On 7 Jul 2005 at 22:57, Richard Smith wrote: > May I, as a longtime Finale user (begining with v.2) who now uses > mostly Sibelius (although I have Finale 2005), respond to this post. > > The reason you can't get Sibelius to work easily is probably because > you expect it to act like Finale. It is different. For instance, there > is no "speedy entry" (although you can make it work similarly) but > there are a variety of very direct keyboard and midi methods of data > entry that are more effective in Sibelius. > > A good approach for Sibelius is enter the music once, then copy, > paste, and edit. It's very quick and, often, midi is not needed to > work very quickly. Sibelius copies much more easily than Finale. Paste > can be reduced to highlight, point, press the middle mouse button > (sorry mac users). No little truck!
I had no real difficulties with note entry. It was the application of articulations/expressions that I found difficult, because of the palette-based approach, which I dislike intensely as a user interface. It's the kind of thing that is easy to figure out, but not easy to use in the long run. "Easy to learn" and "easy to use" are often mutually contradictory goals in user interface design, and for music entry, If found that Sibelius was biased so much towards "easy to learn" that it made using it once you'd learn painful and slow. > When I started on Sibelius (after years on Finale), I felt clumsy. > Now, after 6 years of working with Sibelius, Finale is awkard for me. > They are just different. You may not want to learn Sibelius. That's > OK. But Sibelius will work extremely well if you don't try to make it > act like Finale. I understand all of that, but the problem is the claim that the Sibelius UI is intuitive. It isn't -- it's got just as many "secrets" as Finale. And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): 1. change the page percentage OR 2. change the system percentage The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. -- 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
