uh... warning, fill your coffee mug to the brim.
From: "David W. Fenton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Score (like Finale and possibly like Sibelius)
has a community of plugin developmers? Score
(like Finale) has a public plugin development
API?
i'm not a programmer: i don't completely
understand the distinction between a programme
and a plugin, both for me are simply tools (of
varying complexity) that are external to the
built-in functionality of the programme, this is
what i was referring to, sorry if it was unclear.
The shortcomings I was referring to were UI and
basic structural problems (like being entirely
page-based, tied to a single font and having no
capability for printing to anything but
Postscript printers).
true. there are a few choices for text fonts
however. for most users this is not an issue
either, the average users of finale/sibelius only
use times new roman (jazz scores excepted of
course) or bookman/palatino. for me this
limitation is a serious problem, because i have
developed my own fonts for most graphic
notational details. i have to admit though, the
dynamics in score, which are vector diagrammes
rather than fonts (!), look wonderful. they
have an elegance of character that possibly no
digital font used in finale/sibelius is capable
of emulating.
But the UI is so horrid, almost lacking entirely.
yes, of course. the windows emulation is unusable for proofing.
Last time I heard, the only MIDI interface was an add-on (for MIDI
keyboard input) and didn't work very well. Of course, last I heard
anything about Score was 10 or 15 years ago.
yeah MIDI is seriously problematic; however, the
programme is not built - or seen as by its users
- as a compositional assistant. the people i
spoke with all consider the composing of the
piece to be the job of the composer, not of the
person doing the score. i have to admit i
totally agree with this: despite my knowledge of
finale and familiarity woith working on a
computer, i actually compose on paper, and enter
the score when i can no longer read through the
layers of information on the MS. at least two
similar editing stages usually follow.
certainly this process would be a nightmare in
score because of how it deals with layout, but i
am still able to make a totally clean readable
hand-written score without recourse to a computer
when needed. so i would be able to, if i had to,
prepare a "finished" MS for the person (me)
preparing the score, in score.
Score has always been good, especially with drawing slurs and ties.
except that they are ALWAYS symmetrical, whcih is
much more of a problem with the kinds of
notational situations i come across than
traditional (or pop or film) music.
> there are a number of similar examples...
virtually everything i saw today (and most of the work i have done as
well) could be done on any of the three programmes to the same level
of quality - if you have the eye and patience for it. however, because
of the differences in the various programmes, certain tasks take far
more time to do in one or another programme.
Specifics on that would be interesting.
text on an angle is a joke in score and will
always remain exactly as you position it.
anything with heavy graphics can typically be
best done in score, somewhat better in sibelius,
and only with much cussing in finale.
in sibelius and score you have to have enough
staves for all situations which will occur in
each instrumental group: vln I using 1 stave
(tutti), 2 or 3 stave divisi, solo vlnI staff,
gli altri staff... so far that's 8 staves, and
you don't even want to know what that means for
compiling parts in score... finale + TGTools
deals with this excellently (if not perfectly),
because you can redefine each staff/group bracket
on an individual basis. in score, the staves
are considered numbers (001 from the bottom staff
up in each document), and the text at the
beginning of the staff is only a text element.
you can't change the vertical order or the
horizontal positioning of the articulations in
sibelius, so when you need such things, you have
to define them in a different category - symbols
(but of course!).
dynamic/text placement is fabulous (not perfect,
but really great) in finale since the massive
upgrade of the text expression tool and
transposing more or less works (you still have to
adjust hairpins in such cases); in sibelius the
texts are placed horizontally according to the
metrical position in the measure and vertically
according to the staff, not the note. so after
transposing more adjustments are necessary in
sibelius than in finale.
you can't reorder the articulations in the
sibelius toolpad, and there are a limited number
of articulations (as well as some other
elements), so you have to define extra
artculations as symbols (which of course react
differently than articulations).
sibelius automatically changes the beam height
when tremoli are added (but it seems you can't
change the tremolo symbol or the font used for
it... i'm presently looking into this if anyone
has the answer).
sibelius has house styles; you can copy and
transfer setting in finale; score is totally
definable, and you can search and replace text
(code) for some changes... not all.
setting different staff types, clefs notehead
types for individual notes takes seconds in
score, since everything is considered on an X-Y
grid. try setting 8 different and
non-overlapping staff styles in a single measure
in finale and you're bound to strangle your
goldfish. yeah of course, partial measures blah
blah blah, you can do it to some extent, but
there are situations which you cannot resolve,
but i've never been able to figure out exactly
why to report it.
etc.
... it's not possible to be a casual Score user.
It's just got no obvious user interface. You've
got to know the keyboard shortcuts and how they
interact with the mouse clicks or you'll never
get anywhere. And you've got to know how to lay
out the score before you start.
for all but your last comment, i think this is
also true of anyone who wants to work efficiently
with finale/sibelius. i use mouse-click for
menus as little as possible, preferring key
combos built into the OS, the programme and iKeys.
