spacing, the staff distances may vary a lot if there is not much vertical space and the content is different on each page.
The second algorithm tries to preserve the original layout as much as possible which leads to more a consistent spacing. But you have to make sure that the staff and group spacing already looks fine on most pages before applying Perfect Layout.

In Perfect Layout v3 the algorithms are applied both to the score and to the linked parts.
PL v2 supports the score layout only (not linked parts).

(1) The default staff spacing algorithm works fine on overstuffed pages as well as on pages with lots of free space.


Image 1a: Default staff spacing on an overstuffed page

The plug-in starts by creating the maximum condensed score and then inserts space for a good visual balance.
If there is way too much space, it won't stretch the page until the bottom page margin, but keep a portion free at the bottom of the page.

In general you should always get good results with the default score balancing settings of the plug-in.
Should you be unhappy with the result or would like to have access to more spacing parameters which are currently hidden to the user, please contact our support team.

(2) The second staff spacing algorithm (Option: "Systems->Optimize System Distances Only and Keep Staff Distances") tries to preserve the original staff layout, by only adjusting those staff distances where the staves are actually colliding vertically.
Activate this option only if your staves already have very good staff and group distances before applying Perfect Layout and if there are only few vertical collisions between the staves.


Image 1b: Comparison of both algorithms: "Optimize System Distances Only and Keep Staff Distances" activated and deactivated

b.) Max. Distance between Staves (Default: 470 EVPU)

This value handles the maximum distance between staves.
If a staff group starts, then this value will be increased according to the "group slider".
Usually you will not get this distance between two staves as probably your page will not have that much space. But in case of very much space it will (probably) be limited to 470 EVPUs.
Probably? Why probably?
If only "a bit more" is required to fill the full page, more space will be used.
Some mathematical rounding issues can also lead to slightly different max. values.

c.) Standard Distance Between Two-Staff Groups (Default: 280 EVPU)

If there is a piano part on the staff system, it should not have a distance of 470 EVPU like the other single staves.
Instead, they should be aligned a bit tighter. 280 EVPU has been found to be a good value for typical piano or harp staves.

However, there may be complex piano notation that takes up varying amounts of space.
In such cases, it may be more consistent to allocate more space to piano staves than the default 280 EVPU, especially when they are next to other piano staves that require, for example, 380 EVPU.
The option "Adaptive Standard Distance for Scores with Very Small and Very Wide Staff Distances" will achieve this automatically.
However, in rare scenarios, it may be desirable to have a fixed distance between piano staves, even if they are close to other piano staves with a wide distance. In that case, this suboption should be deactivated.

d.) Sliders: Extra Distance Before/After Staff Groups and Staff/System Distance

Who gets the most empty space?

Multiple systems on a page or staves can get extra space: "between systems" or "between staves".
This can be controlled via the "Staff/System Distance" slider.
The more you move the slider to the right the more space is inserted between staff systems.

Extra space for grouped staves within a system is controlled via the "Extra Distance Before/After Staff Groups" slider.
The more you move the slider to the right the more extra space is inserted before and after groups.
By default these sliders are set to auto-detection: an algorithm automatically sets good default spacing values for standard score types like single staff, piano, piano + solo, duo, piano + duo, small ensemble or large ensemble.

e.) Max. Distance Between Staff Systems (Default: deactivated, 800 EVPU)

(Perfect Layout v3+ only:)
By default Perfect Layout automatically adds space between the staff systems, so that the bottom staff systems aligns with the page bottom margin.
If this meant very much free space between multiple systems, Perfect Layout would reduce the space and automatically avoid the alignment.

However, there are scores, for example with many very different staff system heights, where it makes sense to limit the maximum space between staff systems.
This also means that they won't align at the page bottom margin, if the maximum distance is reached.

To achieve this activate the option Max. Distance Between Staff Systems.
By default the distance is limited to 800 EVPU. But this value can also be adjusted in the dialog.
See image 2 for the difference between automatic staff system distances and a limited distance.


Image 2: Option "Max. Distance Between Staff Systems""

f.) Min. Bottom Margin of Staff System and Auto-Suggest 'Parts' Value

The "Minimum Bottom Margin of Staff System" value is available both for the score and the parts and has the highest influence on the distance between multiple systems on a page.

Especially in parts this is probably the most important value for the system layout.
For a very dense spacing use low values (e.g. 20 EVPU is the default in the 'Tight Spacing' preset).
For a wide spacing use higher value between 150-240 EVPU.

Note: The "Min. Bottom Margin" value will only provide a rough orientation for the plug-in.
The actual bottom margin of the systems will probably be different on each system dependent on the content.

In PL v3 there is also an "Auto-Suggest 'Parts' Value" option.
It tries to suggest a good value according to the spacing in the current system setup in the parts (before Perfect Layout).

"Auto-Suggest" will either generate a value of 80 EVPU (medium dense spacing) or 200 EVPU ("standard" spacing).

How does "Auto-Suggest" work?

Orchestral or chamber music parts very often use a more dense spacing. Other musical genres often use a wider spacing.
It's obviously difficult to detect if the engraver wanted a dense or wide system spacing.

The "Auto-Suggest" in Perfect Layout decides like this:
If the vertical spacing in the parts is already very wide, it will be kept (->use 200 EVPU).
If the spacing is already extremely dense and maybe even with collisions between staves, then it will also be set to s (standard) wide spacing (->use 200 EVPU).
If the spacing is dense, but probably ok, then the plug-in will keep a dense spacing (->use 80 EVPU).
If you load the "Tight Spacing" preset, then the vertical spacing will be set to just "20 EVPU".

If you want to define your own system distance in parts, deactivate "Auto-Suggest" and set your own value.

g.) Reserve Distance Between Bottom and Next Top Staff System Margin (Default: 70 EVPU)

After the score balancing algorithm the bottom system margin will be reduced by this value to allow easy manual shifting of the systems after Perfect Layout has finished.

Image 3: "Reserve Distance Between Bottom and Next Top Staff System Margin"

h.) Min. Vertical Space on Reflow Systems Across Pages (Default: 14 EVPU)

If "Reflow Systems Across Pages" is activated in the Finale preferences, Perfect Layout will re-arrange the systems across the pages and improve the layout. This "Min. Vertical Space" value defines the minimum distance between two systems.Usually you will never encounter this exact distance between systems in the end, as there is nearly always more space available on a page.
This is more a guide value that defines the general density of a page: the higher the value, the less number of systems will appear on a page.
E.g. the value 0 EVPU creates very dense parts, while a value of 50-70 EVPU generates a very loose vertical spacing.
This value is more relevant to (extracted) parts with lots of systems per page (see for example this demo video).
On conductor's scores with only one or two systems per page, this is not relevant as there is usually no reflow of systems across pages.

a.) Adjust Top System Margin to Max. Position of Top Staff

When activated this feature aligns the top element of the top staff with the page top margin (see in image 4 bottom).
This option is available separately for the score and the parts.
By default this is activated for the parts only. In the score it is usually preferred to have the top staff lines aligned.

If you have deactivated this option, make sure you have a nice "Distance Between Systems" value in your Finale (default) page format settings.This will be used/maintained otherwise.

Note: Make sure there is enough vertical space between your page text elements and the page top margin (e.g. page numbers, title) before you apply Perfect Layout. Otherwise you may get collisions when this feature is activated.

When Perfect Layout detects these page text/page top margin collisions, it automatically deactivates this pre-set feature.
In this case you have to manually (re-)activate this option to have it applied.


Image 4: The "Adjust Top System Margin to Max. Position of Top Staff" option
The enclosure of "Letter D" is aligned with the page top margin.

b.) Alignment at the Page Bottom

You can select different alignment techniques for the bottom of the page (see image 5 below). In this case alignment means "snap an element to the bottom page margin". That is also why it is important to set the bottom page margin to your needs before running the Perfect Layout plug-in.

The option "Fix Staff System Bottom Margin (Auto-Detect Lowest)" looks at all score pages, finds the lowest element at the bottom staff and uses the distance of this element to the bottom staff line as the "fix bottom margin".This guarantees that all staff lines of the bottom staff system align over all pages and that no element goes below the bottom page margin line. This default option works best in most cases.

If the bottom staff has very different distances to the bottom staff line (e.g. in modern piano works), it may work better to select the "Lowest Element On Bottom Staff" algorithm which aligns the lowest elements on all pages (and not the bottom staff line).

Both options are combined in the default option "Auto-Detect (Fix Staff System Bottom Margin or Lowest Element)": if the bottom margin is huge and very different on each page (e.g. contemporary piano scores), the "Lowest Element" algorithm is select, otherwise the "Fix Staff System Bottom Margin (Auto-Detect Lowest)".

Other options are:
"Fix Staff System Bottom Margin": same as above, but the distance is not auto-detected and can be entered manually.
"Bottom Staff Line": this option aligns the bottom staff line with the bottom page margin which means that all elements below the bottom staff line appear below the bottom page margin. It's the same as a "Fix Staff System Bottom Margin" with a value of 0 EVPU.


Image 5: Option Align Page Bottom Margin With

Note: the score balancing algorithm needs to take into account each Finale object (except page texts). Unfortunately JW Lua doesn't support all object properties yet, so the algorithm has some minor restrictions.
Currently unsupported or only partially supported objects are for graphic objects, mid-measure clefs, staff names, complex cross staff notes, shape articulations and smartshapes that span more then two systems.
To support some of these objects nevertheless dummy values are used which already lead to better results.

c.) Option: Auto-Adjust Bottom Margin for Colliding Page Texts on Bottom of First Page (e.g. Copyright Text)

Perfect Layout aligns the bottom system with the page bottom margin. So you need to make sure that all copyright text, page numbers, etc. are placed below the page bottom margin in order to avoid collisions with the score.
Perfect Layout's Auto-Adjust Bottom Margin for Colliding Page Texts on Bottom of First Page automatically adjusts the page bottom margin on the first page with systems (i.e. where usually the copyright texts are).

By default it generates a distance of 56 EVPU between the page bottom margin and the page text (see image 6 below).
The distance is set with the Bottom Margin to Page Text Distance parameter.


Image 6: Option Auto-Adjust Bottom Margin for Colliding Page Texts on Bottom of First Page

d.) Option: Force Spread to Page Bottom Margin

While the Max. Distance Between Staves value (470 EVPU by default) usually defines the maximum distance between staves, this value can be overridden by activating Force Spread to Page Bottom Margin.This gives so much space between staves until the system(s) are stretched until the page bottom margin(see image 7).

Image 7:
Left: By default 470 EVPUs maximum distance between staves
Right: Force Spread to Page Bottom Margin activated

e.) Option: Distribute Single Staff Systems Evenly Over Last Two Pages if at Least (5) Systems on Last Page

Similar to the previous option "Force Spread to Page Bottom Margin" which is meant for scores, this option is meant for single staff parts.
However, it only affects the last two pages of a part.
When activated (by default), this feature distributes all systems on the last two pages evenly.
When deactivated, it's possible that the last page only has very few systems which only fill the top part the page.

The minimum number of necessary systems on the last page can be adjusted. By default it is set to 5 staff systems.
This means: the feature will not be activated if there are only 4 systems on the last page.


Image 8: Distribute 1-Staff Systems Evenly Over the Last Two Pages

a.) Improved Measure Layout per System

The measure layout in parts is currently based on seven rules in Perfect Layout (PL).
While Perfect Layout version 2 and version 3 both work on extracted parts, while version 3 also processes linked parts.

1.) The parts layout of a score generated by PL is based on the measures manually set per system prior to running the program.
PL will not reset the measures per system.
For example, if you put five measures in Trumpet 1 system 1 and six measures in Trumpet 2 system 1 while both have the same notes, PL will keep this and not unify it.

If you need a certain part style like broadway/musical, Hollywood film music or jazz, make sure to get the measure layout done prior to running PL (like 4 bars per system, multi-measure rests spanning a whole system, etc.).

2.) The parts layout mainly relies on Finale's music spacing algorithms. In a few cases PL's own spacing is added (e.g. for chords and multi-layer note collisions).
Music Spacing is only applied to a part if one of the options under "Optimize->Options Spacing Settings" is activated and true for that part.
This means the music spacing will be either applied:
- always ("Always Apply Music (Re-)Spacing) or
- if there any chord symbols are found or
- if major spacing settings change with the "Optimize->Optimize Spacing Settings" option.

3.) PL can shift measures to the previous/next system if there are horizontal collisions otherwise (especially between chords or tempo mark expressions).
But this is only performed if "Reflow Across Systems" is activated in Finale's preferences or if the measure layout has been redone significantly in PL.
The latter would be for example the case, if no multi-measure rests had been created before running PL and there were many multi-measure rests in that part which would affect most systems.

4.)With version 3.x of the software, PL can now to shift a new section start to the previous or next system if it is preceded by a double barline or a repeat bar and if it is either the first or last bar of the current system.
This feature is only enabled if "Reflow Across Systems" is activated in Finale's preferences.
To successfully shift the measure, there must be sufficient horizontal space in the system, which can be checked by looking at the horizontal stretch value after the shift - it must be at least 0.95 or higher.
In certain cases, the measure may not shift (e.g. a single-measure crescendo after a multi-measure rest that leads into a new section after the barline, or a rehearsal or tempo mark at the start of the next system).

5.) PL optimizes the linked parts for good page turns, if the part has at least two pages and "Systems->Optimize Page Breaks with Rest Bars" is activated.
For detailed info see the next section b).

6.) If the final system has only one (narrow) measure and there is enough space, PL will shift the final measure to the previous system.

7.) If PL detects coda measures in the score (either through coda expressions or with repeat text elements), it will begin a new system in the parts with the coda measure.
To make the beginning of the coda more obvious, the system can also be shifted down further than usual (Systems->"Shift Coda System Down by").

b.) Page Breaks for Easy Page Turns

In parts with only one staff Perfect Layout v3 can optimize the system and measure layout for easy page turns via the option Optimize Page Breaks with Rests.
This feature analyzes the last systems on a page and looks for good page breaks with multi-measure rests, cue notes sections or longer rests within a measure.

First you have to determine where Perfect Layout should add page breaks.
By default Perfect Layout will add them on the odd (right) pages (Option: "On Odd (Right) Pages").
But you can also select the even (left) or both pages.

There is also the option "Only Optimize if Number of Staff Systems is at Least X".
It automatically deactivates the page break feature on parts with less than X systems (e.g. if the part only has two pages).

Perfect Layout only takes into account rests in the first or second bar of a system, or in the last or next-to-last bar.
I.e. a single multi-measure rest in the middle of a system with at least 5 bars is currently not shifted to the end of a system, because it is very likely that it will influence more than one subsequent system.

However, you can allow "Mid-System Multi-Measure Rests" for the page break if you activate one of these two options:
1.) Always Accept Mid-System Multi-Measure Rests: the first system with a multi-measure rest found in the middle of a system would be used for the page break, if the subsequent systems didn't have rests for a good page break.
2.) Prefer Mid-System Multi-Measure Rests over Single Empty Measures (in PL Gold only): like 1.), but only if there were no previous or subsequent systems with multi-measure rests at the start or end of the system.

Note: in these case of mid-system multi-measure rests Perfect Layout uses the system for the page break, but it doesn't shift the rest bars to the end of the system automatically. Because this will usually lead to music spacing problems or other collisions.
Here Perfect Layout only supports the search for page breaks:
you have to shift the multi-measure rest bars manually to the end of the system after Perfect Layout.

BTW, that is also why these two options are deactivated by default.
However, they allow for more complex page turns which may be required if there are only very few rests.

In Perfect Layout Gold you can control in how many systems Perfect Layout will search for rests through the option "Max. Number of Systems to Search in for Good Page Breaks". By default (and in PL Silver) this value is 4.

Perfect Layout refines its search in several steps:
1.) First it looks for a multi-measure rest that spans at least x bars. In PL Gold x is defined in "Preferred Minimum Number of Empty Measures at Page Break". By default and in PL Silver it is 2.
2.) If it doesn't find such a rest, it will reduce the number of bars (until x=1) and try again.
3.) If it's only one bar, it will first search with for one empty bar with adjacent rests in the previous bar.
4.) Then it will search for single rest bars.
5.) If it still hasn't found a full bar rest and "Allow Rests within Measures" is activated, it will search for long rests at the end of a measure:
In step one it searches for rests that span at least 3072 EDU (dotted half note - set with the "Minimum Rest Duration" option), in step two for rests that span at least 2048 EDU (half note, set with the "If not found, check for" option).
6.) If it still hasn't found a rest bar, it will finally search for mid-system multi-measure rests, even if the two mid-system options are not activated.

Rests at the end of a system are preferred over rests at the beginning of a system.
A rest at the start of a new page will not be visible to the musician before the page turn. So, if possible, this should be avoided.


Image 9: Rest priorities for good page breaks:
The first multi-measure rest in the second system (second measure) could be preferred over the second multi-measure rest (fifth measure of the second system) as it only requires shifting a whole note to the previous system, instead of shifting four quarter notes to the next system.
Perfect Layout decides which rest to take dependent on the system contents (e.g. the density of the music spacing).

If Perfect Layout has found a good page break above the current last system of the page, the number of systems on that page will be reduced.
Dependent on the number of reduced systems, Perfect Layout will either automatically add blank space at the bottom of the page (page break found many systems before end of page) or move systems from the previous page to the page with the page break (page break found close to end of page), so that the overall look will still be visually balanced.

If Perfect Layout has found a good page break in the second or next-to-last measure of a system, it tries to move it to the start or to the end of the system.
This is possible in most cases.
However, there may be scenarios where this is not possible or where it's not guaranteed that it looks good.
In these cases you should have a final look at these page breaks and move the measures manually and/or correct some minor collisions.
Perfect Layout adds a message to the log file and also displays a warning message on the screen at the end of processing.

Note 1: The page break feature is only available if "Reflow Systems Across Pages" is activated in Finale's Preferences->Edit and if "Systems->Optimize Staff/System Distances" is activated in Perfect Layout.
Note 2: The feature currently doesn't work on parts with more than one staff (e.g. piano parts or the full score).

The coda system is automatically shifted down for better readability (Option: "Shift Coda System Down").The algorithm looks for repeat elements or text expressions with the user-defined keyword ("Coda" by default).
If the algorithm detects this word at the beginning of a system, it will move the system down by the given value (120 EVPUs by default). If there is not enough space on the page, the score balancing algorithm will probably decrease the distance.

Perfect Layout can also handle score files with several movements.

However, if possible, it is recommended to avoid large multi-movement scores in Finale with more than 1000 bars and more than 30 instruments as Finale (and Perfect Layout) becomes rather slow when handling these huge files.

Please make sure that the start of the new movement is easily visible and thus can be detected automatically by Perfect Layout.
To do so, if possible:
- use a large movement title (either as page text, as measure text or as a text expression)
- if the movement doesn't start on a new page, give a little more space to the system above
- activate the "Begin a new system" option on the first measure of a new movement in Finale's Measure Attributes dialog and answer "No" when asked if Perfect Layout should remove all "Begin a new system" attributes.

Here is an example video of optimizing a multi-movement score with text expressions as movement titles with Perfect Layout.

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.

You can exclude expressions individually from alignment by adding the keyword EXCLUDE to the description text in the expression designer dialog. This can be helpful if you need an unusual placement of an expression which at the same should be taken into account for visual score balancing.

