David, points well taken, but I use the term integration as the ability to make the programs inside a package communicate seamlessly. And, though it's not integration at the level you understand it must be, Microsoft has achieved seamless communication between all of the programs inside Office. And that they did during the early nineties when I already (back in college) could comfortably embed data from Excel into Word and vice versa. Excel was at its version 3 but Word's version I don't remember, and they were running on Win3.11, that dreadful so called OS which became Win95 with a new interface (well, and more, let's be fair). However, Win2000 was a quantum leap and I even liked to administer it and its server. Yeah, the Directory had its issues and 2003's is much better.
Linux: I am talking about the enormous progress that it has made in the past 2-3 years. Surely, it won't take the desktop environment by storm, but a serious contender it is in that it's much cheaper than Windows, especially with Vista's price tag of $299. A desktop OS for $299? I'll be seriously thinking about going Linux SHOULD more software be available, and that's the crux of the paradigm, more software because it's still a struggle to find it without being under constant development and versions at say .56 But, then again, I don't want to steer away from our main purpose: discuss music software. John. On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:55:52 -0400 "David W. Fenton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 5 Oct 2006 at 22:10, John T Sylvanis wrote: > > > I think integration will happen because the market will > > mature one day and then someone will HAVE to make a move to > entice > > people to buy the product of their new, epochal, idea which has > been > > done by Microsoft 20 years before > > You keep citing Microsoft as an example of "integration." > > But that is simply not correct in anything except a superficial > level. > > Word does not include Excel's capabilities. All it allows is the > embedding of an Excel spreadsheet into a Word document. > > The analogy to a notation package and a sequencer is unclear. Finale > > does not store its data as MIDI, so you couldn't just embed an > existing sequencer into Finale. No sequencer I know of reads Finale > > data files, so that's not going to work, either. > > What you're asking for is not integration on the MS model, but the > incorporation of a whole set of features into Finale that don't fit > > very well with what Finale is. > > I think limited sequencing capability in the service of producing > good playback is a good thing in Finale. A full-fledged sequencer, > however, makes no sense to me, as that's not the purpose of Finale. > > Now, if Finale teamed with the maker of a sequencer such that the > sequencer's output could be imported into Finale without the current > > problems of MIDI import, such that it would be painless to open the > > sequencer file and convert it to printed notation, that would be > quite wonderful. But I don't think it would be a MIDI file that > would > be used, as that's inherently too ambiguous to give good results. > > Indeed, I don't see how a sequencer could ever produce data that's > unambiguous for a notation package without there being some kind of > > notational representation within the sequencer -- after all, MIDI > doesn't specify flat or sharp. > > For my purposes, a few well-chosen revisions and additions to the > current Finale MIDI tools (including a modern UI) would be all > that's > necessary to give me what's needed to create the playback I need. I > > wonder if there is a large enough audience of Finale users who'd > benefit from such innovations to make it worth the effort of the > programmers. > > And I also don't think the number of people who work first from a > sequencer is going to place that high a value on Finale's notational > > capabilities to justify the programming investment to attract their > > interest. > > In an ideal world, sure, I'd love a fully integrated sequencer in > Finale, or, even, hooks between an existing sequencer and Finale so > > that Finale used the sequencer for editing MIDI data and the > sequencer used Finale for notational output. > > But in the real world, I don't don't think MakeMusic has the capital > > to do that. Whether or not Sibelius does is an open question. > > -- > David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com > David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
