Effect descriptions in English and other languages often employ the terms And, + and & to mean the same thing, as in "Red And Blue Peony" and "Red & Blue Peony" and "Red + Blue Peony". Making matters more complicated, in some languages With means the the same thing as And, as in "Red Peony And Tail" in comparison to "Red Peony With Tail". In VDL, however, these terms have different meanings, making it possible to interpret complex effect descriptions that use multiple colors and multiple effects unambiguously.   Table 1 – Conjunctions that sound alike, but are different in VDL Term Meaning Example And Not a VDL term + Combines shots of a cake, candle or chain Red Comet + Gold Comet Cake & Combines colors that are part of the same multi-color effect Red & Blue Peony With Combines an effect with a mine, petal, tail, or other stars mixed in Gold Comet With Red Mine   The first question people ask is: Why is And not a VDL term? The second question they ask is: If effect descriptions in my inventory use the term And anyway, what happens? Ironically, the reason And is not in VDL is precisely to make sure the right thing happens if you use the term in your inventory. VDL is designed to encompass existing effect inventories, to make their meanings explicit, and to enable people to adjust their descriptions when necessary to get the exact meaning they want. The problem with And is that it is used pervasively in existing effect inventories, with different meanings. Thus, if VDL chose any specific meaning for And, that meaning would be the wrong interpretation for a lot of effects in people's inventories. By leaving And out of VDL, the designers of VDL sought to give more latitude to software programs that interpret effect descriptions to create simulations automatically. If And had a defined meaning in VDL, then software programs would be forced to create simulations according to that specific meaning (even if it is obviously wrong). If And is not part of VDL, then software programs are free to determine the best interpretation for it based on the other terms in the effect description. Software programs can usually guess right, which is a better outcome than necessarily being wrong for one set of effects or another. So, if your effect descriptions use the word And, that's probably just fine. Software programs will interpret And as + or & or With, as smartly as possible. If you don't like the result, then change the word And to one of the other three, which all have defined meanings. The two symbols + and & are easy to differentiate.  The + symbol combines effect descriptions for shots of a cake, candle, or chain in circumstances in which the item's shots are not all the same.  Here are some examples, 20 Shot Red Peony + Blue Peony Cake Red + White + Blue Chain Of 6 8 Shot Red Comet + Blue Comet Roman Candle All three of these examples have multiple shots that are not all the same.  The cake in the first example has two kinds of shots: Red Peony, and Blue Peony.  This cake description doesn't specify how many of the 20 shots are red peonies versus how many are blue, nor does it specify the firing order, but it does make clear: The cake shots are one color or the other.  (See articles on cake effect descriptions for instructions to specify the firing order, timing, etc., in effect descriptions). The ampersand symbol & in VDL combines the colors of a multi-color effect.  Compare the chain example above with this chain: Red & White & Blue Chain Of 6 Can you see the difference?  In this effect description that uses ampersands, the chain has six identical shells, each one of them a multi-color shell with stars of three colors. The term With in VDL combines an effect with an additional mine, petal, tail, or other stars mixed in, as in these examples: Gold Comet With Blue Mine Gold Palm With Red Ring Gold Kamuro With Tail Gold Chrysanthemum With Blue If the With-phrase includes the term Mine or Bouquet, then it adds a mine to the original effect, usually representing a shot consisting of lose mine stars underneath one or more shells or bombettes that are lifted together. If the With-phrase includes a term that defines a flower or shape (e.g., Palm, Ring, etc.), then the phrase adds a petal to the original effect. If the With-phrase just describes characteristics of a star, then it indicates the original effect includes stars of that description, mixed in with the other stars.

For aerial shells, the prefire time defines the lift time of the shell if the prefire >= 0.5.  The prefire of cakes applies to the first shot of the cake (details here).   If prefire is < 0.5, then it defines the "delay before simulation," making the launches occur a fraction of a second later than the ignition time.   Cakes of comets or other ground effects will generally have a prefire < 0.5, but cakes of shells will generally have a prefire equal to the lift time of the first shell.  Since changing the prefire of a cake of aerial shells to any value >= 0.5 changes the lift time of its first effect, some people ask, "How can I create a cake of aerial shells with a prefire that I specify without affecting the lift times?".   Would prefire < 0.5 work? (EASIEST ANSWER) Prefire values < 0.5 do not affect the lift time of the shell, so if you want to change the prefire to a small value, you don't need to worry.  A prefire < 0.5 results in "normal" lift times and a firing pattern for the cake that begins after a small delay (the prefire) from when the cake is ignited.   Add LFT to fix the lift time after setting prefire >= 0.5 (GOOD ANSWER) Prefire values >= 0.5 define the lift time of the first shell, but if that's not what you want you can explicitly specify the lift time of the first shell in the cake or any other shell in the cake (or any shell, actually) by adding LFT to the cake's VDL, as in, 1" 2.0s 10 Shot 1.75 PFT FNR Cake Blue Peony 1.50 LFT Since the prefire of this cake > 0.5, it would specify the lift time of the first effect in the cake (the Blue Peony), but that effect includes the LFT term to specify its lift time explicitly, which takes precedence.  So in this example, the prefire does not affect the simulation at all.  So why would you care about the prefire?   Notwithstanding the simulation, the prefire determines the delay between the firing system's ignition time and the "effect time" that the choreographer synchronizes to the music, represented by the little blip on the timeline bar.  In this example, the choreographer might want to synchronize to a time point a little after the break of the first shell, giving the stars a chance to blossom.  By setting the prefire time to 0.25 seconds after the actual lift delay of the shell, the choreographer gives his shells more time to develop.   Would the "Delay Default" field work instead? (SOMETIMES THE RIGHT ANSWER) If your reason for setting the prefire to a value that does not correspond to the shell's lift time is that you have a long fuse in front of the device, like for example a Pyro-Clock fuse or a Visco fuse on a cake, then the "Delay Default" field in Finale 3D may be better suited to your purpose than "Prefire". The Delay Default field in Finale 3D is an external delay between the ignition of the e-match and the ignition of the effect.  The column is normally hidden in the effects window and the script, so click the blue gear menu in the upper right of those windows to unhide it.  In the effects window, the column is called "Delay Default" whereas in the script window it is called "Delay" (the internal column name in the script window is "externalDelay").  The reason it is called "Delay Default" in the effects view is that when you insert an effect the "Delay Default" is copied by value into the script's "Delay" field.  Once it is copied into the script, you can edit the Delay in the script on a row-by-row basis, as you might need to do if you were adjusting the length of the delay fuses on an item by item basis in the physical world.  Thus the "Delay" in the script can be different for different occurrences of the same effect.