Similar to the "EXCLUDE" feature, you can add "FORCEINCLUDE" to the description text of an expression and it will be included even if it is huge and far above/below a staff. By default these expressions would not be taken into account for vertical alignment and/or spacing.


Image 1: EXCLUDE in the description text

When clicking on the little buttons next to the user dialog options a pop-up preview image will appear in your web browser.
In Perfect Layout v3/RGP Lua the buttons also include a question mark.
Unfortunately JW Lua doesn't support embedded images in the user dialog, so this is the only option to have images connected with the user dialog.



Image 2: Preview image button in Perfect Layout version 2/JW Lua (left) and version 3/RGP Lua (right)

You can directly access the Perfect Layout documentation from the user dialog.
If you click on"Help", this documentation page for the current user tab will open in your web browser.
If you click on "PDF", the full PDF documentation opens up in your PDF viewer.


Image 3: Help button and PDF button for accessing the documentation

You can set the unit of measurement in Perfect Layout at any time in the user dialog at the bottom.
This will update all unit based values in Perfect Layout.


Image 4: Measurement units in Perfect Layout

Windows:
Double-click the PerfectLayoutSetup.exe file to start the installation. The installation software will guide you through the installation process.
No manual adjustments have to be made in Finale® after the installation.

The installation takes about 3-9 minutes dependent on the computer speed and the number of components installed.It is highly recommended to install all components to have access to all plug-in features.
A video of the Windows installer is available here.

MacOS: (example for the Gold edition. Replace Gold with Silver or Silver400 on other editions.)
Double-clicking the PerfectLayoutGold.dmg will mount the Perfect Layout installer disk image.
Then double-click Perfect Layout Gold vX.XX.pkg and you will be guided through the installation.
A video of the MacOS installer is available here.

You will receive the license key in the order confirmation email from the online shop (from "share-it!").
Look for "license key" in the email.
Note: it's not included in the PDF invoice, but only in the email text.

The license key is in the format XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (digits and letters mixed).
If it looks like this: 9999-9999-9999-9999 (digits + hyphens), it's the activation code (not the license key).

After you have installed the plug-in the license key and the registration data (name and email) are also displayed at the left bottom of the General tab in Finale (see image 1).

Image 1: Registration data on the General tab

The activation code will be sent to you via email after clicking "Submit License Key" in the plug-in registration dialog.
The activation code is in the format 9999-9999-9999-9999 (digits only!).You can delete the activation code email after activation. It's not relevant after the activation anymore:
these codes are one-time-only and are different every time you install the plug-in.


Image: Email with activation code.

The update code is included in the purchase confirmation email when purchasing an update (e.g. v1.0 to v2.0).The update code must be entered on the Download Updates web page to update your account to the new plug-in version.
After your account has been updated, the update code becomes invalid and can be deleted.
When installing the update (e.g. v1.x to v2.0), you again need the (original) license key from your very first purchase in the registration/activation dialog of the plug-in.
The update code is ONLY for the software download on the web page, not for the plug-in.

The update code is in the format XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (digits and letters mixed).

Your activation code is in the format 9999-9999-9999-9999 (digits only!).
The update code and license key are in the format XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (digits and letters mixed)

If your code includes any letters, it's not the activation code, but probably the license key.

The license key must not be deleted as it is required for all installations. Also for updates (e.g. v1.0 to v2.0).The update code and activation code can be deleted after their first usage. They are one-time-only.

Node.js is required for reading the metrics of .OTF (open type) fonts.
If it is not installed, only .TTF (true type) fonts are supported.
Perfect Layout v2.x requires at least Node.js version 14.16.1: Windows or macOS.
Perfect Layout v3.x requires at least Node.js version 16.17.0: Windows or macOS.
Older versions of Perfect Layout worked with version 12.x.

To check if Node.js works correctly, open cmd.exe on Windows (type in CMD in start menu)
or Terminal app on macOS, then type node and press Enter.
If everything is installed correctly, you should see a "Welcome to Node.js" message.

The installation of all components takes about 1 - 5 minutes (Windows) and up to 1 minute on MacOS.

The Windows installation has finished when the screen says: "Click Finish to Exit the Perfect Layout Plugin Wizard." - then click on "Finish" and start Finale®.
Don't interrupt the installation process with a process kill through the task manager or a computer reset (use the "Back" button or the right top corner "x" instead). Otherwise your plug-in activation may get corrupted and you will probably have to contact our support.

If you get this error message, make sure that your Finale plug-in doesn't use unicode characters.
JW Lua has a problem with unicode characters in file names.

If possible, always use the English default folder names like:
Windows: c:\Program Files\MakeMusic\Finale 26\Plug-ins
macOS: /Library/Application support/MakeMusic/Finale 26/Plug-ins

Finale and/or JW Lua don't like network drives either.
Try to avoid network ressources (\\NetworkPC\FinaleDoc.musx).
There is another FAQ article on this topic.


Image: Error message "No such file or directory"

Yes. It is required to activate and register the plug-in and to download the Finale® plug-in interface "JW Lua" which is not included in the package.
Internet access is also required for updating the plug-in and for deactivating it.

Run the installer tool maintenancetool.exe with administration rights (Right-click with the mouse and select "Run as Admin").
The file maintenancetool.exe can usually be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Elbsound.studio\Perfect Layout.

Select "Remove all components" and the "Next" and "Ok".

The uninstallation process takes between 30 seconds and three minutes, dependent on the number of users on your Windows system.
During the uninstallation you must explicitly confirm that you also want to uninstall Node.js. Otherwise it won't be uninstalled.

The Perfect Layout edition (Silver400, Silver, Gold) and version number is included in the title of the Perfect Layout window:

a) If Perfect Layout uses RGP Lua (Perfect Layout v3 in Finale 25-27), you need the following files:
The blackened letter is dependent on the plug-in version.

Windows:


macOS:


b) If Perfect Layout uses JW Lua (i.e. Perfect Layout v1, v2 in all Finale versions or Perfect Layout v3 in Finale 2014/2014.5), you need the following files:

Windows:
These seven files must be in the Finale/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua folder after installation on Windows.
By default the full folder name is c:\program files\Finale\Plug-ins\Elbsound JW Lua (for Finale 25).
The blackened areas are different dependent on the Finale and plug-in version.


MacOS:
These three files must be in the Finale/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua folder after installation on MacOS.
By default the full folder name is /Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua.
The blackened area depends on the Finale and plug-in version.

MacOS:
This is how the MacOS Elbsound.studio/Perfect Layout folder should look after the installation.
By default the full folder name is /Library/Application Support/Elbsound.studio/Perfect Layout.


Windows:
This is how the Windows Elbsound.studio/Perfect Layout folder should look after the installation.
By default the full folder name is c:\program files (x86)\Elbsound.studio\Perfect Layout.
The ending of the JALAYOU... files is different on the Gold/Silver editions.

Perfect Layout generates up to 6 files in Finale's user folder. The folder is typically located in:
Windows: c:\users\YOURNAME\appdata\roaming\makemusic\finale 26 (or other Finale version)
MacOS: ~/library/application support/makemusic/finale 26
Each Finale version has its own folder. So the files are available - and can be different! - in each Finale version.



None of these files are necessary to run Perfect Layout.
If they are missing, the installer or the plug-in itself will (re-)generate them.

The files in detail:
1.) jwpluginstorage.xml: this file determines Finale's plug-in menu name of Perfect Layout and also other JW plug-ins. It also stores the location of the plug-in. If this file is missing or corrupt, the plug-in will not appear in Finale's plug-in menu.
If you delete this file manually, all user settings from any JW plug-ins will be deleted. The file will recreate itself once the plug-in was used, but still your original settings are gone, if you delete it.
Note: this file is only generated from within the Elbsound installer (!), not from running the plug-in.
2.) JALAYOUX.ini (the X letter depends on your plug-in edition): this file stores the last used user settings of Perfect Layout
3.) JALAYOUX.log or JALAYOUX64.log: this log file stores all progress bar text messages from the last usage of the plug-in
4.) ES Perfect Layout.log: this second log file gives more detailed feedback about the last processed file. It is automatically opened at the end of the processing.
5.) LastFANFileCheck.txt: stores info about when the last update or font check has been performed
6.) ESFontFileNames.txt: stores info about the available fonts and font locations on your system

In Finale's subfolder Font Annotation, the Elbsound plug-ins also generate their own font annotation files with the file extension .f2n.
These font annotation files are currently recreated each time after you have run the full installer to make sure the font annotation files have the latest format.

There can be two reasons, if Perfect Layout v3.x doesn't appear in the Finale 25-27+ menu.1.) Plug-in files missing
Make sure that the Finale plug-in folder, includes all necessary files:
Windows:


macOS:


All of these files are installed automatically with the plug-in installer.
If some files are missing, please first delete the "com.robertg..." file and then run the installer again.

If you use Perfect Layout v3.x in Finale 2014/2014.5, the RGPLua.bundle will be replaced with JWLua.bundle.Note: Perfect Layout v3 in Finale 25-27 only works with RGP Lua, and in Finale 2014/2014.5 only with JW Lua.

2.) Wrong settings in the com.robertgpatterson.RGPPluginSettings.xml file
The com.robertgpatterson.RGPPluginSettings.xml file in the Finale/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua folder tells Finale to show ES Perfect Layout in the plug-in menu.

Usually, the Perfect Layout installer will create this com.robertgpatterson.RGPPluginSettings.xml file automatically.However in rare cases it might not work:
For example, if the plug-in folder already existed and included this file and the file was messed up (it's not very likely, but possible).
The installer has a few repair options, but can't solve all problems automatically.

If you don't see the ES Perfect Layout entry in your Finale menu, you can also edit the path in the com.robertgpatterson.RGPPluginSettings.xml file manually in a text editor.

If the file looks like this and includes the correct path of the "ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua" file, Finale will show "Elbsound JW Lua/ES Perfect Layout" in its plug-in menu.

Windows:

<RGPPluginSettings>
   <RGPLua IncludeUI="false">
      <Scripts>
         <Script Path="c:\Program Files\MakeMusic\Finale 27\Plug-ins\Elbsound JW Lua\ES Perfect Layout - Apply to Parts Only (for Menu).lua" IsDirectory="false" Trusted="true" Debug="false" UseString="false" FromRGPLuaDirectory="false"/>
         <Script Path="c:\Program Files\MakeMusic\Finale 27\Plug-ins\Elbsound JW Lua\ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua" IsDirectory="false" Trusted="true" Debug="false" UseString="false" FromRGPLuaDirectory="false"/>
      </Scripts>
   </RGPLua>
</RGPPluginSettings>

On macOS it looks the same - except the path which typically looks like this:

<RGPPluginSettings>
   <RGPLua IncludeUI="false">
      <Scripts>
         <Script Path="/Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 27/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua/ES Perfect Layout - Apply to Parts Only (for Menu).lua" IsDirectory="false" Trusted="true" Debug="false" UseString="false" FromRGPLuaDirectory="false"/>
         <Script Path="/Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 27/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua/ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua" IsDirectory="false" Trusted="true" Debug="false" UseString="false" FromRGPLuaDirectory="false"/>
      </Scripts>
   </RGPLua>
</RGPPluginSettings>

By default Perfect Layout v3.x (from on 3.0071+) installs and uses RGP Lua as the base plug-in for Finale.
This will work fine in Finale 27.2 - both on an M1 in native mode or in Rosetta mode.

However, if you try to use Perfect Layout v2.x, it won't work in the macOS native mode in Finale 27.2 on the Apple M1/M2/M3 chip.
In this case please run Finale 27.2+ in Rosetta mode. Then Perfect Layout 2.x and JW Lua will work.

This also affects other third party Finale plug-ins:
they may not be compatible with with the native mode and then don't show up in the Finale plug-in menu.

If you have an M1/M2/M3 chip, it's recommended to use Perfect Layout v3.x in Finale 27.2 on an M1 chip with RGP Lua in native mode. It is about 40% faster than in Rosetta mode.

To run Finale in Rosetta mode please:
-Open Finder and select the "Finale 27" app.
-In the File menu click on "Get Info" in the menu bar
-Activate "Open using Rosetta"

Perfect Layout version 3:
PL v3.x in RGP Lua supports the native mode.
PL v3.x in JW Lua still requires Rosetta mode.

This can have several causes:

1.) Did you install Finale 27 after you have installed Perfect Layout?
When you already had a previous version of Finale (e.g. Finale 26) with Perfect Layout, you need to re-install Perfect Layout to make sure it also appears in the plug-in menu of Finale 27.

2.) When applying Perfect Layout to a Finale 27 score with the new SMuFl fonts (e.g. "Finale Maestro"), it doesn't work. Please try the following four solutions:
a) Make sure to have at least v2.47 of Perfect Layout installed. The version number is visible in the top title of Perfect Layout's user dialog.

Image 1: Version number of Perfect Layout

b) Make sure to have the component "Node.js" installed with the automatic plug-in installer (see image 2 below). If you deactivate Node.js during the installation, Perfect Layout won't work with OTF fonts like Finale Maestro.
Perfect Layout v3.x requires at least Node.js version 16.17.0.
Perfect Layout v2.x requires at least Node.js version 14.16.1.
In previous versions Perfect Layout used version 12.x - this doesn't work anymore. If you have an older version of Node.js installed, please re-install Perfect Layout (on Windows you need to uninstall first).
You can also download Node.js 16.17.0 for Perfect Layout v3 directly and install it:
Windows version
macOS version

You can also download Node.js 14.16.1 for Perfect Layout v2 directly and install it:
Windows version
macOS version

c) Should Perfect Layout still have problems with SMuFl fonts, rescan for new fonts. Go to the "General" tab of the plug-in and click on "Rescan Installed System Fonts->Rescan now!".
d) Go to your Finale user folder (Windows: c:\users\YOURNAME\appdata\roaming\makemusic\finale 27, macOS: ~/library/application support/makemusic/finale 27) and delete the file "ESFontFileNames.txt". Perfect Layout will automatically rescan all fonts the next time it starts.
e) Check that your Finale 27 MacSymbolFonts.txt file doesn't include the new SMuUFl font names.

If you want to check if Node.js is correctly installed, please open Windows command (cmd.exe), and type node. It should look like this:

Image 2: Node.js 14.16.1 available on Windows

3.) macOS:
Make sure the macOS tools curl, defaults, sudo and node are available via Terminal.app.
When you open Terminal.app, and type their names it should look like this:








If this is not the case, please contact Elbsound.studio.
For node please follow the installation instructions as described under 2b) above.

macOS has changed its system identification in OS Ventura (13.0).

This means:
Under certain circumstances the plug-in activation is not recognized in Finale anymore if the plug-in (v1.x or v2.x) had been activated in OS 10.13-11.x or in OS 12.x in Rosetta Mode and is now run on an M1 in OS Ventura (OS 13.x).

When the plug-in activation is available, but not recognized, you can't start the plug-in.
Unfortunately you don't see an error message either: the plug-in simply won't start in Finale.

Solution:
1.) If you have not updated to OS Ventura yet, please deactivate Perfect Layout before updating to OS Ventura and re-activate it after you have updated your OS to Ventura (v13.x).
2.) If you have already updated to Ventura, you need to deactivate the plug-in manually and then re-activate it:
  a) Reset the activation online here
    and then
  b) Clear the activation on your Mac by running the Perfect Layout Deactivation tool

Note: if your plug-in already works fine in OS Ventura, you don't need to deactivate/reactivate the plug-in!
Especially Perfect Layout version 3 has some fixes for avoiding similar problems.
However, according to our users it's likely that old installations of Perfect Layout v1 and v2 only work in OS Ventura with this trick.

If your computer has crashed and you can't deactivate the plug-in anymore, it's not possible to re-activate the plug-in on a new computer. Your old activation blocks the new activation.

Here is how to reset the activation manually in this case.

The macOS deactivation requires two steps:
1) Reset the activation online here
You need your license key (included in your purchase confirmation email) and your registered email address for this.

2) Then clear the activation on your Mac by running the Perfect Layout Deactivation tool.
Just download and run this uninstaller. After running your Elbsound plug-in activations will have been removed from your computer.

Perfect Layout requires either the Finale plug-in JW Lua or RGP Lua to work properly in Finale.

Perfect Layout version 1 and version 2 will only work in JW Lua.
It's impossible to get v1 and v2 to work in RGP Lua!

However, for Perfect Layout version 3+ it is recommended to use RGP Lua.
Version 3 will also still work in JW Lua, but with less features and not in native mode on a macOS M1 chip.

The Perfect Layout v3.x installer automatically installs Perfect Layout with RGP Lua.
There is usually no need to install it manually.

Anyway this is how to do it manually:
To install Perfect Layout in RGP Lua, you first need to download RGP Lua.

Note: You need at least RGP Lua version 0.64 for Perfect Layout v3.0075.
It is always recommended to use the latest version of RGP Lua.

Then open the downloaded .zip file and extract the RGPLua.bundle (macOS) or RGPLuaWin.fxt (Windows) file into your Finale plug-ins Perfect Layout folder.
By default this is the folder:
macOS: /Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 27/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua
Windows: c:/Program Files/Finale 27/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua

Then you need to connect Perfect Layout with RGP Lua.
Download this Perfect Layout for RGP Lua setup file and paste it into the same folder from above.
This setup file tells RGP Lua to show ES Perfect Layout in the Finale plug-in menu.

At the end you need to have at least four files in that folder:
com.robertgpatterson.RGPPluginSettings.xml
ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua
JALAYOUx64.lua
RGPLua.bundle (macOS) / RGPLuaWin.fxt (Windows)

If JW Lua was installed too, then you will typically have five (macOS) or six (Windows) files in that folder. But these can be ignored.

If Finale was open during this installation process, you would need to restart Finale now. This will update its plug-in menu.

The com.robertgpatterson.RGPPluginSettings.xml looks like this.
Please edit folder name marked in bold, so that it matches your Finale plug-ins Elbsound folder.

Windows:

<RGPPluginSettings>
   <RGPLua IncludeUI="false">
      <Scripts>
         <Script Path="D:\Programme\Finale 27\Plug-ins\Elbsound JW Lua\ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua" IsDirectory="false" Debug="false" UseString="false" FromRGPLuaDirectory="false"/>
      </Scripts>
   </RGPLua>
</RGPPluginSettings>

On macOS it looks the same - except the path which typically looks like this:

         <Script Path="/Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 27/Plug-Ins/Elbsound JW Lua/ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua" IsDirectory="false" Debug="false" UseString="false" FromRGPLuaDirectory="false"/>

Image 2: The macOS Finale plug-in folder with all files (jwlua64.bundle is not necessary for RGP Lua)

Note 1: If you also have other versions of Finale installed (25 or 26), you need to repeat the whole RGP Lua setup process for each version of Finale.
I.e. you need to copy all RGP Lua files into the plug-in folders of each Finale version.

Note 2: RGP Lua requires at least Finale 25. It does not work in Finale 2012, 2014 or 2014.5.

Note 3: MacOS only: If you are running Finale 27.2 or higher on a M1 mac, you can run Finale both in native mode or Rosetta mode. RGP Lua supports both modes, JW Lua only supports Rosetta mode.If you run Finale in Rosetta mode and you have both JW Lua and RGP Lua in that folder, you will have two (!) ES Perfect Layout entries in the Finale plug-in menu. It's recommended to remove JW Lua from that folder in this case.

Note 4: MacOS only: If ES Perfect Layout still doesn't work now, please check that you have granted the necessary system access to Finale as described here.

