John Greschak - Finale Suggestion 339: Allow Plug-ins to Attach Auxiliary Data to Finale Objects

No. 339

Allow Plug-ins to Attach Auxiliary Data to Finale Objects

IWBNI it were possible for third-party plug-ins to attach auxiliary data to Finale objects. As it is now, this is not possible.

This feature would allow plug-ins to extend the existing data structures of Finale and as a result provide more powerful functionality. For example, with this feature a plug-in could do the following:

Attach a beam-over-barline flag to records of type EXENTRY that are used to store the beaming settings of the Edit Frame dialog box for a given entry.

Attach a page-break flag to records of type EDTMeasureSpec that are used to store the settings of the Measure Attributes dialog box for a given measure.

Attach MIDI performance data to records of type EDTArticulationDefinition that are used to store the settings of the Articulation Designer dialog box for a given articulation.

Such attached information would be saved to Finale MUS and ETF files and could be recalled by a plug-in in another session to be used as needed.

The System Exclusive data format defined in the MIDI specification could serve as a model. Auxiliary data records could include a manufacturer's ID code that would identify the third-party plug-in developer with which the data is associated.

Created: February 21, 2000
Last Updated: February 21, 2000
Version: Finale 2000b