I'm afraid I must disagree. First, Microsoft is not a good example of a company that tries to make life easy for its customers. But even in the case of Microsoft, they have usually provided SaveAs filters that allow you to save a new document in many of the older, more broadly compatible formats. Considering that Coda wants to see Finale used widely across large universities, and across the professional publishing community, it is absolutely astounding that they are building these architectural boundaries. "Dumb" is probably a better word for it.
Beyond all that, the argument that the file format must become incompatible to accommodate new features does not hold water. Programmers have been designing "extensible" file structures for about 40 years now -- structures that can accommodate future changes without rendering the earlier software unusable. It really isn't too much to ask. Sounds like a good reason to stick with an earlier version until they figure out how to do this properly. Craig At 12:38 PM 6/16/2002 +0200, Jari Williamsson wrote: >Eric Dannewitz writes: > > > I am wondering WHY Coda keeps changing the file format. > >Well, the file "format" is the same, but not the version of the file format. > > > Seems like nothing major changed in 2003. > >There are major changes. Do a tour around the Staff Attributes dialog >boxes. There are many changes there that wouldn't be compatible with >Fin2002 - not just the TAB support, but more importantly things such as >the new stem/beam features. > > > Not even Microsoft changes file formats. > >Mainly because they don't add features to the file format any more. New >Word versions only provide "easier" and "more efficient" ways to achieve >things. They did change file formats in earlier versions of Word. >Also, you can't compare Microsoft with any of the notation software >companies. The development resources (and user base) that MS have is >_huge_ compared to any notation product. > > > I can compose something on my Windows Office XP and load it into Office > > 2001 for mac, and save it, then open it in Windows XP again. > > > > Any insight into this? Is a MIDI file the only resort? > >MusicXML will provide a much better conversion result! You got Dolet >Light with your Finale 2003 for Windows. Save a score to MusicXML and >import it to Dolet again to get an impression of how it works. Dolet is not >yet available for the Mac, so you need to convert the MusicXML file to >Finale 2002 for Windows before you send it to the Mac. > >I agree with you that the version issue in Finale is an obstacle when >sharing files between different Finale users. FWIW, I have a feeling that >this might be much easier in the future. > > >Best regards, > >Jari Williamsson >ICQ #: 78036563 > >_______________________________________________ >Finale mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