Note 5: If ES Perfect Layout still doesn't work in the Finale menu, please also check that your antivirus/internet security software or firewall doesn't block Perfect Layout's internet access.This is required for checking the license activation. For more info on this issue see here.

The message looks like this:

Image 1: Message "0 Finale installation(s) Found"

The installer only detects Finale versions if they are correctly registered in the Windows registry.
For Finale 2014/2014.5 the following entries should exist:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\MakeMusic\Finale2014\InstallPath
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\MakeMusic\Finale2014.5\InstallPath

For Finale 25 the following entry should exist:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MakeMusic\Finale\InstallPath

For Finale 26 the following entry should exist:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MakeMusic\Finale26\InstallPath

For Finale 27 the following entry should exist:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MakeMusic\Finale27\InstallPath

If you open the Windows tools Regedit, it should look like in the images below.
Note: Your Finale install paths may be different than those in the images below!


Image 2: Finale 2014.5 Registry Entry


Image 3: Finale 25 Registry Entry


Image 4: Finale 27 Registry Entry

You can also test if these entries exist, by opening the Windows console ("cmd") and typing:
reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\MakeMusic\Finale\InstallPath /reg:64
reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\MakeMusic\Finale2014.5\InstallPath /reg:32

This is how it should look for a working installation in Finale 2014.5 and Finale 25:

Image 5: Finale Registry Entries in the Windows Console
(Note: the folder names can, of course, be different on your installation. They must direct to the folder with the Finale.exe file.)

You can add these entries manually through the Windows console ("Cmd"), through "Regedit" or by re-installing Finale. For more info please contact our support.

Did you uninstall the Elbsound package or the plug-in right before you started the installer?
Unfortunately this doesn't work - probably because of a problem with Windows font cache.
You need to restart Windows before reinstalling the plug-in and the Elbsound Music Font Package. Otherwise the fonts may not be registered correctly.
If you have problems with installed/uninstalled fonts, another solution is to remove the Windows font cache file (c:\windows\system32\fntcache.dat).If you delete this file and restart Windows, it will be recreated which also very often fixes font issues on Windows.

In general you can activate the plug-in on only one computer.
If you have a license key that allows activation on two computers, you need to make sure that you use the identical licensee name and email address in the license key dialog in the installer.You also need to make sure that your computers are in the same network and thus use the same IP address base.
This is usually only the case if you perform both installations within a short time frame as the IP address may change from time to time (dependent on your network).
We recommend to do both installations within a short time frame (like a few hours). If there are several days between the two installations, it's very likely that it won't work - but it depends on your network settings. If your network never changes its IP address at all ("static IP address"), then there won't be no problems with the two installations.
If the installation fails because of a change in the IP address, you have to uninstall the first installation, and then re-install both installations within the allowed time frame again.
If you uninstall the plug-in completely, make safety copies of your settings file if you have changed the default settings (i.e. JALAYOUX.ini in your Finale configuration folder).

Make sure to first have one installation fully completed (i.e. installer finished), before you start the second installation. It doesn't work if you run the two installations at the same time.

Do not use any IP-hiding or other IP-manipulating services like "No-IP.com" during the activation of the plug-in as this won't work.
After the activation of the plug-in the IP addresses or networks are not important anymore.

LAN and WLAN:
One user has reported that it didn't work when one computer used LAN and one WLAN.
In his configuration it only worked when both computers were connected to his LAN.
The reason was that one network used IPv4 addresses and the other one IPv6 addresses.
Usually LAN and WLAN share the same IP base, but this could be a solution if you still have installation problems.

Please also read the next section "Common error codes -18, -19, -21, -22, -44, 83, 84, 85, 86, 120 from second computer activations explained" if you have these error messages during the installation on the second computer.

The following error messages can occur during the installation:

Error -18:
You have tried to activate an update, but your (old) license key is not yet valid for that update.
E.g. if you have bought v1.0 and now try to install v2.x, you will get this error message.

Solution:
Please purchase the "v1.x to v2.x" update.
Then register the update code to make your old v1.x license key valid for v2.x.
Then install the v2.x update.
(Same for other version number changes, v3, v4, v5, etc.)

Error "-18/64":
Please contact Elbsound.studio if this error occurs.

Error -19:
You are running a plug-in version that doesn't match the version registered to your account.
E.g. if you have bought version 1 or 2 and install the beta of version 3 without upgrading your account to version 3, then you will get this error message.
If Elbsound.studio should update your account (e.g. because you are participating in the beta test), contact Elbsound.studio.
Other please install the correct version that matches the version number from your activation.

This problem also occurs when you have activated an (old) license key on your computer (e.g. a license key for PL v1.0) and then purchase a new license key for a new version like PL v3.0.When you try to start the new PL v3 plug-in from the Finale plug-in menu it will give this error message -19, because it only finds the old license for v1.0 on the computer.
In this case either deactivate the old license key first and reactivate the plug-in with the new license key from the new plug-in which you have purchased.
Or purchase an update which will make your old license key also work with newer versions.

Error -21:
There is a problem with your license key or the plug-in activation.
Please try to uninstall the plug-in from this computer and then try to reinstall. Should it still not work, please contact Elbsound.studio support.

Error -22:
There is a problem with your license key or the plug-in activation.
This error typically occurs when you install the wrong edition:
For example, if Perfect Layout Silver is installed and activated on your computer, and then you run the Gold installer, you will get a warning message that the wrong edition has been installed and also this -22 error message.
In this case try to deactivate the old plug-in from this computer first and then reinstall the new version.

If you have purchased an upgrade and want to install version Gold over Silver, please deactivate Silver first.
Then run the Gold installer.

This error also occurs when you change your computer and re-use the data from the old hard drive.
In this case it's recommended to run the "Perfect Layout Removal"-Tool (for macOS) on the new computer which removes the old installation data.
If Perfect Layout was already activated before, you also need to reset the activation through our online deactivation tool.
After the removal of the old data and the online deactivation you can run the Perfect Layout installer again.

Note 1: The online deactivation tool only works on macOS activations with Perfect Layout v2.x or v3.x,
or on Windows activations with Perfect Layout v3.x. On Windows with PL v1.x and v2.x please contact Elbsound.studio.
Note 2: Don't forget to confirm the deactivation by opening the link in the confirmation email.

The detailed deactivation instructions can be found on this FAQ page under the PL v2: Perfect Layout and Updating to OS Ventura".
Should it still not work, please contact Elbsound.studio support.

Error -44:
The automatic activation check failed. Make sure you are connected to the internet.
In rare cases this error can occur if your internet connecion is extremely slow (e.g. more than 10 seconds for the simple internet connection).Usually this can be handled running the plug-in again.

Error 83:
The plug-in has already been activated on this computer. You may get this message when you try run the installer a second time on this computer and your original installation is broken (e.g. because of a re-installation of Windows or another severe crash).Please try to uninstall the plug-in from this computer and then try to reinstall. Should it still not work, please contact Elbsound.studio support.

Error 84:
The name or email address for your second activation doesn't match the email address in the Elbsound.studio database from your first activation.
Please make sure to use the same email address and retry. Please check your old emails for the email address you used when activating the plug-in on the first computer.
Should you still can't recover the correct email address, please contact Elbsound.studio.

Error 85:
The name/company name for your second activation doesn't match the name/company name in the Elbsound.studio database from your first activation.
Please make sure to use the same name and retry. Please check your old emails for the name you used when activating the plug-in on the first computer.
Should you still can't recover the correct name, please contact Elbsound.studio.

Error 86:
The IP address of your second activation doesn't match the IP address from your first activation.
For more details please read the FAQ section "How can I activate the plug-in on a second computer?".
Please also make sure to not use any IP-hiding or other IP-manipulating services like "No-IP.com" during the activation of the plug-in. This won't work.
However, after the activation of the plug-in has been completed the IP addresses or networks are not important anymore.

Error 120:
Please contact Elbsound.studio if this error occurs.

The full Perfect Layout installer always installs the correct RGP Lua version.

However, in rare cases there may be version conflicts.
There are typically two reasons for an RGP Lua version conflict:

1.) (Main reason!) The RGP Lua file is installed in two Finale plug-in subfolders, but with different version numbers.
Please search all Finale plug-in subfolders for the RGPLuaWin.fxt (Windows) or RGPLua.bundle (macOS) file and make sure they all have the same version number.
Differences can easily be found by looking at the modification date or the file size.
It's ok to have the RGP Lua file in several Finale subfolders, but only if the RGP Lua version numbers are identical.

2.) If you have installed RGP Lua or Perfect Layout manually, conflicts can also occur more easily.
In this case, just re-run the latest Perfect Layout installer to make sure you get the correct RGP Lua version.

When Panda Dome antivirus is installed, make sure its setting "Ask before neutralizing a virus" is activated.
This setting is NOT activated by default.
This means: Panda Dome can delete files automatically without asking the user for permission, even if these are obviously not affected by a virus. In the worst case this can crash programs - like Finale.

If this option is activated, Panda Dome still doesn't ask anything during the plug-in activation and the activation will work fine. It's probably a Panda Dome bug.


Image: Panda Dome setting "Ask before neutralizing a virus" activated (=green)

The plug-in activation does not support the Windows DOS code page 65001.

However, it's possible to manipulate this value in your Windows systems which leads to an error during the activation of the plug-in.
This typically occurs when the Windows Beta option 'Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support' is activated in the Windows 'Region Settings' dialog (see image below).


Image: 'Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support' option in Windows 10 and 11
By default, this option is deactivated. Only in this case the plug-in activation will work.

It's a known Windows issue that, if activated, old DOS commands like the ones Perfect Layout requires do not work any more (technical explanation here).
Please deactivate this Windows option before activating Perfect Layout.
Note: Deactivating this option requires a Windows reboot.

To automatically detect this problem, Perfect Layout scans the Windows registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\CodePage\OEMCP which stores the default DOS code page value.
The activation on Windows won't work if this value is set to 65001.

There are two known reasons for this problem:

a) An IP-hiding or manipulating services like "No-IP.com" or a virtual private network (VPN) change the IP address of your computer.This may lead to problems during the activation process of the plug-in.

b) Your DOS code page settings prevent an activation.

c) Your antivirus software blocks the activation process.

Solutions:
a) IP problems
Please deactivate any VPN or IP-hiding services before running the activation process in Perfect Layout.

b) Please read the FAQ section on DOS code page problems for a solution.

c) Antivirus software blocking the acitvation process (e.g. BitDefender/Windows)
If the registration dialog appears again after you seem to have successfully activated the plug-in, it's very likely that your antivirus software has blocked the activation of the plug-in in the Windows system.
It's known that the software BitDefender can do that.

However, this does't occur with all BitDefender installations. But we don't know yet what exactly causes this.

Solution:
1.) Make sure you have the latest BitDefender release.

2.) If you have Finale 25, 26 or 27+, please use these version for the plug-in activation.
Finale 2014/2014.5 are still 32-bit and lead to more problems in the antivirus detection.

3.) If the problem still occurs, have a look at the BitDefender log file and add an exception to BitDefender that allows the registration command to Finale.
Note: You have to reset your plug-in activation online, before you can activate the plug-in again.
Otherwise you will see a message that the license key already has been activated.
Don't forget: The online deactivation requires clicking on the link in the confirmation email that you will receive.

4.) Should it still not work, you may have to deactivate BitDefender during the activation of the plug-in.

Disclaimer:
Elbsound.studio cannot confirm this issue or its solution.
The problem didn't occur on our computers when we tested BitDefender.
We only report what helped other users who had this problem on their computer.
Please use these solutions at your own risk. Elbsound.studio cannot be held liable for any damages that these external solutions do to your computer.

Unfortunately, we don't have any influence on the development of the many antivirus programs.
Small sofware development companies with these problems are typically ignored.
However, when a software developer looks at the code that BitDefender claims to be dangerous, he can easily see that the blocked code won't do any harm: the code just writes some values into the Windows registry.
The blocked code starts with a PowerShell command.

The only known case where this error message occurs is the Apple "-10673 Error" which occurs in installers from many software companies since January 2022 (see more info).Only a few macOS computers seem to have this problem. On the Elbsound computers this problem didn't occur.

To find out if this was the problem, open the Finder and go to the /var/log folder.
Then open the file install.log in a text editor and search for Perfect Layout at the end of the file.
It is about 100 lines of text from the Perfect Layout installation.
Browse to the very end of this installation block.

Does it include an entry like "The application /Applications/Google Chrome.app cannot be opened for an unexpected reason" followed by "Code=-10673"?

For example like this:
...
2022-07-24 03:09:50-07 DREF-OFDQ-QHB package_script_service[86658]: ./postinstall: The domain/default pair of (com.elbsound.perfectlayout, InstallName) does not exist
2022-07-24 03:09:51-07 DREF-OFDQ-QHB package_script_service[86658]: ./postinstall: The application /Applications/Google Chrome.app cannot be opened for an unexpected reason, error=Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-10673 "(null)" UserInfo={_LSLine=3863, _LSFunction=_LSOpenStuffCallLocal}
2022-07-24 03:09:51-07 DREF-OFDQ-QHB package_script_service[86658]: Responsibility set back to self.
...

If it includes the code -10673, then the problem has something to do with your default browser settings.

To solve this:
Open the macOS "System Preferences", go to the "General" tab.

If your default browser is not "Safari", please change it to "Safari". Then restart your computer and run the installer again.
If your default browser is "Safari", please change it to "Chrome" (or the other installed browser). Then change it back to "Safari". Then restart your computer and run the installer again.
Should it still not work, change it to "Chrome", restart the computer. Then change it back to "Safari" and restart the computer. Then re-run the installer.

Sounds like a weird solution, but it actually worked and was recommended in the "more info" link above.

Make sure that your computer has internet access.Otherwise read the next FAQ entry: "How do I deactivate the plug-in when my computer has crashed?"

Windows:
Go to your Elbsound.studio/Perfect Layout folder.
By default this is: c:\program files (x86)\elbsound.studio\perfect layout
Then run the maintenancetool.exe located in that folder, select to "Remove all components". Then click on ok and start the uninstallation/deactivation process.
When the uninstallation is finished, you have to cancel the maintenancetool.exe.

MacOS:
Start the plug-in in Finale. Go to the "General" tab and click on Deactivate. Then cancel the plug-in. This short video shows how to do it - including (re-)activation:

To deactivate your plug-in when you don't have access to your computer anymore go to our homepage:
Support->Deactivate Plug-in.


Image A: Online deactivation of the plug-in

Make sure you have your license key and your registered email address at hand.

Enter this info and click on "Get Deactivation Link".
If your product data is correct, you will receive and email with a deactivation link.
If you click on that link and confirm it by entering your license key again, your product will automatically be deactivated in our database.

Note 1: for security reasons the deactivation link is only valid for a few minutes.
Note 2: This only removes the activation

If you have started Finale by double-clicking on a Finale document that is hosted on a network address (e.g. 192.168.178.36\FinaleDoc.musx or \\NetworkPC\FinaleDoc.musx), then JW Lua On Windows has problems.

Solution:
Please close Finale and restart it regularly by clicking on the Finale app and opening the Finale document from within Finale. Then run the plug-in again.

If you get this message on MacOS, please contact Elbsound.studio support.

Perfect Layout is automatically installed in Finale 2014, 2014.5, 25 and 26 - but only once for each version.So if you have installed for example multiple instances of Finale 26 (e.g. a German and an English version, or v26.2 and 26.3), you need to install the plug-in manually in some versions.

Example:
If you have installed Finale 2014, Finale 25, Finale v26.0 and Finale 26.3 on your computer, you probably only need to install the plug-in manually in either Finale 26.0 or Finale 26.3 (dependent on which is registered correctly).

Here is how to do it:
1.) Make sure you have run the Perfect Layout installer on your computer
2.) Find the main Finale 64bit-version (i.e. Finale 25 or Finale 26) where the plug-in has been installed correctly (i.e. where it appears in the Finale plug-in menu).
3.) MacOS only (on Windows skip this step): Run the plug-in in this main Finale version by selecting the plug-in in Finale's plug-in menu and register/activate the plug-in.
4.) Open MacOS Finder or Windows Explorer and go to the plug-ins folder of your main Finale version.
In Finale 26 this is probably /Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 26/Plug-ins or c:\program files\MakeMusic\Finale 26\Plug-ins.
5.) Copy the full Elbsound JW Lua folder and paste it into the Plug-ins folder of each of your other Finale 64bit versions where it has not been installed automatically.

Example on MacOS:
If you had /Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 26/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua and /Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 26.3/Plug-ins before,then you should also have /Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 26.3/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua afterwards.

Make sure this new folder contains these files:

Image A: Windows: Necessary files in Plug-ins Folder


Image B: MacOS: Necessary files in Plug-ins Folder

6.) Now open your new Finale version (e.g. 26.3 in the example above) and add the plug-in to Finale's plug-in menu. This also shown in this 1 minute real-time video:


Adding the plug-in entry to Finale's plug-in menu:
7.) Open JW Lua in your Finale plug-in menu (it's available in the folder that you selected during the installation, e.g. Elbsound JW Lua).
8.) In the JW Lua plug-in click on the Development tab.

9.) Click on the "..." (three dots) button at the left bottom, then click on "Add" and select your Finale Elbsound JW Lua plug-ins folder (e.g. /Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 26.3/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua or c:\program files\MakeMusic\Finale 26.3\Plug-ins\Elbsound JW Lua).
10.) Click on OK and change to the Manager tab of the JW Lua plug-in.

11.) Click on [Menu] in Plug-in Groups
12.) Click on New... in Items in Groups
13.) Select "ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua" in your Finale/Plug-ins/Elbsound JW Lua folder from step 9 above.
14.) Close the JW Lua plug-in by clicking on the "Close" button at the right bottom and then close Finale.
Note: Only closing Finale will save the changes to JW Lua.

Repeat the steps 2.-14. for the Finale 32bit-version (i.e. Finale 2014 or Finale 2014.5).

Note:
The Elbsound and JW Lua files used in Finale 2014 and Finale 2014.5 are identical (32bit).
The Elbsound and JW Lua files used in Finale 25 and Finale 26 are identical (64bit).
So if you need for example files for Finale 26, you can also use the Elbsound Finale 25 files.

Note:
If you have installed Finale 2014, 2014.5 and Finale 25, then install Perfect Layout and then install Finale 26, Perfect Layout will not be available in Finale 26 unless you install it manually as described above or run the installer again.

Please add the plug-in menu entry manually as described in:
How can I install the plug-in in each Finale installation manually?
starting at Step 7 ("Adding the plug-in entry to Finale's plug-in menu").

No, this is not possible. The installer wipes out other Perfect Layout installations in the same folder.

Windows 7 is not supported by Microsoft anymore. We try to support it as long as no new severe issues come up, but we highly recommend to update to Windows 10 or 11 for general security reasons.

To be able to use our plug-ins on Windows 7, please make sure that you have Windows 7 Service Pack 2 (="Convenience Rollup") and all the latest updates installed. Otherwise Windows' PowerShell which is used by the Perfect Layout installer might not work as expected.

Also please always use the latest Perfect Layout Windows installer. The last Windows 7 updates require at least Perfect Layout v2.0042.

