> The comparison does make me wonder though: Wouldn't a real comparison > where experts with each software work by strictly copying one or more > sources of real published music be long overdue? > > Some time ago (years I guess) we had this kind of thread as well, where > I believe Sibelius staged a kind of competition, but ended up with a > rather poor result for their own software and quickly withdrew the results. > > I'd volunteer to do this kind of competition, if it is limited to no > more than two or three pages.
The study was organized by Matanya Ophee of Orphee Editions ( www.orphee.com ) a historian, legendary curmudgeon and publisher of often gorgeous classical guitar music editions. It was well organized and included double-blind judges. The samples chosen were from the 'Golden Age' of European engraving and the task was to precisely emulate the originals. As I recall there were entries from all the major notation programs. Stanley Yates placed first with Finale, I was second with Finale (although mine was more accurate!), Graphire Music Press did well, Encore poorly and Score was about the worst. This last was Matanya's preferred and stoutly defended program and he withdrew the results of the study quickly. Although the study was generally well-designed, a glaring weakness was inability to control for both operator experience and time spent. I contended that it was possible to equal any output with the most elementary drawing program, if you wanted to do it one pixel at a time. It was actually quite fun to try to produce a counterfeit - all the way down to the flyspecks! - but it said little about comparative efficiency of different programs that all could do the basics. Richard Yates _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
