ER @ HOME wrote:
Hello,
I'm soliciting advice and input regarding making the "BIG" Switch from
FinMAC 2002/'03 to Sibelius 3.1 (OS X). I'm an expert user of Finale (up and
running since the infamous US$1000.00 version 1.0) and am able to work
very quickly and efficiently in FinMAC 2002/Mac OS 9.2.2.
One thing to keep in mind in making the switch to Sibelius that I do not
see that others have mentioned is the control you give up over your
data. When I considered switching seriously a couple of months ago, I
decided against it, mainly because with Finale you have the option of
saving your files in a format that is readable by other systems. That
is, if you save as ~.ETF files, the details of the ~.ETF format are
public, so that it is possible to your ~.ETF files with Sibelius, or
Lilypond, and perhaps others. Sibelius has no similar capability, that
is, it neither writes files in ~.ETF format, nor any other format with a
publicly published data file format. And since the data file format is
a proprietary trade secret, you may not legally, in the U.S., anyway,
reverse engineer the data file format so you can extract the data
yourself, should Sibelius fail, or decide to start charging a license
fee for the file formats.
ns
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