Should you still get the "-1756/No Internet Connection Available" message, please install the "Windows Management Framework 5.1" update which installs PowerShell version 5.1 and gives support to TLS12 (the Transport Layer Security protocol required for accessing some https files).
This official Microsoft update KB3191566 is available here.
Make sure to select the correct version which depends on if you have Windows 7 32-bit (File: Win7-KB3191566-x86.zip) or Windows 7 64-bit (File: Win7AndW2K8R2-KB3191566-x64.zip).

The "WMF 5.1" update also requires .NET 4.5 to be installed which is usually the case.
If not, it is available here.

Disclaimer:
Elbsound.studio cannot confirm this issue or its solution. We only tell what helped other users that had this problem on their computer.
Please use these solutions at your own risk. Elbsound.studio cannot be held liable for any damages that these external solutions do to your computer.

This error can occur on Windows systems where the WMI ("Windows Management Instrumentation") component has become corrupt or is not correctly activated.
According to several sources on a Google search and a confirmation by a Perfect Layout user, running the "Tweaking.com - Windows Repair" tool with its component "WMI Repair" solved this issue.
According to the Tweaking.com homepage the tool is available for free for personal use.

More info on this (common) error message "SWbemObjectSet: Invalid class" is available for example here:
1. "WMI Error: swbemobjectset: invalid class"
2. "WMI Error: swbemobjectset: invalid class"

Note: Use the Tweaking.com - Windows Repair tool at your own risk!
Elbsound.studio is not responsible for this tool and can't guarantee that this fixes the WMI issue or that this tool is even safe and trustful.
Elbsound.studio could not reproduce this WMI error on its own computers and thus cannot confirm this solution.

If this error occurs after the registration dialog, it's very likely that either
(1) your antivirus software has blocked the system registration of the plug-in.
It's known that "Kaspersky Total Security" can trigger this error message.
(2) Or on macOS only the "Security & Privacy->Automation" settings didn't allow Finale to access Terminal.app.
Access must be granted to Finale to use Terminal.app, System Events and Image Events.
It must look like in this image:


If this error mssage has occured, you need to do the following to activate the plug-in:

1.) Clear the failed activation in the Elbsound database via this link.
2.) The following script will remove all invalid Perfect Layout entries from your computer.
a.) Windows: download and run the "Remove Perfect Layout from System" tool.
    To run the script, right click on the script and click on "Run as administrator".
    If Windows doesn't allow to run the script (Dialog "Windows protected your PC"), click on "More info" and then on "Run anyway".
b.) macOS: run the "Deactivate Perfect Layout in System" tool.
3.) Download and run the lastest Perfect Layout installer again
4.) Dependent on problem (1) or (2) you have to:
     (1) Deactivate your antivirus software for a short moment
     (2) or make sure your "Security & Privacy->Automation" are set up as in the image above
5.) Start Finale and click on "ES Perfect Layout" in the Finale Plug-ins menu.
6.) Fill out the Perfect Layout registration form and go through the plug-in activation
7.) After the activation has been completed and you see the first user dialog of Perfect Layout, you can reactivate your antivirus software.
The plug-in has now be correctly activated and should work fine.

Note 1:
The same problem can also occur when you update Perfect Layout.
In this case you may also have to deactivate your antivirus software or add an exception.
The exception is probably:
a) access to the domain https://elbsound.studio
b) allow all Finale.exe files (from each Finale version) to access the system, especially the registry.

Note 2:
Please use this solution at your own risk.
Elbsound.studio cannot be held liable for any damages that deactivating the antivirus system does to your computer.

Make sure you have not added any plug-in to the macOS sudo tool that could affect the output behaviour of sudo.
Sudo is used for accessing the macOS system and in case of the password input, it can lead to problems when sudo plug-ins change the output.
To check if a sudo plugin could be the problem, please disable it and try running the Perfect Layout installer or the plug-in again.
Please contact Elbsound.studio if sudo plug-ins may be the problem and you can't disable them.

There are three known issues:

1. Windows Only:
Make sure PowerShell is installed and accessible on your computer.
It is installed in Windows by default.
However in rare cases it's not accessible because of a corrupt system enviroment setup.

a) Look for your folder c:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\
Does it exist? If so, fine.
If not and you are on Windows 7, please read the topic I am having installation problems under Windows 7 (Error: -1756 / "No Internet Connection Available").

b) Now check that Powershell actually works:
Open the Windows command tool (cmd.exe) and type
powershell $PSVersionTable
Does it look like this:


If so, fine.

c) If not, please check your Windows system environment variables.
Does the system environment variable "Path" include "C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\"?
If not, please add it.
After that PowerShell should be working.

2. Windows Only:
Make sure the Windows tools cmd and wmic are installed and accessible.
They are installed in Windows by default.
However it's possible that they are not accessible because of a corrupt system enviroment setup.

When typed into the Windows command tool, it should like this:


If this is not the case, make sure your Windows system environment variable Path includes:
c:\Windows
c:\Windows\System32
c:\Windows\System32\Wbem
c:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\
c:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs


Image: Screenshot from the German Windows (in English it's "System Environment Variables").
Upper and lower case is not important (Windows and WINDOWS is the same).
This image shows only the entries required for Perfect Layout.
It's very likely that there are many more entries in your Windows setup.

If your main Windows or Program Files (x86) folder is on another hard drive than c:, please change the drive name accordingly.

See 1.) on how to add new environment variables (Click on "Neu" (New) in that dialog).

3. Windows/macOS:
Make sure that you don't have an anti-virus, firewall or internet security software that blocks the domain elbsound.studio.
In this case the plug-in can't connect to the activation database and won't work.

One user reported that the internet security software F-Secure/Windows had blocked the internet access from cmd.exe which the plug-in calls.
Another user reported that the internet security software Sophos had blocked the domain elbsound.studio.
To solve this, please add exceptions to your security software.

4. macOS with sudo plug-ins:
Make sure you have not added any plug-in to sudo that could affect the output behaviour of sudo.
To check if a sudo plugin could be the problem, please disable it and try running the Perfect Layout installer or the plug-in again.
Please contact Elbsound.studio if sudo plug-ins may be the problem and you can't disable them.

Perfect Layout v3: Finale® 2014, 2014.5, v25, v26, v27 for 64bit Windows 10, 11 or macOS 10.13+ - 14.x (tested until 14.6).
Note 1: PL v3 should also work in Windows 7 and 8 when all the latest Windows updates are installed, but Elbsound.studio doesn't support that.
Note 2: According to some users PL v2 also works in 10.11/10.12, but Elbsound.studio doesn't support that either.

Perfect Layout v2: Finale® 2014, 2014.5, v25, v26, v27 for 64bit Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 or macOS (tested in 10.13 - 12.6, according to some users also working in 10.11/10.12)

Minimum 4 GB RAM, for huge orchestra scores exceeding about 20.000 frame assignments 8-12 GB RAM and Finale® v25, v26 or v27 are required, otherwise the plug-in may run out of memory.

Windows: 250 MB, macOS: 400 MB of free hard drive space (after installation 250 MB), plus space for the font annotation files dependent on the number of fonts that are installed

For the installation/(de-)activation you need a user with administration rights

Internet connection during the installation and update process, and an email address to receive the activation code or an installed email program to request the activation code.

macOS (PL v2.x+) and Windows (PL v3.x+): an internet connection is required during the processing of the plug-in for checking the activation

macOS only: You need to grant access to Finale to use the Terminal app, Image Events and System Events for activating/checking the license, downloading updates, displaying the plug-in's progress bar (optional) and finding out the number of screens for correct coordinates.

macOS only: The macOS standard tool "sudo" is used for some system calls. You may need to disable sudo plug-ins, if they cause problems with Perfect Layout's sudo calls.

Windows only: Powershell, WMIC, cmd and curl must be installed (it is installed by default on Windows unless the user has removed it manually)

macOS only: The macOS Bash system must be available together with the tools curl, defaults, sudo, echo and osascript. They are available in macOS by default.

The faster the processor speed, the faster the plug-in (see this comparison). The plug-in is single-threaded, so multiple cores do not speed up the processing.

Data Privacy: For the activation and license validation of the software some data will be stored on our servers. For more info read Data Privacy at Elbsound.studio and the EULA

We have tested the French edition of Finale® 2014 and the German edition of Finale® 25 and both worked fine. So we assume that the other versions will do too.
Make sure to have the "Configuration Files" folder set to Finale®'s default "Configuration Files" or "Konfigurationsdateien" (German version) as the Perfect Layout plug-in doesn't detect other configuration folders at the moment.
This value can be set in Edit->Preferences->Folders->Configuration Files.

No, it isn't. The plug-in was developed with JW Lua, but it can be used like and feels like any other Finale plug-in. The user won't see JW Lua when using Perfect Layout.
The plug-in appears in Finale's plug-in menu and everything is installed automatically with the installer.
It has many options though, so it might take some time to get acquainted with all features and options.
But the plug-in is also designed for "one-click usage". So you should already get good results with the defaultsettings if you follow the workflow suggested in the Quickstart: How to Use-document.


Image 6: After the installation the plug-in automatically appears in Finale's Elbsound JW Lua plug-in folder.

To get the new license key please

1.) Uninstall (Windows) or deactivate (MacOS) your current version (e.g. Silver 400).
If you have activated two installations ("Two Activation License"), make sure to have both versions uninstalled. For more information on uninstalling/deactivating the plug-in see thread below on uninstallation/deactivation.
a.) To deactivate the plug-in on MacOS, start the plug-in in Finale, go to the "General" tab and click on "Deactivate", then click on "Cancel".

Image 1: MacOS Deactivation

b.) To uninstall the plug-in on Windows, start the maintenancetool.exe in your Elbsound.studio/Perfect Layout folder (probably c:\program files (x86)\elbsound.studio\perfect layout).
Then select "Remove all components", click "Next" and on the next page click "Uninstall".

Image 2a und b: Windows Uninstallation

2.) Tell us that you have uninstalled it (send us a mail via our contact form or use our support email address).
3.) We will check it in our activation datebase and then remove your old license key from the database
4.) Then we will send you the new license key for the upgrade edition (e.g. Silver)
5.) Download your new installer. The link is in your purchase receipt email.
6.) Run the downloaded installer, enter the new license key and activate the new edition (e.g. Silver).

The old license key (e.g. from Silver400) is not valid anymore after this procedure (i.e. neither for a Silver400 installation, nor for a Silver upgrade installation).

We always try to send you the license key as fast as possible. But please keep in mind that this is no automated process. You may have to wait until the next business day until you receive the license key.
Please also check your spam folder if you haven't received the license key within two business days.

If you are eligible for a free update, skip to step 2.

1.) Purchase the update through our online shop.
The purchase confirmation mail includes an Update Code. This is required on the download page to update your account to the new major version (e.g. from v1.0 to v2.0). It is only required once for that purpose.
Once your account is set to the new major version (e.g. v2.0), subsequent downloads of intermediate updates (v2.x) don't require the update code anymore, but only the license key.
Your old v1.x license key is still valid after the update wherever you are asked for the license key - also in a v2.x or v3.x version.

2.) Open the Elbsound download page in your browser

3.) Enter your "Update Code" (something like XAHZ96DGS4EL6CMXEGF) included in your update purchase confirmation email together with your original license key (from your old version v1.x) and your registered email address to download the new installer.
Make sure to select the correct version (Silver400, Silver, Gold).
If you are eligible for a free update, because you bought a plug-in shortly before the update came out, leave the update code field free as your user account already has been updated automatically.

If you are on MacOS, just run the new installer like any of our plug-in updates without deactivating the previous Perfect Layout version. The installer overwrites the previous version. Done.

On Windows you need to uninstall the previous version first before installing the update as the installers are only valid for one main version number. Here is how to install a v1.x to v2.0 update on Windows:

4.) Make a safety copy of your last saved settings file if these settings are important for you (JALAYOUX.ini in c:\users\YOURNAME\appdata\MakeMusic\Finale ...\JALAYOUX.ini, X can be H, B or G dependent on your version) and if you haven't already saved your settings to a user file.
It's possible that the deinstallation deletes your last saved settings file (dependent on the version your current v1.x installation).
5.) Uninstall the old plug-in version by running maintenancetool.exe typically found in c:\program files(x86)\elbsound.studio\perfect layout and selecting "Remove all components".
6.) If you're using the plug-in with a two activation license on two computers, please make safety copies of your last saved settings and uninstall the plug-in on both computers before running the new installation.
7.) Run the new installer that you downloaded. Make sure to use your old license key (from v1.x) when you're asked for the license key in the new version (e.g. v2.x). Your license key doesn't change through an update!
8.) If you have made safety copies of the last saved settings, then restore these settings. Don't delete your old copy - just in case of any problems.
9.) When you open Finale and start the plug-in, it displays the new version number in its title on the main user dialog.
10.) If you have two activation licenses, run the new installer on the second computer and restore the settings (as described in 7. + 8.).

There are three methods to install an intermediate update.
Either you use Perfect Layout's automatic update installation (1), or you start the update manually in the plug-in (2) or you (re-)run the installer (3). These are described below.
For updates that change the main version number (e.g. v1.x to v2.x), please read the section above ("How do I update a plug-in from v1.x to v2.0?").

(1) Automatic Update
The automatic update download and installation is shown in the video below.
If you just confirm the automatic installation when you're asked to, everything will happen automatically.
There is no need to cancel Finale. You just have to restart the plug-in after the update has finished.

Note: this update method only updates the plug-in in the current Finale version. If you have multiple Finale versions installed, you have to use this process in each Finale version.Only if you use method (3), Perfect Layout will be updated in all Finale versions at the same time.

(2) Manual Update in the Plug-in
If you want to use Perfect Layout's update function manually, go to the General tab of the plug-in and click on "Check for Updates Now!".

(3) Update through the installer
MacOS:
Just run the new installer. It will update any existing installation.

Windows:
New updates can be installed through the maintenancetool.exe file in the Elbsound.studio folder (typically: c:\programme (x86)\Elbsound.studio\Perfect Layout\maintenancetool.exe).Make sure that you start the maintenance tool with admin rights (right-click the file with the mouse and select "Run as Administrator").

The updater tool checks if new updates for the plug-in or its other components are available in the online repository and will automatically install them, if you wish to.You need to close all Finale® programs before updating the files.

The plug-in can automatically check if a new update is available (Option "General->Automatically Check for Plug-in Updates").To save time this check is not performed each time you run the plug-in, but only from time to time.
If you want to check it yourself, you can click the "Check for Updates Now!" button on the General settings page.
The maintenancetool.exe is also used for uninstalling the plug-in.

Here is a real-time video of the update process with maintenancetool.exe on Windows:

Register your product under Products->Register Product.
Then go to Products->Download Updates.

Some users have reported "false positive" alerts from Kaspersky Total Security during the installation of an update. Kaspersky is informed about this issue, but hasn't fixed it yet.
Interestingly online virus checkers like virustotal.com don't list a Kaspersky alert, so it may also have to do with some special user settings.

a.) Solution for Perfect Layout version 3
You can either avoid the update process and download and install the full installer instead, or - at your own risk - deactivate Kaspersky during the update process.

b.) Solution for Perfect Layout version 1 and 2
You can either avoid the update process and uninstall and re-install the new software instead, or - at your own risk - deactivate Kaspersky during the update process.

Note (Perfect Layout v1 and v2/Windows only):
If the maintenancetool.exe has been quarantined and is no longer available, you need to reinstall the plug-in. An automatic update is not possible anymore.

One user has reported a "false positive" alert from F-Secure while running the plug-in.
F-Secure warned that the plug-in uses cmd.exe. As Perfect Layout requires cmd.exe, powershell.exe and node.exe for some system calls (like checking the registration, looking for installed fonts, showing the progress bar, etc.) you need to allow F-Secure to use these Windows system programs.

Lua is a fast script language, but it is unfortunately much slower than optimized and compiled programming languages like C++.Here are a few tips for comfortable working with the Perfect Layout plug-in:

a.) Use a fast PC! Recommended are overclocked PCs above 4,0 GHz. They don't need to have many cores, the plug-in (and Finale®) can only use one core. Not recommended are energy-saving variable speed laptop processors (like Intel's N4200) that operate on a very low basic frequency (e.g. 1.10 GHz): see speed comparison.

b.) macOS: If you are on an M1 processor, use PL v3+ in RGP Lua in Finale 27.2 in native mode. This is currently the fastest combination on macOS and about 40% faster than in Rosetta mode.

However it's typically still about 25% slower than on a fast Windows-PC.
Or in other words: use a Windows computer!

c.) Fine-tuning the plug-in settings:
If you want to experiment with the plug-in's settings on a larger score, test it on a reduced score first. Remove all linked parts and in the score keep only the first page (or the first two pages), save again with a new file name. Now experiment with the plug-in in this reduced document. This usually only takes a few seconds or at least less than a minute. If you have the right settings, load the original file and apply the plug-in again.

d.) Running the plug-in:
- Follow the "Quickstart: How to Use" guide and don't do any unnecessary manual adjustments before running the plug-in.
- Finale® creates linked parts by default. If you don't use them, delete the parts before running the plug-in. This will decrease the processing time about 40%.
- If you have expression libraries with more than 500 or even 1000 expressions, it is recommended to delete all unused expression definitions. (Go to "Show All" in Expression Designer dialog and then select all (!) an click on "Delete". When asked "One or more of these itemes is currently in use in the score. Are you sure you want these items removed?" click on "No". This will only remove the unused expressions.)
- If you have a really huge score at Finale's internal limit (like 29.000 frames, 150.000 entries=e.g. 60 staves with 1200 measures each plus linked parts) or apply the plug-in to a corrupted Finale file, it might be helpful to run the plug-in overnight.
- If you run the plug-in on multiple instances of Finale® at the same time (e.g. 2014, 2014.5, v25), this slows down processing slightly (ca. 10%) But if you run it on multiple instances at the same time to fine-tune your settings, it might help you to get your desired results faster.
- MacOS: If possible, don't use Finale 25/MacOS: the processing speed of the MacOS version of Finale 25 is considerably slower than Finale 2014, 2014.5, v26 and v27. On Windows Finale v25 is NOT slower.
- Clear your temporary files folder from time to time (e.g. c:\windows\temp and/or c:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Local\Temp). If you have 40.000 files in your temp folder, then the plug-in becomes slower.You can also create a dedicated temporary files folder for Finale (Edit->Preferences->Folders->Temporary Files).
- If you have openend Finale® some time ago (maybe a day or even longer), the plug-in processing can be much faster if you close Finale® and restart it before running the plug-in (up to 30% faster).
- While waiting for the plug-in's results, you can do other stuff on your computer. If you have installed other versions of Finale, you can use them.

No, you don't. But it is more fun on a fast computer. The number of CPU cores doesn't matter. Only the GHz frequency counts.

Here you can see how fast the Perfect Layout v1.x plug-in performed on the "ES Perfect Layout Demo.musx":
The times were measured after clicking on "Ok" in the user dialog (="Processing Time" in the log file).

