At 09:55 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote:
On 8 Jul 2005 at 18:16, Ken Durling wrote:
> At 12:39 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote:
> >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.
>
> Objection overruled. Don't blame Sibelius for what you don't know how
> to do. This is a very basic setting under Layout > Document Setup>
> Staff Size. I don't know Finale well enough to know exactly what is
> meant by "page percentage" but I suspect that it's under House Styles>
> Engraving Rules> Staves> Justify when ____% full? I could be wrong.
I posted about this later on. The UI for adjusting these things in
Sibelius is buried in dialog boxes, whereas the UI in Finale is based
on right clicking on things displayed onscreen, or dragging margin
lines, or by using one of the standard tools.
While the Finale methods have their drawbacks in terms of some loss
of precision if you only try to drag things around onscreen (instead
of using the tools that allow precise settings), in Sibelius, I could
see no way to visually see the settings I was changing, except to
visit a dialog box, make the changes and then close the dialog (yes,
one of the dialogs had a preview, but it was too small to be entirely
eliminate the need to close the dialog to see the results).
I also find simple page navigation very frustrating. How do I move
right in the page display? [typed later:] Well, I've discovered that
there are scrollbars that can be turned on (don't know why they're
off!) and that you can click on the navigation palette in a special
way to navigate from page to page, but this does not feel at all
comfortable to me. I cannot seem to position the view window
successfully where I want it. That is, I can't seem to figure out the
relationship of the position of the mouse click to where the view
window ends up.
I never use the navigation palette or the scroll bars. I'm entirely
comfortable with a combination of click and drag and page up/down.
I mucked around quite a while with a MusicXML imported file and there
were a whole host of problems in the conversion (I'm not blaming that
on Sibelius), and I had a devil of a time figuring out how to fix
them. Here's a couple:
1. the first time I imported, I let Sibelius choose the instruments.
It chose orchestral strings instead of the solo sounds. I never was
able to figure out how to change the playback to use solo string
patches instead of orchestral.
2. the piece being imported had independent key signatures, but only
in the final movement. The problem was that the key signature change
in the piano part for the second movement was missed (it's only the
piano that has independent time sigs). Now, I have no way of telling
if this is a MusicXML problem or not (the file won't re-import into
Finale, giving me a DTD error), but I don't really care about that.
My concern was with how to fix it. And because of Sibelius's page
view orientation, it was extremely hard for me to reliably select
measures to transpose.
3. the cello part had some sections in treble clef. I didn't expect
to get the right performance from a MusicXML import, but in giving a
look, I couldn't quite figure out how to get the treble clef passage
to play an octave below notated (it didn't come out right with an ETF
import, either).
4. playback was very annoying. I wanted the view to be 2-page view,
but every time I started playback, it switched back to 100% (or some
larger percentage), which made it very, very difficult to follow
playback. Ah -- I see there's a setting that was set to always play
back at 75%.
You can set this however you want it, even no zoom, where I have it set.
5. I tested their version of "Human Playback" and found that the
default settings were best (espressivo with basically no rubato). But
I don't like certain interpretations of how the shape of lines should
be interpreted, specifically, any time a line has a disjunction (say,
a leap up an octave) the first note after the leap is accented.
That's musically *awful* for just about any style I can think of.
If you look to Sibelius as a playback program, I think you're barking up
the wrong tree. And the above behavior sounds more like a problem with your
sound module than Sibelius - mine does no such accents on wide leaps. And
playback is what you're criticizing - at least many here are - Finale for
pursuing. It's a notation program. I am really pleased so much was
implemented in this upgrade that directly addresses engraving.
6. I also just tried ETF import, and it's not too bad, actually. But
now the tempo is wrong. For some reason the MusicXML import got the
right tempo, but ETF doesn't. I can't for the life of me figure out
where on the menus to go to change the playback tempo, or the
definition of the Allegro Vivace at the beginning (which is stuck at
H = 50, instead of H = 78 as in my original). OK, I've figured it out
that I can recreate my tempo marking as part of the Text Dictionary,
and I did that. But in creating it, I made the mistake of defining it
as Q = 78 (instead of half). Now I'm trying to edit it, and there
seems to be no way to change from quarter to half as the tempo pulse.
OK, so I'll double 78 and use 156. Well, I try selecting 78 and
typing over it -- no go. So I try backspacing. It deletes some of it,
but not all. It looks like the only way I can reliably change the
tempo is to use a spinner control! ACK!! That's HORRID user interface
design. But at least I was able to fix it. Yes, I had to use a method
of data input that I HATE using, and yes, I couldn't change the
quarter note to half note after the dictionary entry was created, but
I was able to get what I needed. Now that I know these things, it
shouldn't be a problem again, but why the UI is so NON-STANDARD, and
why something that was user-set in the first place should not be
editable, I can't say. None of these things look "intuitive" from
where I sit!
