On 27 Jun 2004 at 2:13, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > In a message dated 6/26/2004 6:23:22 PM Pacific Daylight Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > "See, folks! You've scared away another customer and warmed the > hearts of Sibelius users! I wonder if some of these posts are from > spies!" > > Oh please, Hal--I hope you're joking. Some of the most devasating > critiques have come from long-time hard-core list members like Darcy > Argue and David Fenton.
And I'm not wishing for Finale's failure. I want it to succeed. And that's precisely why I think people should withhold their upgrade dollars if they don't think they are going to get something that's worth paying for. As to Sibelius, I tried the demo. It's very difficult, given the inability to save a file, to tell from the demo how usable Sibelius is or not. One can't really tell what it's like to work on it on a project of any length. What I did find was that in comparison to Finale, the step time entry is very, very poor (it reacts much too slowly to be fast), but that it wouldn't be disastrous. I also didn't much like the UI, but part of it is that the demo doesn't come with sufficient documentation to explain how to do much of anything. If you like the default results, well, you'll be happy. I *hated* the default layout, for the same reason I hate Finale's default templates -- everything is much, much too large. I was never able to figure out after entry was done how to reduce the size of systems. But I don't feel like I've gotten much of a feel for Sibelius. I really don't think the Sibelius demo is very good at all in helping a user understand what it does and doesn't do. It would be much better if it would limit you to saving a single page, rather than allowing you to save nothing at all. So, I'm not jumping ship. But it wasn't the horrid experience I was expecting. Aside from size, I thought the default layout settings were just fine and dandy. And I really think the idea of house styles is first-rate. All that said, the Finale programmers' feet need to be held to the fire. And the threat of not purchasing an upgrade is the only real leverage any individual user has. -- 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