Windows 10, Laptop (from 2017, 8 GB, 1.1 GHz, N4200 CPU -> very slow):
Finale® 2014.5 JW Lua plug-in processing time: 31,6 seconds

Windows Vista, Laptop (from 2009, 3 GB, 2,5 GHz, P9500, AMD Radeon 3400):
Single-threaded benchmark: 1145
Finale® 2014.5 JW Lua plug-in processing time: 16,8 seconds

Windows 10, PC (from 2013, 32 GB, 3.3 GHz, i3960, AMD Radeon 5450):
Single-threaded benchmark: 1928
Finale® 2014.5 JW Lua plug-in processing time: 12,6 seconds

Windows 10, Laptop (from 2017, 32 GB, 4.4 GHz, i8700, NVidia GTX 1060):
Single-threaded benchmark: 2815
Finale® 2014.5 JW Lua plug-in processing time: 7,1 seconds

Windows 10, PC (from 2021, 32 GB, 4.7 GHz, i9-11900k, NVidia RTX 4070 (from 2024)):
Finale® 2014.5 JW Lua plug-in processing time: 4,0 seconds
(this last measurement was made with Perfect Layout v3.0219 which has much more features than v1.x, but also more speed optimizations!)

Some notes:
-Perfect Layout on MacOS is MUCH slower than on Windows.
-Finale 25/MacOS is MUCH slower than Fin2014/2014.5/MacOS. Avoid Finale 25 on MacOS and use 27 instead.
-The processing speed for Finale® 25-27/Windows is about the same.
-The processing speed in RGP Lua and JW Lua is about the same.
-However, RGP Lua might be a little slower, because it processes more features than JW Lua.

MakeMusic (the makers of Finale®) have decided to not give the Finale® PDK (which is needed for development of Finale plug-ins) to new developers like Elbsound.studio.Only the three known developers (Jari Williamsson, Robert Patterson and Tobias Giessen) still have access to the PDK.
So we had to use JW Lua, a plug-in interface for Finale® designed by Jari Williamsson which is based on the programming language Lua.JW Lua is a fantastic platform. But if the Perfect Layout plug-in had been developed directly in Jari Williamsson's Finale C++ framework, it probably would have been 20-100 times faster.
Hopefully MakeMusic will change their policy in the future, so that also the processing speed becomes "perfect".

There are four reasons for this behaviour:
a.) General checks which take quite some processing time are independent on the selected region (like an installed fonts check, creating font metrics files or checking for expression categories)
b.) The plug-in never only works on one measure, but also analyzes the surrounding measures and staves.
c.) The larger and more complex a score, Finale® seems to become exponentially slower.
d.) Especially the page update function takes a lot of time on large scores: it can take more than a minute - and this is called several times.
(This is also the reason why calling the plug-in on a part is much faster than calling it on a single staff in an orchestra score.)
e.) The plug-in is not yet fully optimized for sub-regions.

So processing one measure in a huge score might take more than 10 seconds, while the same measure in a small score takes less than a second.

There seems to be a little memory leak in the JW Lua PDK, in the Finale® PDK or in Finale.
Just restart Finale® and the plug-in will be fast again.

The main dialog shows a rough estimation of the plug-in processing time:

The first time the plug-in is applied, the estimation isn't that good as it doesn't know yet how fast the computer is.The more the plug-in is used the more exact the estimation will be as it compares each time the estimation with the resulting time and updates its factors.The larger the score, the better the estimation. For only a few selected measures, the estimation is usually not very good.

One way to save lots of time with Perfect Layout is to do "batch processing". For example if you have a huge score and many extracted parts and you want to process it overnight, this is the solution.
Attention: this is technique is a bit advanced, so take your time in reading this short tutorial.

Note:
Batch processing with JW Lua only works with the "ES Perfect Layout" plug-in, but NOT with "ES Perfect Layout - Apply to Parts Only" which requires RGP Lua.

There are several ways to achieve this:
1.) JW Lua has its own batch processing function.
2.) Write your own JW Lua script that loads documents (for example in one folder) and applies the plug-in.
3.) Finale Script can also call Perfect Layout as it is available in Finale's plug-in menu structure.

We will describe the first solution ("JW Lua") here.

a.) Select the correct plug-in settings

First you need to make sure that the correct plug-in options are selected.
You can't select different settings for each file - all will use the same settings.
So run the plug-in on a short test document (e.g. a single staff default file, so that you don't have to wait too long) and set all Perfect Layout options as you need them for the batch processing. The settings are automatically saved when you apply the plug-in and will appear again the next time you call the plug-in.
But ALSO SAVE THESE SETTINGS MANUALLY by selecting "Save As": you need to restore your settings later after the batch processing has been finished.

b.) Hide the user dialogs

Batch processing means processing without any interruption through user dialogs. So you need to hide all user dialogs first.

(1) Gold Edition
In the Gold edition it's easy: go to the "General" tab and check "Bypass All Warning Dialogs", "Bypass All Plug-in Cancel Dialogs" and "Bypass Main Dialog".
JW Lua's own batch processing function doesn't save the files after processing.To have this automated check on the "General Settings" tab "Save Document Automatically After Prcoessing with 'PL' ending".This step should be done DIRECTLY AFTER you have saved all other settings with "Save as" in the previous step. Then click on "ok" to fix these settings internally (and start the plug-in).

(2) Silver Edition
In the Silver edition this feature is officially not supported, but you can hack it at your own risk:
Open the Perfect Layout settings file JALAYOUB.ini (Silver400) or JALAYOUH.ini (Silver) in your Finale configuration folder (e.g. for Finale 2014.5 it is c:\users\YOURNAME\appdata\roaming\MakeMusic\Finale 2014.5).Then search for the entries "BypassAllPluginCancelDialogs", "BypassAllWarningDialogs", "BypassMainDialog" and "SaveDocToPL" and set their value to "true" (instead of "false"). Then save the file.

c.) Run the batch processing

1.) Open all the files that you want to have processed in Finale.
2.) Instead of calling ES Perfect Layout in Finale's plug-in menu, click on JW Lua in the same menu folder and go to the "Explorer" tab.
3.) In the tree "Menu" select ES Perfect Layout, then click on "Run Multi..." (see image 3a).
4.) In "Selected Regions" select "Always Select Full Document as a Region" (in batch processing mode the plug-in always processes the whole document).
5.) Click on "All" to select and process all files, then click on "Run" (see image 3b).
Now all files will be processed.

d.) Restore the user dialogs

Delete the settings file JALAYOUB.ini (Silver400) or JALAYOUH.ini (Silver) in your Finale configuration folder (e.g. for Finale 2014 it is c:\users\YOURNAME\appdata\roaming\MakeMusic\Finale 2014.5).If the .ini file is missing, the plug-in will create a new one with the default settings.If you have made a copy of your settings file, you can also either rename it to JALAYOUB/JALAYOUH.ini or load it when you run the plug-in the next time.


Image 3a: Batch Processing with JW Lua


Image 3b: Select the files for batch processing

Limitations:
Finale might crash during the batch processing: we have been using batch processing on a daily basis now for three years for testing the plug-in with our ca. 11.000 Finale test documents.It's likely that after some time, a Finale crash will occur. We assume that it has to do with a missing memory garbage collection that we can't influence.This crash can occur at any time. It seems to depend on the complexity, size and number of files: the smaller the files, the more will be processed.Our experience with our own JW Lua batch processing script is that up to ca. 2500 files can be processed, if they are rather small (less than 200kB).But only very few (ca. 10-30) can be processed if they are huge (>5 MB).
If such a crash occurs, it doesn't mean that your original document can't be processed. Just remove the files that have already been processed and start the batch processing again. It will ALWAYS work like this.

Perfect Layout uses Terminal.app for showing the progress bar of the plug-in and activating/deactivating the plug-in, "Image Events" for detecting a multi-screen setup and "System Events" for activating/deactivating the plug-in and detecting the screen resolution for correct placement of the progress bar.An external progress bar is necessary as Finale is a single-core software and it's not possible through JW Lua to update a progress bar over a longer period including text descriptions for the current state.
On the first use of the plug-in you may get a warning message about Terminal.app and System Events wanting to access something (as in the images 11a and 11b below).
Please allow this if you want to have the progress bar working by clicking on OK and/or Open System Preferences.

If you don't allow this, Perfect Layout will also work, but dependent on your MacOS and Finale version you probably will not see a progress bar.
Make sure to allow at least Terminal.app as it is also required for activating/deactivating the plug-in.
The progress bar script that is run on Terminal.app is located in /Library/Application Support/Elbsound.studio/Perfect Layout/progressbar.sh and its code is readable.

After you have allowed this access or if you want to change this manually later, you can do so in the macOS "System Preferences" under "Security & Privacy"->"Privacy"->"Automation".
This is how it looks for Finale 26 and Finale 27 under macOS Big Sur:

Image 11: Finale 26/27 has been granted access to Terminal.app, System Events and Image Events

Note: it's possible that the messages below look different or don't pop up at all on other MacOS versions and/or on other Finale versions.Finale versions before 26 and/or macOS versions before Mojave didn't have this accessibility issue.


Image 11a: One of the Access Warning Messages


Image 11b: One of the Access Warning Messages


Image 11c: One of the Access Warning Messages


Image 11d: One of the Access Warning Messages

How to reset this?

If you have accidentally disallowed to use Terminal, SystemEvents or ImageEvents, you can either manually reactivate it by going to System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Privacy->Automation and activating the (deactivated) sub-options Terminal, SystemEvents and/or ImageEvents, so that it looks again like in the image 11 above.
Make sure to unlock on the "Lock" symbol at the left bottom of the dialog. Otherwise you can't change these entries.

It's also possible to remove all entries from that Security & Privacy->Automation list.
Just open Terminal.app and enter:
tccutil reset AppleEvents
The next time an app requires access it will again ask you.

There are three known issues where this can happen.

1.) The macOS "Security & Privacy->Automation" Settings
If you are on macOS Mojave (10.14) or higher then make sure that in the macOS "Security & Privacy->Automation" settings "System Events" is activated under your Finale app.
The first time you ran the plug-in macOS asked if you want to allow Finale to access "System Events". If you have denied this, the plug-in won't work.
To allow it unlock the setting by clicking on the Unlock symbol at left bottom, then check the "System Events" entry below Finale as in this image:


2.) The Perfect Layout registration uses AppleScript.
In rare cases there may be a conflict, for example, with very old Adobe or QuarkXpress software which messes up AppleScript on macOS.
This does not only affect Perfect Layout, but many other standard software too.
Two conflicts are known:

a) The macOS standard tool osascript is not accessible at all.
This is a very rare, but confirmed macOS issue that is, for example, mentioned and solved in these forums (Link 1 and Link 2).
To check if this is the problem on your computer, open Terminal.app and copy&paste the next line followed by hitting "Enter":

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Please enter a few letters." with hidden answer default answer "" with title "Test Code for Osascript" with icon 2' -e 'text returned of result'

You should see a popup dialog that asks you to enter a few letters.
Or, in case of the issue, you will see the error message:


How to solve this?
Should Terminal.app also display the following lines:

Then you should try Apple's suggestion to type the following line into Terminal.app, hit "Enter" and restart your computer:
chsh -s /bin/zsh

If Perfect Layout still doesn't work, then it is probably some other software on your computer that causes this problem.
You will find many solutions by googling this problem with this link.
Users that reported this problem on internet forums for other software had many different solutions, so it might be a little tricky to find out what stops osascript on your computer.
However, it's very recommended to fix this problem on your computer as it also may affect other software.
osascript is a macOS standard tool that helps to automate many macOS system taks as it can access all kinds of system tools. It's frequently used - not only in Perfect Layout.

b) The problem with very old Adobe files
When you google this problem, you will find many confirmations. See for example discussions.apple.com or page 7 in Troubleshooting for Photoshop.

The solution is to remove the (usually very old) two files:

Adobe Unit Types.osax
QXPScriptingAdditions.osax

from these three folders:
/Library/ScriptingAdditions
~/Library/ScriptingAdditions
/System/Library/ScriptingAdditions

and then restart the computer.
Note: it's not sufficient that you rename the files in these folder. They must be removed completely from these folders.
After that the two folders /Library/ScriptingAdditions and ~/Library/ScriptingAdditions should be empty.
The folder /System/Library/ScriptingAdditions only includes StandardAdditions.osax and Digital Hub Scripting.osax.
Then run the plug-in again and the "Activate" button should work now.

Should it still not work, it's possible that you have blocked Terminal.app or Finale some time ago in System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Privacy->Automation.
In this case have a look at the previous topic ("I get a warning message about Terminal.app/System Events/Image Events access") and search for tccutil reset AppleEvents.

Usually the first time the plug-in runs, you are being asked to confirm if you want to auto-close the Terminal window which shows the progress of the plug-in.There you should select "Yes".

If you want to change this behaviour later, go to:
Terminal -> Settings -> Profiles -> (Select a Profile) -> Shell
or: Terminal -> Preferences -> Profiles -> (Select a Profile) -> Shell     (in older macOS versions only)

On "When the shell exits" chose "Close the window"
and/or
on "Ask before closing" chose "Never".
Either selection should work.

This is an old Finale® bug.
The Perfect Layout plug-in creates hairpins that look correct when printed to PDF, but which might look faulty in Finale®.


Image 2 Left: The hairpin goes through the niente expressions (Finale® View).
            Right: The hairpin stops below the niente expressions (PDF View).


Image 3 Left: The hairpin has a soft tip (Finale® View).
            Right: The hairpin has an angular tip (PDF View).

Usually this not should occur (so if you encounter this, please contact support).
There are however five cases where this can happen:
a.) the dynamic expressions were placed in the wrong expression category (e.g. "Miscellaneous" instead of "Dynamics")
b.) the hairpin and/or the expression are attached to other measure positions than what they visually seem to be attached to ("ambiguous assignment").
c.) the dynamics use an unsupported music font
d.) the font annotation files are missing for the music font of the dynamic expression
e.) the dynamics are applied as articulations instead of expressions
f.) the dynamics/hairpins are placed on a staff with lyrics

The first problem (a) is automatically fixed by the plug-in, if the whole document is selected in "Score View" when applying the plug-in.
The second problem (b) is automatically solved in many cases, but not in all (see image 4).


Image 4: Ambiguous assignment of hairpins and expressions: the expressions are both attached to the left note, while the hairpin's start and end points are both connnected to the right note

Problem c) can be solved by only using supported music fonts (see Supported Music Fonts).
Create the missing font annotation files to solve problem d) (Preferences->Edit->Font Annotation, then select the font and click on Auto Annotate All and then Save).
Always use expressions to apply dynamics (problem e) - never use articulations for this.

Collision removal on staves with lyrics (problem f) is more difficult and currently not implemented in Perfect Layout. Why? Because there is no standard way of solving the dynamic/hairpin/lyrics collisions.Sometimes the dynamics are placed on top of the staff (which is currently not taken into account for collision removal at all). Sometimes the dynamics are place before, below or above the notes.We plan to have an automatic solution available for version 2.0 of the plug-in. Until then you unfortunately need to solve dynamic collisions on lyrics staves on your own.

A user has reported that Perfect Layout doesn't work on Windows if he starts Finale by double-clicking on a Finale document that is hosted on a Samba share.It seems to have to do with the working directory being set differently by Finale when you double-click on a file.

Workaround:
start Finale regulary (by clicking on the Finale app) and open the Finale document through Finale's Open File dialog.

The Lua programming language is very limited and many functions required to run the plug-in are not accessible through Lua, but through the Microsoft Windows console (the "Black Window").
Unfortunately it's not possible to hide this window, so it might look a bit irritating at first.
The window is used for example for reading the font metrics.

On MacOS these black windows are not visible.


Image 5: Several black window pop up during the initialization of the plug-in

The Finale® window is minimized during the processing as otherwise the automatic redraw functions of Finale® would slow down the plug-in processing dramatically (about 3 times slower).

Usually this should not occur.
However some situations were reported that involved several instances of different Finale® versions being open at the same time (Finale® 2014, 2014.5 and 25) and running several Perfect Layout plug-ins and one plug-in terminates unexpectedly.
Sometimes warning messages for missing fonts also didn't make the window reappear.

Should you notice an unexpectedly long processing time (e.g. the progress bar doesn't change for several minutes), simply maximize the Finale® window manually by clicking on the Finale® symbol in the task list at the bottom of your screen.

It's possible to deactivate all dialogs and warning messages for batch processing.

In Perfect Layout Gold this can be done easily through the dialog (General->Bypass...).
In Perfect Layout Silver/Silver400 this can only be done through a trick by changing the BypassMainDialog value in the Perfect Layout settings file (JALAYOUx.ini where x can be H, G or B) from false to true.

How do I get the user dialog back when it doesn't pop up anymore?
Either set the option BypassMainDialog in the settings file JALAYOUx.ini to false, so that it looks like this:
BypassMainDialog=false

or delete the whole JALAYOUx.ini file. It will automatically recreated next time by Perfect Layout.
Note: Deleting the file will also delete the last saved settings and return to the default settings of the plug-in.

The JALAYOUx.ini file for Finale 27 is located in:
Windows: c:\users\YOURUSERNAME\appdata\roaming\makemusic\finale 27
MacOS: ~/library/application support/makemusic/finale 27

No, as in every standard software you will only get the compiled binary which can not be edited.

JW Lua is a free plug-in development environment for Finale® developed by Jari Williamsson.It uses the original Finale® plug-in development kit (PDK) and gives an interface to develop plug-ins in the programming language Lua.
The advantages of JW Lua compared to the original Finale® PDK are:
- easy to learn
- easy access to all Finale® functions
- it doesn't need any other software for running the programs in Finale® (compiler, software development kit, etc.)
- simple Finale® plug-ins can be written within a few minutes
- platform compatible (MacOS/Windows)
- as the original Finale® PDK isn't available anymore to the public, this is currently the only way to develop plug-ins for Finale®.

The disadvantages are:
- it is very slow
- the programming language is limited, so operating system functions are difficult to access and make complex development difficult.


Image 6: JW Lua development window

More info:
Documentation: http://jwmusic.nu/jwplug-ins/wiki/doku.php?id=jw_lua
Interface docs: http://www.finaletips.nu/frameworkref/annotated.php
JW Lua Mailing List: http://jwmusic.nu/mailman/listinfo/jwlua_jwmusic.nu
Download: https://www.finaletips.nu/index.php/download/category/28-beta-version
Free Plug-in Scripts: https://elbsound.studio/jw-lua-scripts.php

Open JW Lua (Plug-ins->JW Lua->JW Lua) and click on the "Development" tab (see image 6 above).Then click on the file name (left to Plug-in Def...) and select <Open...>.


Image 7: JW Lua Open File

Navigate to your Finale® program folder and go to the sub-folder Plug-ins\JW Lua
(e.g. C:\Program Files\Finale25\Plug-ins\JW Lua or c:\Program Files\Finale 2014\Plug-ins\JW Lua).Then select "ES Perfect Layout (for Menu).lua" and click on "Open" ("Öffnen" in the image below).

Image 8: Select the file and click on "Open"

Start the plug-in script by clicking on Run script or press Alt-R.


Image 9: Starting the script

The progress bar shows the progress of the plug-in.

The major steps are called:
- Initialization (e.g. Preparation for the user dialog)
- Checking Expression Categories
- General Preparation (e.g. Font metrics creation, font availability, check for invalid or weird smart shape connections, etc.)
- Preparing and Resetting Parts (e.g. calculation of the start metrics, reset/hide/clear the start positions, MMRest reation, rest minimization)
- Processing Parts (e.g. remove collisions, vertical and horizontal alignment and do most of the other features)
- Optimizing Systems Distances (Staff and system balancing)
- Finalization (e.g. checks that no staves have disappeared or were accidentally shifted to the next page)

The progress bar is increased after each task that has been completed.
It doesn't take into account that some function take much longer than others.
For example "Processing Parts" has about 100 sub tasks: while some take only a few milliseconds, others may need a few seconds or even minutes.
As the progress bar is not connected directly to Finale® (but through AutoHotKey and some .log files), it has a delay of up to 0.5 seconds.