7. somehow the import got my Finale score (a piano quartet), which
had 3 systems per page, into 3 systems on the lefthand page and 1
system on the righthand page (with the exception of one page that has
four systems on it, vertically overlapping). Now, I understand that
these are import problems and I'm not going to blame Sibelius for
failing to get an ETF import perfect (though the logic of how it
could mess this up escapes me). I finally just removed all the
existing before-staff and after-staff spacing and let Sibelius space
the staves itself, and that was pretty much OK. I could work with it,
once I figured out how it's done.
8. responsiveness of the UI on my 500MHz P4 with 768MBs of RAM is
ABYSMAL. Everything is extremely slow. Playback in Sibelius's page
view gets way ahead of Sibelius's ability to redraw the screen.
Finale does a far better job of this (playback in page view). Also,
Finale is more intelligent about positioning the currently-playing
system, as well, so that I'm not constantly needing to scan around
the screen looking for where the playback point is currently.
I've never had a problem with screen redraw. My slowest machine is 866Mhz,
my fastest 3.2Ghz. Redraw is fine at 866, even for a full symphonic
score. (I've never heard of a P4 that slow. Are you sure it's not a
P3?) My 866 is. I don't know what caused this on your machine, but not
a complaint that's heard on the Sibelius list.
9. the playback controls are dreadful. I had a terrible time setting
the thing to start a point where I wanted to play from, because the
slider controls were too small, or because the incremental move
worked by beats instead of measures. Also, I could never get my tempo
markings to work correctly -- I thought I'd licked that one by
figuring out the dictionary thing, but I couldn't seem to make it
work consistently in all the ones I tried after the first successful
one.
I don't quite understand this complaint. Just click on a note where you
want it to start and hit either P or the space bar. (the same commands are
in most DAWs) Either the whole score, a single stave or any combination of
staves. It will start from that point. Thereafter P will return to
marker, and space will pause and resume. (This is new) You can enter a
metronome marking anywhere you want (Alt-C-X-M then right click) and as
many as you want and hide them if you really want to control
playback. Ctrl-right or left arrow will move you measure by measure where
plain arrow goes note to note - just like the old Wordstar command. Pretty
basic.
10. the automatic interpretation of repeats was pretty sad. In
several sections, it kept repeating the same section over and over
again (I have no idea why).
Again, without looking at specific contexts, I have no idea why - this is
not a common complaint.
Anyway, that's enough for now. Most of the notational aspects I could
probably figure out how to configure, but I find the user interface
is, overall, really poorly done, with lots of places where it's
extremely hard to find how to control things (they just aren't
located anywhere on any of the menus that would make sense to me).
Again, just because YOU can't find them doesn't mean they're poorly
done. Whoever expects to learn a complex program with an hour or two over
the demo? Have you ever gotten into Photoshop?? And Finale is notorious
for unintiutive UI. I find Sibelius far more intuitive, but I've also put
thousands of hours into it, just as you have into Finale. Calling Sib's UI
"really poorly done" smacks of gratuitous iconoclasm, I have to say. It's
clear that many disagree, even seasoned Finale users here.
Also, there seems to be very little in the way of context-sensitive
menus. I would expect that if I right click on a text expression I'd
get some shortcuts to commands that are specific to the type of
object I'm clicking on, but there's nothing there.
Try Ctrl/Alt - P for Properties. This used to be integral to the keypad,
but is now - since V.3 - separate.
In this respect, Finale is much better (though you have to be in the
right tool for it to work).
I'm less concerned about layout now than I am about things that I
just could not for the life of me figure out how to change. Layout I
could live with having it be a bit stricter than Finale's. But I felt
very restricted by the page layout view.
Did you try the various rulers in the View menu? There is a staff ruler
that might be closer to what you seek.
Learning the default and customizing keyboard shortcuts is one of the real
keys to Sibelius, and the manual has always emphasized this. Mouse
navigation and entry is far inferior.
Sib's UI is not dreadful Far from it. It works wonderfully and is very
flexible. But it takes tine to learn. I'm still trying to find time to
pursue finding my way around Finale better. Neither program is perfect,
and layout is one of the tougher issues in Sibelius. But I'm not going to
call either program awful because I just haven't learned how to use it! .
Ken
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