On 21 Jun 2004 at 7:10, dhbailey wrote: > Be forewarned, though, about Sibelius' claim to "import Finale files!" > > It requires you to save the Finale files in ETF, and it won't > recognize the most recent Finale versions at all. . . .
I can't really see either of those as grounds for criticism. ETF is a much easier format to parse, I'd think, then the binary format, and it's extremely easy to produce it. And it's unfair to expect them to be able to read versions of Finale's file format that came out after the release of Sibelius (or, realistically, even a short time before its release). > . . . And when it does > the importing, it loses a lot of the formatting, so that is evidence > that Sibelius, just like MakeMusic, makes wild claims that it can't > live up to. Well, there were a number of things wrong with the import, the absolute worst being that all the slurs that had not been edited came out as nearly flat lines. If that's not fixable by changing some global setting, then it's a major problem for importing. Of course, I'm not going to import. I'll keep Finale around for my Finale files. I'm looking for something to use in making new files. The first real frustration I had was that it interpreted the tempo wrong. I imported the file I've been working on with the tempo tool problem, and it's in 3/8, with the meter defined as 1 dotted quarter to the measure (I note that Sibelius implements beaming in exactly the way I proposed years ago on this list, as a map of how to beam each subdivision -- right away that saves me trouble in entry, assuming it does what it looks like it will do), but my initial tempo was 78 for the 8th. Sibelius plays at some arbitrarily chosen 67 to the dotted quarter, and other than dragging the slider during playback, I can't figure out any method for changing the initial tempo. Other things that would require workarounds was that my invisible layers put in for playback were displayed, but I can see it looks fairly easy to hide things. Some articulations didn't come through, and so forth, but it's not really too bad. I don't know if I can function editing in page view, as it never stays where I want it. Finale's "Igor" view is really the only way for inputting and editing music (though the ability to "focus" on one staff sort of makes up for it). Also, a demo that won't save anything is really pretty useless, though. One that would save one or two pages would be a lot better. It makes it pretty hard to investigate the program in any detail when you have to start from scratch every single time. The help file is pretty useless. I can't even figure out how to create a note with a trill on it. But I'm sure it's just because I haven't gone through the demo. I'll try inputting music from the MIDI keyboard later. But so far, other than the frustrations of not being able to find basic things just because I don't know the organization of the program, it looks pretty straightforward. I can definitely see why people who are just starting out would have an easier time with Sibelius than with Finale. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