In Finale® 2014/2014.5 the progress bar can also show a red alert message when there is a huge probability that the file is too big for processing under 32bit. If the Perfect Layout crashes a bit later, then you need Finale® 25 to process the file with the Perfect Layout plug-in.

I have noticed unoptimized or faulty expression positions and/or the vertical staff spacing is too wide.
The plug-in has a few rules dedicated to "2-staff systems" used for example in piano, harp or accordeon notation.
But it only works if the system is detected correctly. To be detected:
a.) The two staves must be grouped (Staff->Group and Bracket->Add Bracket, will be automatically added when creating it through the Score Manager or the Document Setup Wizard)
b.) You need to either give it the proper instrument name in the score; or the proper group name; or the proper staff name or abbreviation; or a piano group bracket together with the same MIDI channel; or the proper instrument ID or playback sound (see image 10).
Make sure these are given to both staves.
If a) and any of b) is detected, the rules will apply automatically.


Image 10: Score Manager

Image 11: The left dynamic expression is not automatically centered, the right one is

The plug-in only corrects the layout, if it is very likely that this is what the engraver wanted.
In the left image it's a bit unclear, if the mf was supposed to be below the first or the second note, although it's attached to the second.
The Perfect Layout only centers the expression, if the horizontal offset is below the thresholds defined in the Reset/Hide settings of the plug-in:
a.) Reset Horizontal Position of Dynamics Until Maximum Horizontal Offset: the default value is 57 EVPU.
b.) ditto., Max. Horizontal Reset Offset for Whole or Dotted Notes: the default value is 85 EVPU.
To check the current offset, right-click on the expression, select Edit Expression Assignment and look at the horizontal offset value.
(In the left image below the horizontal offset is -60 EVPU, so it was 3 EVPU above the threshold.)

Technique text expressions are currently only partially part of the collision removal process, because it is more difficult to define their best position. Usually they don't have such a fixed position as for example dynamic expressions have.Hopefully they will be included in a future release.
However they are included in other collision detection processes: e.g. the vertical alignment of tempo marks or the vertical staff spacing takes them into account.

A collision detection for these symbols is currently not supported by the plug-in.
The same goes for tuplet numbers and slurs.
As slurs currently can't be changed through the JW Lua interface, it would only be possible to automatically shift tuplet brackets, but not to correct the slurs.

Yes, this is possible.If you apply the Perfect Layout plug-in after the Realbook Plug-in, make sure the following options are unchecked - otherwise the spacing and/or measure layout might get messy:
- Optimize->Always Apply Music (Re-)Spacing to Full Document Before Processing
- Optimize->Always Respace If Chords Found

There are three known scenarios where this can occur:

1.) From time to time (ca. every 100-1000 call of the plug-in) the measure number region preparation function crashes for a yet unknown reason.It's listed as a JW Lua bug. Should Finale® crash, please check the log file of the plug-in which can be found in the Finale® configuration folder (e.g. C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\MakeMusic\Finale 2014).
The plug-in creates two log files:
JALAOUX.log: Includes the texts for the progress bar
ES Perfect Layout.log: Includes a more detailed description of what the plug-in has done including warning messages.

If the last entry in "ES Perfect Layout.log" is "Checking Measure Number Regions", then the known measure number region bug has occured.Simply restart Finale® and run the plug-in again. It won't crash again unless the Finale® document was indeed corrupted.
Should the last entry be different, please contact support to let them analyze the crash. The problem can probably only be fixed if you also submit the Finale® document.

BTW, this is a reason why you must always save a Finale® document before running any plug-in.

2.) When you use unicode letters in the Score Manager->File Info page where the text of the title, subtitle, arranger, etc. are defined, the plug-in can crash.
For some yet unknown reason (either a problem in the Finale plug-in interface or in JW Lua/RGP Lua) Finale crashes when it reads certain unicode letters from this file info page.

Solutions:
a) Don't use unicode letters on Finale's File Info page.
or
b) Activate "General->Asian Unicode Safety Mode" in the plug-in. When activated the plug-in ignores all texts from the file info page.
However, this b) solution means that collisions with page text elements that use the file info texts won't be detected anymore.

As this problem originally occured with unicode characters from Chinese and Japanese fonts only, this is how it got into the dialog.
Meanwhile there is one known scenario where this crash can also occur with a European unicode letter.

3.) If you have huge scores (like 600 measures, 50 staves, 50 linked parts or more), you must run the plug-in in Finale 25 or Finale 26 (i.e. with 64 bit).
If you run it in Finale 2014 or 2014.5 (32bit), it's possible that there is a memory limit problem with JW Lua which can lead to a crash. This doesn't occur in 64bit.

No, as this is very likely to be more than 100.000 items in a huge score which would be difficult to read.
But the plug-in provides a log file which includes those items where it detected problems, discovered untypical mistakes or where it moved items (expressions, articulations, hairpins) more than "just a little bit".
The log file can be found at Finale®'s configuration folder (e.g. C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\MakeMusic\Finale 2014). The file is named "ES Perfect Layout.log".

This is the log file of the ES Perfect Layout Demo.musx document.
Note: Normally there is less info in the log file, but the ES Perfect Layout Demo document includes many critical scenarios, so there are more warning messages than usually.

Initialization, Elapsed time: 0.07

Starting ProgressBar
Current Document Filename:D:\eigene dateien\musik\jw lua\page layout test3.musx
File name: D:\eigene dateien\musik\jw lua\page layout test3.musx, Elapsed time: 1.66
Initialization, Elapsed time: 0.00
The current settings are:
Reflow Measures: Only Within Systems
Reflow Systems Across Pages: Deactivated
Manual Positioning is set to: Incorporate

Starting MinimizeFinaleWindow
Starting Dialogs, Elapsed time: 1.07
Creating Staff Style: BlankNtnWRests -OthNotes -Art -Expr -Lyr -SmaSh -OthLyr...
Checking Expression Categories, Elapsed time: 0.00
General Preparations, Elapsed time: 0.00
Dialogs finished, Elapsed time: 0.00
Preparation and Resetting started, Elapsed time: 0.00
Font metrics file must be created for Helvetica
Loading the font 'Helvetica'... not successful. Using the metrics from the font 'Arial' instead.
Font metrics file must be created for Times
Expression changed from measure 54/4096 to measure 55/0 (Staff: 1/"Violin I ").
Duplicate identical Expression 7 deleted in measure 54 position 0 in staff "Violin I " (ExprID:7).
Layer 2 moved to layer 1 in staff "Violin I "(1), measure 9.
Layer 2 moved to layer 1 in staff "Violin I "(1), measure 7.
Hairpin vertical line removed in measure 5, position 0 (Staff 1 "Violin I "). Its start and end points were connected to the same measure position.
Slur replaced with tie in part 0/Score, staff 1/"Violin I ", measure 23 (Slur item number: 3188).
Preparation finished, Elapsed time: 0.00
------------------------------
Resetting score and parts, Elapsed time: 0.00
------------------------------
Preparing and Resetting Part: 0 (Score, Staff: 1 / "Violin I ", Slot: 1, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.01
Articulation removed from rest: ID 1 in measure 18 position 2048 staff 1/"Violin I ".
Articulation removed from rest: ID 3 in measure 32 position 2048 staff 1/"Violin I ".
'Open tie' removed in measure 13 position 1024 in staff "Violin I ".
Expression 3 on staff 1 ("Violin I ") was attached beyond measure duration (old position measure 6 / 5000 EDUs). It is now assigned to measure 6 / 4032 EDUs.
Duplicate articulation removed in measure 19 position 1024 staff 1/"Violin I ".
Duplicate articulation removed in measure 32 position 0 staff 1/"Violin I ".
------------------------------
Preparing and Resetting Part: 0 (Score, Staff: 67 / "Drum Set", Slot: 2, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.00
Expression moved (Function 3) from measure 9/384 to measure 9/0 (Staff: 1/"Violin I ").
The expression 3 has changed its horizontal position by -58 EVPUs (see measure 28/4032/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
The expression 51 has changed its horizontal position by -147 EVPUs (see measure 79/0/Staff: 67/"Drum Set"). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
------------------------------
Preparing and Resetting Part: 1 (Violin I , Staff: 1 / "Violin I ", Slot: 1, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.01
Measure reflow performed over systems for part 1: Violin I .
------------------------------
Preparing and Resetting Part: 2 (Drum Set, Staff: 67 / "Drum Set", Slot: 1, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.00
Measure reflow performed over systems for part 2: Drum Set.
------------------------------
Reset finished, Elapsed time: 0.00
------------------------------
Processing score and parts, Elapsed time: 0.00
------------------------------
Processing Part: 0 (Score,Staff: 1 / "Violin I ", Slot: 1, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.32
Stunted slur removed in part 0/Score, staff 1/"Violin I ", measure 5 (Slur item number: 3192).
Slur over identical tie removed in part 0/Score, staff 1/"Violin I ", measure 7 (Slur item number: 3196).
Duplicate slur removed in part 0/Score, staff 1/"Violin I ", measure 35 (Slur item number: 3206).
DC/DS repeat element in measure 61 moved by 49 units.
Coda/Segno repeat mark in measure 39 moved by -89 units.
The dynamic expression 3 has changed its horizontal position by -53 EVPUs (see measure 6/4032/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
The dynamic expression 2 has changed its horizontal position by -67 EVPUs (see measure 9/3008/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
The dynamic expression 3 has changed its horizontal position by -49 EVPUs (see measure 19/4032/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
The dynamic expression 36 has changed its horizontal position by 72 EVPUs (see measure 40/0/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
The dynamic expression 33 has changed its horizontal position by 64 EVPUs (see measure 56/0/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
The dynamic expression 7 has changed its horizontal position by -51 EVPUs (see measure 56/4032/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
The dynamic expression 7 has changed its horizontal position by -51 EVPUs (see measure 59/4032/Staff: 1/"Violin I "). Please check that it is and/or was placed correctly.
Very short hairpin found. Probably not enough space in measure 9, part "Score", staff "Violin I ". (Smartshape saved: true)
Very short hairpin found. Probably not enough space in measure 12, part "Score", staff "Violin I ". (Smartshape saved: true)
Very short hairpin found. Probably not enough space in measure 50, part "Score", staff "Violin I ". (Smartshape saved: true)
Very short hairpin found. Probably not enough space in measure 56, part "Score", staff "Violin I ". (Smartshape saved: true)
------------------------------
Processing Part: 0 (Score,Staff: 67 / "Drum Set", Slot: 2, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.00
Congruent hairpin deleted in part 0/Score, staff 67/"Drum Set", measure 59, measure pos 1024.
------------------------------
Optimizing System Distances..., Elapsed time: 0.00
Part finished., Elapsed time: 0.00
------------------------------
Processing Part: 1 (Violin I ,Staff: 1 / "Violin I ", Slot: 1, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.12
Text repeat element in measure 61 is set to right justification, but currently aligned with the left barline. Please check the justification settings for optimal layout.
Coda/Segno repeat mark in measure 39 moved by -89 units.
Very short hairpin found. Probably not enough space in measure 50, part "Violin I ", staff "Violin I ". (Smartshape saved: true)
Very short hairpin found. Probably not enough space in measure 56, part "Violin I ", staff "Violin I ". (Smartshape saved: true)
Very short hairpin found. Probably not enough space in measure 59, part "Violin I ", staff "Violin I ". (Smartshape saved: true)
------------------------------
Optimizing System Distances..., Elapsed time: 0.00
Part finished., Elapsed time: 0.00
------------------------------
Processing Part: 2 (Drum Set,Staff: 67 / "Drum Set", Slot: 1, Measures:1-79), Elapsed time: 0.08
DC/DS repeat element in measure 61 moved by 49 units.
Coda/Segno repeat mark in measure 39 moved by -89 units.
------------------------------
Optimizing System Distances..., Elapsed time: 0.00
Part finished., Elapsed time: 0.00
Part Processing finished, Elapsed time: 0.05
Finalization, Elapsed time: 0.00
------------------------------
Plugin Processing Time: 14.56 seconds
Close progress bar, Elapsed time: 0.01
Some pages need more vertical space to avoid colliding staves or to insert enough space between staff systems (Page: 1). If possible, try reducing the page scale or staff height and run the plugin again.
Plugin Processing Time:0m:17s, Elapsed time: 2.49
Plugin finished, Elapsed time: 0.00

The plug-in can be applied both in "Score View" and in "Parts View".
It is very much recommended though to run the plug-in the first time in "Score View" with the whole document selected, because some main functions are only activated if the whole document is processed (e.g. expression category fixes, MusicXML improvements on expressions, some multi-measure rest unifications).
Running the plug-in on the score also makes sure that all inconsistencies between score and parts are removed. Especially older Finale files sometimes have inconsistencies.

If the plug-in is run in "Score View", the selected region in the parts will always be processed too.
If the plug-in is run in "Parts" mode, the selected region in the score will not be processed.

However it's safe to run the plug-in in "Parts" mode, even if the plug-in has not been applied to the score before. But the plug-in will have slightly less features.

Which means: if changes are required in the "Score" that are linked to the "Parts", the change will not be made if you run the plug-in in parts only - to avoid inconsistencies.
For example: if a hairpin is attached to measure position 0 (=first beat) in both score and parts, and the plug-in would like to snap it to a dynamic expression on beat 2, this will not happen if the plug-in is run in "Parts View" as the link would be destroyed.
If the plug-in is run in "Score View", the snap would happen and also occur in the parts, so that the change would still be linked correctly between score and parts. Then just run the plug-in on this single part.

A common use case for running the plug-in in "Parts view" only is for example if you did some changes to a part at the very end of the processing (after Perfect Layout has been applied to the score and all parts).

In huge scores (or probably only in Finale® documents that are buggy?) Finale® seems to create a massive amount of temporary undo files. So many that temp folder is full (65536 files).We haven't found out yet what Finale® element causes this behaviour. From our 9000 test files this occured in three cases (all files from the same client).

Although the plug-in will still improve such a score (especially expression and hairpin alignment), it is very likely that it will also remove some manual optimizations.
The plug-in was not designed for use on an already manually optimized score that makes extensive use of custom smart lines or contemporary notation.
It will save you more time if you run it before doing any manual optimizations (see Quickstart: How to Use the Plug-in).

Make sure that the font file is available in OTF or TTF format and that it is installed in c:\windows\fonts or in the Windows user font folder (typically C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts ).

If you have installed new fonts on your system after the installation of Perfect Layout, make sure to click the "General->Recan Now!" button in Perfect Layout that searches for all (newly) installed fonts.
Perfect Layout only scans all fonts the very first time it is started.

If the font is installed on your computer in one of the above mentioned two folders and has an .OTF filename extension, make sure that the tool Node.js is installed on your computer.
By default Perfect Layout installs Node.js. However, in the Perfect Layout v1 and v2 for Windows it was possible to deactivate the installation. And in very rare cases Node.js is installed, but not accessible.
To check if Node.js works correctly, open cmd.exe on Windows (type in CMD in the start menu)
or in Terminal app on macOS, then type node and press Enter.
If everything is installed correctly, you should see a "Welcome to Node.js" message.

If it doesn't look like this, you need to re-install Node.js.
The easiest way is to re-run the Perfect Layout installer.
However, you can also download the Node.js installer directly from their homepage.
Perfect Layout v2.x requires at least Node.js version 14.16.1: Download it for Windows or macOS.
Perfect Layout v3.x requires at least Node.js version 16.17.0: Download it for Windows or macOS.
After installing Node.js the problem should be solved.

If the plug-in still complains that it can't generate font annotation files for an .OTF font, there is also another workaround:
a) Generate a .TTF version of your .OTF font file with a font converter like www.onlinefontconverter.com (Make sure the font license allows the creation)
b) Create a sub-folder "ttf-fonts" in your Finale/Font Annotation folder
c) If you have several Finale versions installed, create a sub-folder for each Finale/Font Annotation folder
d) Rename the font file name of the newly generated .TTF file to be eactly like the .OTF file (but keep the .TTF file extension)
e) Copy the new ttf font file into the "ttf-fonts" folder
f) If you have several Finale version installed, copy it into each of the "ttf-fonts" folders

Especially on Windows there are some old format fonts (.fon) like Courier, System or Roman. These are not supported by the plug-in. Please don't use them.
It's possible that the font is still not detected as Finale has an unusual way of using font names: it's different than in other standard Windows software (see our article Font Names in Finale).
This is especially true for font names using name extensions like "... LT Std", "... MT Pro", " BT" or font weights that Finale doesn't support ("Medium", "Thin", "Black", etc.).

Not finding the font files may also lead to long start-up times of the plug-in (with the message: Creating font annotation files...).
In this case please contact our support team. We will try to support your font in the next plug-in update.

The OK button is not clickable when the Finale document is larger than the plug-in edition allows:
Perfect Layout Silver400 only allows 400 measures and 36 (visible) staves or linked parts.
For processing larger documents you need the Silver or the Gold edition of the plug-in.
Also see overview of plug-in editions.

Yes. It's also possible to apply it to the full score/parts first, and after some minor adjustment apply it to single measures or staves.
You will probably not get identical results when applying multiple times: the horizontal and vertical spacing might be slightly different.
But don't forget: you will always get the best results when the plug-in is applied to the score and thus also to the parts.
It's not recommended to run the plug-in on the score only, then generate the parts and then run the plug-in on the individual parts. Because all functions that would break linked score/part elements (like hairpins, expressions) are not activated when applied to a part only.

1.) Check that the pages don't have page breaks which prevents measure shifting.
Perfect Layout automatically adds page breaks to lock the page layout - in order to prevent that Finale automatically undoes the layout that Perfect Layout has created.
To do this select the Page Layout tool, right-click on the staff system and click on "Delete Page Break" if available.
2.) There is also a JW Lua script that can remove all page breaks with one click.
You can download the script here. If you need help on how to use the JW Lua script "RemoveAllPageBreaks", please read this (external) "Getting Started with JW Lua" tutorial.
3.) Please check Finale's Preferences->Edit and look at the reflow settings.Make sure "Reflow Systems Across Pages" is checked (for moving systems).Then set "Reflow Measures" to "Only Within Systens" or "Across Systems (Maintain System Locks)" (for moving measures).

Please also read the section on the Reflow settings in the "Quickstart: How to Use"-tutorial.This is a very powerful and important feature for the plug-in as it allows the plug-in to automatically layout completely unlayouted parts with one click.
But this only works with the settings from 3.).
if you want your system and measure layout untouched, uncheck "Reflow Systems Across Pages" and set "Reflow Measures" to "Only Within Systems" before applying the plug-in.

If Finale's font encoding settings don't match Perfect Layout's settings, it will display this warning message:

Image: MacSymbolFonts.txt warning message

If you don't use the fonts from the warning message in Finale at all, just ignore the warning message and select yes.
If you only use the font files in other notation software (e.g. Capella, Sibelius), ignore the warning message too.
If you have never used these fonts before in Finale, but wish to use them now or later, just ignore the warning message.

In other words the warning message is only relevant, if you have already used the mentioned fonts in older Finale documents, because when re-opening these documents it is possible that Finale displays wrong symbols if the MacSymbolFonts.txt entry has changed.
But it is a reversible process: if you select yes the MacSymbolFonts.txt will be automatically updated. Should you encounter any symbol problems later in older documents that use these fonts, you can simply remove the added font name manually from MacSymbolsFonts.txt later.

