On Jan 6, 2006, at 6:59 PM, Owain Sutton wrote:
Christopher Smith wrote:
Really, though, there IS a limit to how intuitive a complex program
like Finale could be.
Why?
No, I don't think it's an antagonistic comment. I think it's a valid
question. Music notation, while complex, isn't *that* complex. The
arrangement of the notation on the page, with as little effort as can
be achieved, is the difficult task. I don't see that there's an
obvious limit to how far this process can go.
If your comment was intended to say "there's a limit to how intuitive
an interface such as that of Finale can be", then that's a different
matter.
I honestly don't see the difference. Finale is one of the most powerful
notation programs on the planet, and its interface reflects that.
Balancing off getting things right without our input against giving us
the power to change things is VERY complex! Sibelius maybe takes things
out of our hands a bit more in return for a simpler interface (which I
don't think I could live with as easily) while Score, by all reports,
let you do almost ANYTHING while doing almost nothing for you, and was
beastly difficult to learn and use.
To use an example I gave in the original post - what is the most
"intuitive" keystroke for toggling between Page and Scroll View? To
answer my own question, there is none. That is one of the limits one
comes up against rather quickly.
Or my other example - Staff tool, Smart Shape tool and Speedy Entry -
all start with S, so which one gets assigned to the S key? Whoops! That
key is not available. Neither are the second letters. Maybe a bigger
keyboard...
Limits. Not much to do about some of them. They aren't brick walls
(which I think was your point) but there are diminishing returns.
Christopher
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