Finale®'s MacSymbolFonts.txt file includes a list of music fonts for Finale's internal font handling. The program uses a different font encoding when a font is on the list. Fonts can have several encodings. This means for example if you select the character 138, a different symbol appears if the font is in MacSymbolFonts.txt or if not.

Very often fonts have several encodings (e.g. for MacOS and for Windows) and not all of them fully work in Finale® (on MacOS and/or on Windows), so one has to test which encoding works best.

This also depends on how you work, what fonts you use and what you need:
While Windows is more tolerant regarding the selected encoding, MacOS very often requires the font name to be added to MacSymbolFonts.txt.
So if a Finale® document is to be exchanged between MacOS and Windows, it is recommended to have matching MacSymbolFonts.txt files.

Note: Unicode fonts (=fonts with more than 255 symbols like Aruvarb or November2) must never be added to MacSymbolFonts.txt, as MacSymbolFonts.txt automatically limits the number of available symbols top 256.

The Perfect Layout plug-in currently only supports one type of encoding for each music font. That's why you will get an error message if MacSymbolFonts.txt doesn't match the encoding that the plug-in requires.
The plug-in will automatically update MacSymbolFonts.txt if it is not compatible. After the update a restart of Finale is necessary.
When the MacOS version of the Perfect Layout plug-in is released, the recommended font encodings might slightly change to guarantee best compatibility between MacOS and Windows.

In general it is save to just follow the suggestions of the Perfect Layout plug-in regarding MacSymbolFonts.txt.
But attention must be paid if you have manually adjusted font annotation files that don't mark the glyph borders, but have user-defined borders that don't match the glyph borders (for whatever reason ... usually this is not recommended and not necessary):these font annotation files are not compatible with a changed encoding and need to be recreated.

If your accidentals become like this (i.e. the bottom accidental colliding with the notehead in the right image):


this may be the result of a very old Finale file (created before 2004).
To fix this go to Document Options->Accidentals and activate "Use cross-layer accidental positioning" before running Perfect Layout.

The plug-in supports nearly all main music fonts (more than 470).
More than 300 of the supported fonts/font families can be seen in the highly recommended Elbsound Music Font Comparison tool.

What does "supported music font" mean?
First the plug-in needs to know if a font is a music font, a chord font, a symbol font or a text font.The plug-in currently knows more than 1200 of these font names (see font list here) and assumes that every unknown font is a text font.
For some tasks of the plug-in it is also important to understand what a symbol from the font means (i.e. the semantics).A fermata requires a different handling than a dynamic symbol.
The plug-in uses both the expression category names and/or the "description of the music symbol" for its detection.
About 1200 symbols from more than 470 music and chord fonts are described in the plug-in's music font database.
If a symbol is not described, it might be excluded from some of the plug-in's tasks.

There are however a few commercial music fonts that are officially not supported yet as we didn't get free samples in time to include them.But they will probably work as well as they are all (nearly) Maestro-compatible.
These are:
- Font Shop's Urtext fonts,
- the hadnwritten fonts by NorFonts,
- the MTF fonts by Music Type Foundry.

If your music font is not supported yet, but Maestro-compatible, it is very likely that the plug-in will work without problems.If you want other music fonts to be supported, please contact support. For a small fee it is possible to include your font in the next release.

Finale sometimes only shows musical symbols from a font in their font selection lists instead of the real font name:


To select the correct font, please type the name manually as in this animation:

In two cases JetStream seems to have problems when adding hairpins that span over more than one measure to a Finale document (as of 20th January 2021).
While the hairpins visually look fine after adding them through JetStream, they are internally stored critically - and can lead to problems when changing the measure layout of the (second) hairpin measure in Finale or when applying Perfect Layout: the hairpins can suddenly appear above the staff or even in the previous measure. The JetStream team is already working on a fix.

Quick Workaround:
Problem 1:
If you only have hairpins below the staff in your score, there is a simple fix for the "above the staff" problem:
select the whole document and go to Plug-ins->JW Change->Hairpins->Vertical Position , then uncheck "Relative" and set "Vertical" to -144 EVPU. This moves ALL hairpins below the staff.
If you then apply Perfect Layout, the "JetStream"-hairpins will not appear above the staff anymore.

Disclaimer:
The information about this JetStream behaviour was not confirmed by Elbsound.studio, but only reported to us by a client.
The JetStream team was informed by us and confirmed that they will have a look at this issue.

Problem 2:
There is probably no workaround for the "move to the previous measure" problem, except: don't use Perfect Layout, don't change the measure layout in the second (or third) hairpin measure and don't change the time signature as this might influence the (visual) placement of the hairpins.
We recommend to wait for an update of JetStream.
We don't know which hairpins are affected by this. In the document that we received from a client, this second problem only affected a cresc. hairpin over several measures directly connected with a dim. hairpin. These were internally not assigned to the measure in which they were visible, but to the previous measure at a beat position beyond the time signature (e.g. at beat 6 in a 4/4 measure).

For most users the Silver400 edition is the best choice.
It costs about half as much as a regular Finale® update, but has hundreds of powerful features which is much, much more than a regular Finale® update - maybe as much as five or more updates.

With Perfect Layout you can easily create scores with a professional look. Professionals calculate in working hours.
80% of our v2.0 beta users reported that Perfect Layout saved them 20% or more of their overall Finale working time. One third even reported that it saved them more than 25% of their time (see image below from the v2.0 beta test survey from January 2021).
And the plug-in creates a more balanced output than you could achieve manually in that time.
So if you save one day per week for layout tasks (with a 20,- Eur per hour rate - which is still pretty low), even the Gold version of the plug-in has already paid off after less than one month of usage.

Perfect Layout is not comparable with any other existing Finale® plug-in. It is a "one-click" solution for optimizing scores and parts at the same time with more than 200 options in the user dialog, more than 700 internal parameters which cover all options, distances, movements, etc, more than 300.000 lines of code and support for more than 470 music fonts.It also fixes very many long-term problems of Finale® and features many new "intelligent" algorithms for automatic score and parts preparation.

And don't forget: plug-ins for music software are a niche market and professional plug-ins for notation software are an even smaller niche market.

A good comparison for the price are "Sampling Libraries".
Professional sampling libraries cost between ca. 400,- Eur and 5.000,- Eur (e.g. VSL Symphonic Cube).
The host software usually costs much less (for example 100,- Eur for Plogue Bidule or Cubase LE).But it requires the plug-ins (=sample libraries) to be used professionally.

Perfect Layout version 3: yes!

Perfect Layout version 1 and 2: In general yes.
Only the new Fin26 functions (articulation stacking and slur collision with articulations) currently can't be detected with the recent JW Lua release.
So it might look better (or worse - just as you prefer it) if you switched off "Stacking" and set "Slur Interaction: Auto inside/outside" to "Ignore" before applying the plug-in.

Also make sure to select "Keep Positioning" of articulations when opening a document from a previous version of Finale®. If you select "Enhance" instead, some articulations might not be fixed.

Here is a PDF comparison of a pre-Finale 26 document imported into Finale 26 and processed with the plug-in: once with "Enhance Positioning" selected, once with "Keep Positioning".

Our online shop is operated by the German company Digital River GmbH.
You can download their W-8BEN-E form here.

Write us a mail and let us know what you would like to see in the next update of the Perfect Layout plug-in.

- Removes collision of hairpins with slurs, ties, notes, articulations (except with articulations between the start/end note of top slurs)

, expressions, barlines and repeat brackets (below staff only). (mm.4, 6, 9, 15, 19, 29/30, 43, 55,etc.)
- Removes collision of (standard) articulations with (one!) other articulation on top of the staff, with slurs (only if connected with start or end note of slur), ties and dynamic expressions. (mm.1, 2, 4, 7, 35, 37 / m.1)
- Removes collision of dynamic expressions with slurs, ties, repeat brackets, notes, accidentals and barlines (below staff only). (mm.6, 22, 23, 24, 28, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59)
- Removes collision of trill line smartshapes with up/down bow articulations. (m.37)
- Removes collision of text repeats and notes, articulations and multi-measure rest numbers (on top of the staff only). (m.61)
- Removes collision of ottava and trill lines (not custom line trills) with notes, accidentals and articulations (on top of the staff only). (m.23)
- Removes collision of rehearsal mark letters, rehearsal mark texts and tempo mark text expressions with notes, articulations and left-aligned chord symbols. (mm.4, 25-38, 58)
- Removes collision of voice 1 note with voice 2 articulation. (m.25)
- Removes collision of Voice1/Layer1 dynamic expressions with Voice2/Layer2 notes). (m.25)
- Removes collision of glissando lines with accidentals and augmentation dots (together with optimized vertical alignment). (m.40)
- Tremolo articulations on whole notes are corrected. (m.59)
- Not all slur parameters are currently supported, unsymmetric slurs may still have tiny collisions.

Each collision system just checks the collisions of two individual elements. It is not a general collision avoidance system that checks all surrounding elements and calculates the best spacing solution. In most cases this system works fine, but from time to time there are situations where the suggested solution is not the optimum.

- Expressions and hairpins are aligned horizontally and vertically, and, if necessary, corrected in its measure position according to a great number of (notation) rules that try to achieve a visually balanced, musically clear and collision-free look.
- Hairpins and dynamic expressions below the staff are aligned vertically (expressive text in conjunction with dynamic expressions also). Vertical alignment is reset after a few measures, a certain distance and on each new system. (mm.3/4, 8-10, 12-14, 15-16, 24-30 and more)
- Dynamic expressions and expressive text on the same measure position are aligned horizontally and vertically. (m.53)
- Adjacent hairpins and dynamic expressions are connected with a small visual gap in between. (mm.6, 9, 10, 12 and more)
- Moves dynamic expressions slightly up on systems with slash staff style measures where no other object goes below the bottom staff line. This reduces unnecessary space e.g. on drumset parts with lots of slash notation. (mm.63)

- Moves dynamic expression up on slash staff style measure with invisible very low notes. (mm.65)
- Positions dynamics expressions in the centre below the note. (mm.1, 3 and more)
- Corrects vertical alignment of hairpins with line breaks (i.e. two alignments necessary). (mm.14/15)
- Dynamic expressions attached to very low notes and shifted left and upwards are kept on that position and will not be centered below the note to avoid very low dynamics. It doesn't work the other way round yet: centered dynamics on very low notes are kept on the centered position and will not be shifted left and upwards. (m.32)
- Alignment of expressions is content-dependent (e.g. pp and mf get a reduced vertical offset value compared to fff, so that the actual distance to a note or articulation is identical).
- Corrects wrong horizontal position of a niente hairpin expression under a rest. (m.68)
- Tempo marks, tempo alterations and rehearsal marks are aligned horizontally. (mm.4-7)
- Tempo marks, tempo alterations and rehearsal marks can be aligned vertically.
Two different modes are available:
a) minimum distance to staff (each mark is aligned individually)
b) align according to highest offset (all marks are vertically aligned according to the highest mark). (mm.25-38)
- Centered "più ff" expressions become quasi right-aligned. (m.59)
- Centered "ff sub." expressions become quasi left-aligned (same for poss., s(i)empre, espr., secco, etc.). (m.40)
- Moves expressions connected to a centered "real" whole rest to other layers' notes on measure position 0 if available. (m.49)
- Numbers from the Finale "Number Repeated Measures" plugin are centered. (m.45)
- Moves an expression that is assigned to "All Layers" to another layer if layer 1 is invisible. Otherwise Finale doesn't do a correct vertical alignment. (m.58)
- Moves dynamic expression from the end of the measure to next measure's position 0 if it either has a huge horizontal offset to the right or if the note on measure position 0 is tied backwards. (m.54/55)
- Slurs at line breaks which end with high notes will be re-aligned, for example when a run with a slur ends on the next system (This feature is implemented, but only works on manually adjusted slurs because of a JW Lua bug). (m.14)
- Harp glissando optimization can be achieved with the Elbsound Harp Glissando plugin (mm.40)

- Creates multi-measure rests in score and parts if they had not been created automatically yet. (mm.41/42 and (mm.62-71)
- Can remove multi-measure rests in measures that have non-MM breaking expressions and/or hairpins. (mm.14/15)
- Removes multi-measure rests in parts if the measures have changed after the first MM rest creation. (mm.51/52)
- Moves multi-measure rest numbers slightly down on 1-line staff measures. (mm.73-75)
- Shows/hides measure number ranges below multi-measure rests if the multi-measure rest has a defined length. (hidden mm.41-42, shown mm.72-77)
- Updates all multi-measure rests to the current style from the multi-measure rest document settings (e.g. change from shape to symbol). (m.72)
- Updates the settings of measure number ranges to valid values (centered, below, square brackets)
- GP (=Generalpause) expressions are detected and split MM rests. (m.42)
- If a multi-measure rest ends with a clef change, then the MM rest will be reduced in size to avoid collision between the MM rest and the clef. (m.42)
- A measure number group below the MM rest will also be shifted slightly to the right to match the new position. (m.42)

- Hairpins are connected, if possible, to adjacent note entries or notes with dynamic expressions for optimal playback. (mm.4, 6, 9, 10, 12 and more)
- Moves hairpins that are attached to rests to note before, otherwise the Finale 2014 hairpin playback doesn't work correctly. (m.13)
- Lets hairpins start slightly right to a note/rest and lets them end slightly before a note/rest. (mm.4, 13, 9, 10 and more)
- Shortens hairpins that end on measure position 0 of the next system to end on the last beat of the last measure of the previous system, in order to avoid hairpin line breaks (but for optimal playback this should not be done, it's just for visual reasons)
- Automatically resets hairpin horizontal break offset to 0, so that they align with measure start and measure end. (mm.14/15)
- Support of "niente" hairpins: automatic connection of hairpin with any niente ("o") text expression or a niente text ("niente" or "quasi niente") (currently restricted to one niente hairpin per measure). (mm.66 and 67)
- Can auto-connect to the next/previous note if it is close enough. (m.34)
- Hairpins can be made horizontal. (m.34)
- Hairpins can be resized to the default opening width. (m.13)
- Hairpins that start on measure position 0 before the note can be reset to a horizontal offset of 0. (m.3)
- Hairpins that end on a rest are shortened to the start of the rest (if not followed by a note with a dynamic expression). (m.13)
- Hairpins that end in the middle of an empty measure are shortened to the end of the previous measure. (mm.59/60)

- Puts articulations on rhythmic and slash notation measures on top of the staff (except for those marked as "Below Note") (mm.19-22)
- Moves articulation on high-pitched grace notes from below staffline to above the note. (m.59)
- Combinations of two symbol staccato/tenuto plus accent articulations are correctly aligned on articulations above the notes (not supported below the note yet).
- Creates inside slur articulations if necessary for collision with steep slurs (but not if there are multiple articulations on that note). (m.12)
- Changes certain shape articulations with helpful descriptions in the shape definition to character articulations.
For example, different staccato dot articulations may have a shape symbols of their duration, i.e. 30%,50%,75%, etc. The shape is great for the score/playback creation process, but for printing it will be reverted to the staccato dot character. (m.39)

- Puts tuplets on notes with lyrics on top in order to avoid collision with lyrics on bottom. (m.18)
- Puts tuplets over one line (percussion) staves on top in order to avoid collision with dynamics on bottom. (m.43)
- Optimized tuplet and/or default values from the tuplet preferences can be applied to all tuplets. (m.33)
- Tuplets on extreme notes can be moved on top of the notes instead of staying on the stem side. (m.60)
- Tuplet brackets on quarter note tuplets (and higher) can be hidden (turned off by default).
- Nested tuplets are split: the main tuplet will be on the stem side, the sub tuplet on the note side.
- Splits fake tuplets where the first half of a tuplet is a regular note (e.g. dotted eight note plus three 16th notes in a 8th note triplet become eighth note plus three 16th notes in a 16th note tuplet). (m.55)
- Optimize tuplet numbers: if the tuplet number doesn't match the longest/shortest note duration, it can be adjusted (e.g. 6 16th notes with a tuplet number 3 (i.e. 3 8th notes), get a new tuplet number 6). (m.58)
- Missing tuplet brackets are added if it simplifies reading (e.g. within a group of beamed notes without secondary beam breaks).

- Moves typically right-aligned text repeats to the right border of the measure (D.C., D.S., Fine, etc.). (m.61)
- Moves typically left-aligned text repeats to the left border of the measure (Coda, Segno, etc.). (m.39)
- Unifies vertical offset of all text repeats.
(mm.39, 61)
- Repeat brackets will horizontally (not vertically yet!) aligned with their starting/ending measure.
- Moves a system starting with a "Coda" rehearsal mark slightly down in extracted parts. (mm.62-71)

- Adds 5-line staff symbol at the end of a measure if it is a 1-line staff measure followed by a 5-lines staff with a new clef. (m.48)
- 1-line staves have different distance values or baselines than 5-Line staves (for example dynamics can come closer to the staff line). (mm.43-48)

- Minimizes the distance between the top lyrics baseline and lowest note and articulation. (mm.5, 17-18)
- Fixes the distance between multiple lyric baselines of the same type (unless multiple different lyrics types and numbers occur in one measure). (m.5)
- Removes vertical offset from manually adjusted syllables. (m.5)
- Removes invalid syllables.
- Removes invalid lyric flags.

- Broadens measures with condensed hairpins to improve the hairpins visually. (m.12)
- Sets slash style measures to time signature spacing. (mm.21, 63-67)
- Sets slash style measures with visible offbeat notes in other layers to note spacing.
- Removes uneven slash measure spacing caused by non-hidden, but invisible notes. (mm.21, 64)
- Apply music spacing to full score (turned off by default).
- Adaptive spacing for chord symbol collisions: measures with chord collisions are set to "Avoid chord" collisions in spacing, others are set to not use it. (mm.13, 14, 34)
- Reduces the measure width in blank notation style, slash and repeat style measures with individual values for minimum measure widths.
- Adaptive spacing for blank notation and repeat styles measures: if the staff is very crowded, these special measures will be squeezed more. (m.11)
- If a measure holds a preparation clef for the next measure, the measure will be broadened and extra space at the end added if there is a collision with a note entry or a slash symbol (from the slash staff style) in that measure. (mm.24, 48)
- Inserts additional beat chart elements to measures if necessary for improved spacing (e.g. in a measure with one whole note, but several hairpins or expressions: (m.56))

- For details see Settings->Systems

- Relinks all expressions, articulations and hairpins from the parts with the score before further processing (older Finale documents can have expressions attached to different beats in score and part which might confuse the alignment). (m.39)
- Clears manual positioning of articulations, dynamic expressions, rehearsal marks and tempo expressions. (m.24, 52 and more)
- Removes unneccessary articulations on rests (e.g. if staccato dots were copied to rests with the explode function. Allowed articulations like a fermata remain.). (m.18, 32)
- Removes duplicate articulations of the same kind on the same note (resulting for example from staff implode). (m.32)
- Removes duplicate (nearly) identical expressions at the same position. (m.54)
- Removes duplicate (nearly) identical hairpins at the same position. (m.59)
- Removes duplicate (nearly) identical slurs. (m.35)
- Corrects dynamic expression placement at the beginning of a pickup measure.
- Non-opaque expression enclosures with line width 0 will be removed.
- Right-aligned multi-measure rest breaking expressions are duplicated and also stored in measure 1 of the multi-measure rest, so that they don't disappear anymore at the end of the mm rest.
- Separated "f" and "p" dynamics on a note will be connected to "fp". (m.48)
- Resets manual accidental shifts (turned off by default).
- Unisons are slightly separated.
- Warning message is issued when the pickup measure is set to a value less than 32 EDUs (which may result in undesired symbols being displayed).
- Apply optimized tie preference settings. (m.61)
- Apply optimized slur preference settings.
- Measure numbers on measures with "space before music" (i.e. key or time sig changes) can be shifted to the left to appear directly above/below the barline (instead of at the beginning of the music). (m.16, 68)
- Removes (unnecessary) accidentals from backwards tied notes. (m.51)
- Sets tempo marks, tempo alterations and rehearsal marks to "break multi-measure rests".
- Tempo alterations can be optionally be hidden under multi-measure rests.
- Tempo alterations are hidden at the end of a piece, if no note entries follow.
- Can optionally hide tempo alterations in MM rests (turned off by default).
- Split three beamed eighth notes in pickup measure to one eighth note plus two beamed eighth notes.
- Removes 'open ties' (i.e. tie starts that don't have a corresponding tie end). Laisser-vibrer staves like harp, timpani, cymbals or vibraphone are ignored. (m.13)
- Close hairpins are "connected" with a gap. (mm.63-68)
- Assigns noteID to entry-based glissando lines that are connected with a note, but have no noteID.
- Sets vertically moved rests to standard position if it is a one-layer and one-voice measure. (m.7)
- Detects text expressions assigned to invalid categories and moves them to "Miscellaneous".
- Invalid expressions are deleted (i.e. if the expression ID doesn't exist anymore).
- Certain smart lines will be placed at a fixed vertical position on top of a staff (for example Fill-in-------¬ on drumset staves). They will also be aligned with right before the barline if they are close. (m.66)
- Deletes empty pages at the end of a part. (m.68-71 - not visible)
- Corrects expressions that are connected to a slightly wrong measure position (e.g. Pos 32 instead of 0) to the correct position (this occurs especially in older Finale documents). (m.9)
- All single grace notes get slashes. (m.59)
- All single grace notes become 8th notes, all multiple grace notes become 16th notes.
- Rests are checked if they match the time signature and otherwise splitted/merged and the measures respaced (not in measures with the different notation styles as in m.49). (mm.23, 50, 51, 57, 61)
- Invalid composite time sigs that are actually non-composite time sigs are included in the rest check for time signature matching.
- Rebar is optionally possible (same as Utilites->Rebar, turned off by default because of its side effects on quantization)
- Measures can optionally be padded with rests if incomplete (turned off by default, in order not to pad layers that are incomplete on purpose)
- Removes stunted slurs that start and end on the same note/position. (m.5)
- Removes hairpins that start and end on the same note/position. (m.5)
- Deletes invisible articulations with invalid articulation definitions (i.e. those articulation definitions that were already deleted).
- Expressions that were assigned beyond measure duration (e.g. position 4096 EDUs in a 3072 EDUs measure) are corrected and assigned to the best fitting note position where they are currently visible. (ff in m.6 was actually assigned to measure 7)
- Manual adjustments of slurs can be removed. (m.24)
- Accidentally flipped hairpins that start and end in the same measure are corrected.
- Accidentally flipped ties are corrected if there are no voice2 entries and no entries in other layers (only if the FlipTie flag is used, not with the Special flag). (m.54)
- Accidentally flipped/frozen stems are corrected if there are no voice2 entries and no entries in other layers. (m.31)
- Voice2Launch flags are reset if there is no voice2 on that beat. This also corrects the direction of wrong stems and slurs. (m.8: the wrong flag results in an upsidedown stem)
- Corrects messed up measure number region indices.
- Removes slurs that double ties. (m.7)
- Replaces slurs with ties if slurs were applied accidentally. (m.23)
- Dynamic expressions which are assigned to non-dynamic categories are automatically shifted to 'Dynamic Expressions'. (f in m.12)
- Typical expressive text expressions which are assigned to non-expressive text categories are automatically shifted to 'Expressive Text'. (legato in m.52)
- Typical tempo mark text expressions which are assigned to non-tempo mark categories are automatically shifted to 'Tempo Marks'.
- Typical tempo alteration text expressions which are assigned to non-tempo alteration categories are automatically shifted to 'Tempo Alterations'. (A tempo in m.79)
- Measure number expressions which are assigned to the "Miscellaneous" category can be shifted to "Rehearsal Marks".
- Slurs can be updated from on/off to automatic engraver slur. (m.38)
- Slurs not connected to the end note of a series of tied notes will be connected to the end note (except for grace note slurs). (m.59)
- Invalid invisible slurs (attached only to one entry instead of two) are deleted.
- Fixes invalid SmartShape flags in measures
- Wrong Expression flags in measures are cleared.
- Wrong Special flags in note entries are cleared.
- Wrong Articulation flags in note entries are cleared.
- Manual positioning of notes can be cleared. (m.5)
- Group brackets can be automatically added on groups with at least 3 staves (and bracket set to none).
- Moves entries that were accidentally placed on layers 2-4 to layer 1. Cue notes, non-playback layers, or notes under alt notation staff styles are not moved. (m.7,9)
- Hairpins with a start or end measure position greater than the acutal measure duration are reset to the measure duration.
- Hairpins that end after the last measure are reset to end in the last measure.
- Horizontal custom smart lines are forced to be horizontal. If you don't want that feature, uncheck "Horizontal" in the custom smart line definition. (m.66)

- Cue notes get all stems down/up depending on the placement of the whole measure rest. (m.11)
- Cue note instrument texts move below the staff. (m.11)
- Cue note instrument texts are connected with the first note of the cue (instead of rests). (m.11)
- Assigns cue note instrument text to the same layer as the cue note, so that they have a reduced size as the cue note. (m.11)
- Hides "cue notes only"-measures in the score and applies an "Blank Notation with Rests" staff style. (m.11)
- Hides "100% sized"-cue notes that were only created to have 100% sized lyrics with a "Blank Notation: Layer X" staff style.
- Cue note text expressions (e.g. "(Fl.)") without notes can now break multi-measure rests. (m.68)
- If an "empty" pick-up measure holds a cue note clef change only, the width of the measure will be fixed so that the clef is displayed correctly
(i.e. this is necessary if a part starts with a clef followed by a cue note clef which can only be handled with an empty extra measure)
- Hairpins, custom line and trills can be hidden in cue measures (m.11)

- All measures with notes on a certain layer are set to blank notation on that layer (for example to remove playback only layers or playback for cue notes). (m.11)
- Hides unnecessary group names that are also part names (e.g. Piano or Harp).
- Hides chord symbols on selected staves in the score, but shows them in the parts (to reduce complexity in the score). (m.63)
- Hides rehearsal mark texts that have the same text as the lyrics in that measure. (m.5)
- Hides all expressions in the score that are only to be shown in page view (e.g. harp tuning or solo markings) based on user-defined expression categories. (m.16)
- Hides instrument-specific articulations in the score that are only to be shown in the parts to reduce complexity of the score (e.g. up/down bow). (m.1, m.1)
- Adds automatic measure counting to slash measures (every xth measure and after double barlines). (m.63-67)
- Add automatic measure counting to one-bar repeat measures (every measure, optionally in parts only (see m.45)). (m.44-46)

- The plugin runs over the score AND all linked parts in one go, making different adjustments in the parts and score (e.g. vertical alignment of dynamics/hairpins has different results on the score and the parts as their staff systems include different measures).
- All the functions mentioned above can be switched on/off and have many parameters.
- The plugin uses the same font database as the House Style Changer and recognizes music symbol and glyph spacing from more than 300 music fonts. (mm.24, 30, 51, 52)

These issues can't be fixed because of limitations in JW Lua or Finale, or they will be fixed in a future update.

- The installer currently doesn't support Windows user folders with unicode characters (i.e. the folder c:\users\.....\). At the moment only symbols from Windows-1252 encoding are supported (i.e. allowed are Western European symbols like äôáèüß, but not letters like ǧȒʥԖש).
- No support for scores with staff dependent time signatures.
- GPOS tables in OpenType fonts are currently not supported by our font engine (e.g. vertical glyph placement as in the Figurato font currently leads to wrong metrics in the plug-in)
- Finale 27: SMuFl .json files are not taken into account for the symbol metrics. Perfect Layout uses the actual symbol metrics from the font file.
- Diagonal hairpins are only partially supported.
- Non left-aligned chords are only partially supported in collision detection.
- The chord styles Solfeggio, Nashville and Roman are not yet supported in collision detection (the plugin always assumes one of the CDEFGA(BH)-standards).
- Cross-staff smartshapes are not supported for collision detection.
- The activated option "Allow Horizontal Split" in the measure dialog is only partially supported. It's not very recommended to use this feature anyway, because not even Finale supports it fully. It's recommended to fake a measure split with two measures, fake time signature settings and a hidden right barline.
- Dynamics on cross-staff notes in two-staff groups (e.g. piano) are only partially corrected in placement.
- Not all cross-staff scenarios are yet supported for optimal staff/system balancing. Should you notice any problems, please let us know, so that we can support them.
- Staves or staff styles with line spacing other than the default 24 EVPU are not fully supported yet which may lead to collisions or unoptimized spacing.
- No support for non-smart (=old-style) word extensions. These can not be detected correctly in JW Lua. Please activate "Use Smart Word Extensions" in the Lyrics->Word Extension dialog.
- Some fonts will work better on Windows/macOS if they are/are not added to MacSymbolFonts.txt. The plug-in font database currently only supports the state that works better on Windows. As a result the plug-in might require to update the MacSymbolFonts.txt file, if it doesn't find the correct fonts listed.
- Multi-measure rests are automatically created/validated. But as this may affect the system layout, it's possible that systems end up on different pages than before or that extra pages are added somewhere in between. Automatic multi-measure rest creation should be avoided if the part has systems with different number of staves (e.g. hidden staves) and many empty measures that would be consolidated to a multi-measure rest. This would massively influence the part layout. In this case create the multi-measure rests manually before calling the plugin and adjust the measure layout to your needs.
- The left/right metrics of consolidated rests are not always calculated correctly (JW Lua or Finale plugin SDK bug). The best result appears when the active layer in Finale is layer 1.
- In custom line definitions the values in the "Line Adjustments" group (Start H, Continue H, End H, V) cannot be read by JW Lua. If possible, set them to 0, otherwise the lines may align wrong.
- Rests in very ambiguous time signatures are not corrected (e.g. 11/4).
- The very old Finale "Special Parts Extration" feature from the 90s is only partially supported and tested as it's usually not used nowawadays anymore.
It's recommended to use Finale's linked parts or extracted parts instead.
- Chord spacing is not fully correct in measures that have all of the following properties: slash/repeat style, overlapping chords, more notes than chord positions and not notes on all chord positions.
- Tracking (of text elements) is not calculated 100% correctly.
- Diagonal hairpins that cross staff lines are made horizontal.
- Finale's tool palettes are sometimes resorted by the minimization and maximization of the Finale Windows. We are still looking for a solution to this phenomenon.
- System/staff balancing may not work optimally if the pages have different scaling percentages.
- Automatic staff system balancing works best when all pages have the same page scaling, system scaling and staff scaling. Should they not match, it is not guaranteed that the result over all pages is fully convincing.
- When clicking on "Undo" and then on "Redo" after having run the plug-in, JW Lua or the Finale PDK has a bug that may lead to a different page layout/measure spacing or even systems vanishing in the score. It's possible to use undo/redo, but use it with care - i.e. check the page layout is still ok.
- The staff stem setting "Always Up" and "Always Down" cannot be detected (JW Lua bug). This can lead to stems being falsely flipped.
- Fingering articulations are only supported in articulation stacking if they have a horizontal offset of 0.
- Stacked hairpins (one above the other) are currently not handled correctly and might be placed on top of each other.
- Hairpins are vertically aligned to dynamics, expressive text, articulations, slurs, ties, notes and the staff line. Other symbols (e.g. custom lines) between hairpin and the staff line are currently not taken into account.
- Graphics attached to measures are currently not supported by JW Lua. So they are not taken into account for collision detection (Page graphics aren't taken into account either, as page elements aren't taken into account in general).
- Expressive text as custom smart lines (e.g. cresc. - - - -) is currently not automatically aligned with dynamics.
- Accidentals as expressions are not taken into account for collisions.
- Glissando smartshapes are not connected correctly to the notes, if their custom smart lines use an offset ("Start H" and "End H" values). JW Lua doesn't support reading this offset.
- Collision detection of rehearsal marks, tempo marks and tempo alterations only works good if there are at maximum two expressions per measure at the same measure position from two different expression categories.
- The clef slots are assumed to be used as in the Finale default document (i.e. slot 1=violin clef, slot 4=bass clef, etc.).
- JW Lua doesn't allow the detection of full or short barline in 1-line staves, so they are both aligned identically.
- Three stacked articulations (e.g. downbow, fermata and accent) are not included in collision removal.
- Lyrics baseline optimization currently only works for lyrics below the staff.
- All staff systems on a page should have the same Staff Height value.
- Document options for tie placement currently can't be read through the plugin interface, so the plugin always assumes Finale's standard values for tie positionings.
- Tie alterations that affect the tie metrics are currently not supported, i.e. collisions might occur. The functionality is supported by the Finale PDK, but currently not implemented yet in JW Lua.
- Collision of articulations with ties on top of the staffline is currently not supported yet, but also occurs rather seldom.
- Pickup duration detection is unstable: if a pickup measure is created with the "Use a different time signature for display" method and the second measure has a completely different time signature, the pickup is only detected if one of the first measures has at least one rest. (JW Lua bug: it has limited support for "Use a different time signature".)
- Automatic shape detection is currently switched off in Finale 2014 as JW Lua currently crashes Finale when examining shape instructions (i.e. down/up bow shapes are not detected as valid articulations for collision detection).- Automatic detection of shape articulations is only supported in Finale 2014.5, 25, 26 and above.
- The few supported shape articulations (like "Up+Down Bow") must be designed "on baseline" (they must not cross below the baseline). Otherwise the stacked articulation collision doesn't work.
- As shape expressions are hardly supported, molto crescendo "end of hairpin" expressions are only detected if they are text expressions, not shape expressions.
- Shape articulations and expressions are currently not supported for collision detection.
- The articulation "inside slur" capability of Finale 26 is currently not supported by JW Lua. The plug-in automatic inside/outside slur feature only works up to Finale 25.
- Time signatures with decimals are currently not supported by JW Lua (e.g. .625/2 for a 5/16 time signature with one beaming group).
- JW Lua currently doesn't support updates of the Vertical Baseline Offset on shape expressions. This may lead to displaced expressions when they are baseline dependent and the baseline offset has changed.
- For all features to work with cross-staff notes, make sure to have the staves grouped. Cross-staff notes in non-grouped staves are not always detected correctly.
- Because of a Finale bug with the "Slur Tips Avoid Staff Lines" option, there may be collisions with slurs in rare cases that appear on the screen only. But: when printing the document to a printer or to PDF, the collisions are not visible.
- Hairpins that appear on three staff systems in a row are only checked for collision on the first and last system.
- Slur collisions are only detected correctly for slurs without line break or for the first system of slurs with a linebreak (i.e. slur collisions after the linebreak are only estimated very roughly or not taken into account at all, because of a JW Lua or Finale PDK bug).
- When an alert message dialog is clicked, Finale may lose the window focus (This is a known JW Lua bug). Simply click on the Finale window to get the focus back.
- Dynamic expressions might get close to steep beams. Those beams are currently not included in collision detection.
- You must not specify a different configuration folder name and directory other than Finale's default ("Configuration Folder" or "Konfigurationsdateien"). Otherwise the directory will not be detected and the plug-in doesn't work.
- The superscript command is not yet supported in collision detection and niente alignment.
- Rest optimization is currently not activated on slash and repeat style measures with multiple layers.
- Document default fonts (from the Document Options->Fonts menu) are only partially supported if they are set to "Fixed" size (which they usually aren't).
- Resized staff systems have not been fully tested yet (-> planned for future update). If possible, use other scaling options like staff height or page percentage and/or make sure all staff systems have the same scaling.
- Only partial support yet for individually resized staves.
- The plug-in has many optimizations for two-staff groups, like piano notation. These do not always work on three staff groups (e.g. a piano in contemporary three staff notation).
- User-defined font annotation files are currently not supported. Only the original font metrics are used. This can lead to incorrect metrics and thus collisions or too big distances if the Finale document loads user-defined FAN files.
- Staves that don't have 1- or 5 staff lines are only partially supported in spacing/collision optimizations.
- The values from the Smart Shape Placement menu are currently not accessible from JW Lua. So the plugin assumes the default values.
- A ttf, ttc, otf, dfont or suit font file must be available on the hard disk for font metrics analyzation in OS registered font directory, otherwise the metrics are not available.
- Priorization: manually adjusted tremolo articulations may be messed up when the connected note entry has illegal flags (like Special or Voice2Launch). So note entry flag correction has a higher priority than tremolo articulation placement. So it's recommended to run for example the JW Yada Yada plugin after having run the Perfect Layout plugin.
- The plugin has not been tested with all international versions of Finale and might not fully work in these because of different keywords. If you notice a difference, please contact us.

Perfect Layout v3: Finale® 2014, 2014.5, v25, v26, v27 for 64bit Windows 10, 11 or macOS 10.13+ - 14.x (tested until 14.6).
Note 1: PL v3 should also work in Windows 7 and 8 when all the latest Windows updates are installed, but Elbsound.studio doesn't support that.
Note 2: According to some users PL v2 also works in 10.11/10.12, but Elbsound.studio doesn't support that either.

Perfect Layout v2: Finale® 2014, 2014.5, v25, v26, v27 for 64bit Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 or macOS (tested in 10.13 - 12.6, according to some users also working in 10.11/10.12)

Minimum 4 GB RAM, for huge orchestra scores exceeding about 20.000 frame assignments 8-12 GB RAM and Finale® v25, v26 or v27 are required, otherwise the plug-in may run out of memory.

Windows: 250 MB, macOS: 400 MB of free hard drive space (after installation 250 MB), plus space for the font annotation files dependent on the number of fonts that are installed

For the installation/(de-)activation you need a user with administration rights

Internet connection during the installation and update process, and an email address to receive the activation code or an installed email program to request the activation code.

macOS (PL v2.x+) and Windows (PL v3.x+): an internet connection is required during the processing of the plug-in for checking the activation

macOS only: You need to grant access to Finale to use the Terminal app, Image Events and System Events for activating/checking the license, downloading updates, displaying the plug-in's progress bar (optional) and finding out the number of screens for correct coordinates.

macOS only: The macOS standard tool "sudo" is used for some system calls. You may need to disable sudo plug-ins, if they cause problems with Perfect Layout's sudo calls.

Windows only: Powershell, WMIC, cmd and curl must be installed (it is installed by default on Windows unless the user has removed it manually)

macOS only: The macOS Bash system must be available together with the tools curl, defaults, sudo, echo and osascript. They are available in macOS by default.

The faster the processor speed, the faster the plug-in (see this comparison). The plug-in is single-threaded, so multiple cores do not speed up the processing.

Data Privacy: For the activation and license validation of the software some data will be stored on our servers. For more info read Data Privacy at Elbsound.studio and the EULA