> because of the nature of the programme (especially before the update
in 1999) it would have been necessary to actually know something about
> engraving traditions...
Do you see these as drawbacks to Finale and Sibelius? I don't.
simply pointing out differences.
>and since finale is not developed by musicians...
sorry, poorly-phrased. although musicians may be
involved in the development of the programme, and
persons may be consulted who are musicians, and
people on this list have also certainly had
modest to moderate impact on development
decisions, "musicians" are not those who make the
PRIMARY decisions about the development of finale.
In other words, a 200-year-old tradition that doesn't reflect the
capabilities the computer brings to the process.
well, the other side of this is that a lot was
lost in the early years of computer engraving
that finale and sibelius are still catching up
on, but was implemented in score right from the
start. typographical control for one, quality
output is another. and many of the plugins
developed for finale simply hide its
insufficiencies to create output which reflects,
respects and possibly builds upon this 200-year
old tradition.
have you noticed how many errors there are in the
instrument.txt file? most users wouldn't notice,
but the kinds of errors this introduces wouldn't
happen (or at least only rarely) with score
users' output.
> i.e. the goal has
always been high-quality publishing level output (judged by existing
plate-publishing standards). the thinking in score reflects this
almost exactly, yes the entire layout has to be planned in advance, as
was the case with plate engraving.
And that means the spacing algorithms don't have to calculate certain
kinds of things because the engraver does that calculating.
yeah, based on standards and individual decisions
informed by contextual understanding of notation,
engraving and graphic design. again, PIs have
been developed to begin to gain back what was
lost in this area, but the users are not gaining
the knowledge that is part of this tradition,
they are gaining tools that allow them to fake
it. however, this is another discussion...
Why is it that everyone assumes the purchase of Sibelius by another
company means that Sibelius will be weakened? Isn't there a certain
synergy involved there? Why would a company purchase Sibelius and
then kill it off?
the brothers apparently (a colleague of mine
follows the forum quite closely) had very strange
reactions on the sibelius forum that have made a
number of its users wary. the buy-out was
initially pumped as a partnership... which it
certainly isn't. also they claimed taht the
next version will not be affected by the
"merger"... well of course not, because the next
version is already more than half-ready probably.
not a word from the brothers on how the "merger"
will affect the next 2, 3, 5 versions, they
haven't even responded to such questions.
could be a marketing issue (i'm no economist
either, you should see the shirts i wear!).
company X buys out Y because (and only when) Y
has become a more or less "mature" player; X
doesn't really have to invest in the difficult
and costly stages of development, but simply need
to assure a VERY minimal amount of maintenance
and "improvements" of Y's products and rely on
their own (X's) massive marketing capacity to
assure continuous and increasing income from the
buyout.
i too like to maintain belief in the goodwill of
humanity, but come on, seriously, no buyout of
this sort has the good of the user community
anywhere near its top priorities.
Score has no future. It could very easily be
completely broken by a shift in the support for
old-fashioned graphics (it's a DOS program,
after all, and assumes direct hardware access).
i'm not sure what you mean here, i have no
understanding of DOS or of programming. there
is a guy who might be the person to take on score
in the future... it is an open question at the
moment; based on discussions with users of score
i would not be so arrogant as to suggest it has
"no future".
Finale has improved in so many of the ways that
bothered me, and because Finale remains a viable
program. That can't be said for Score, seems to
me.
like i said, the programme itself seems to have
already been complete enough for its users that
an update of the programme itself was not
*urgent*, given the programmes developed to
assist it.
Score is never going to be released as a Windows program.
Ever.
i respect your knowledge of and experiences with
PC, david, but seriously think you're wrong on
this one. of course time willl tell.
--
From: dc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
How did you recognize the different examples? Besides the fonts, of course.
I've often tried to find out from Score users what was so much better, and
never got any precise answers.
yeah sometimes it was the fonts, but also
specific things that if i had the choice i
wouldn't even attempt in finale. one example was
an exact retrograde of itself, graphically as
well as musically, including the copyright and
title texts. certainly you could use finale +
illustrator or pagemaker for such things, but
after knowing a bit about score (before this guy
showed me the programme in use) i was sure it was
a breeze in score.
other cases based on some of the things i
mentioned above. also the "look" was in some
cases an indication, although the scores were in
general all quite good. and of course the
examples were in a lovely leather-bound book to
show off their best work. lesser quality
examples might have been more indicative, i'm not
sure.
You say the spacing is "much more
sophisticated", but what do you mean by that? What can you do in Score,
spacing-wise, that you can't do in Finale? I had a friend who used both for
professional engraving, and the only thing I ever got out of her was that
she preferred Score's "algorithms" (?).
sure you can tweak the finale beat charts all you
want and can spend hours getting it "just right",
whereas in score you would type in a few values
and move to the next bar. the reason is very
simple really, you will never get the precision
(except by accident) with a mouse and finale's
beat charts that is possible in score, because
you enter the proportional values yourself for
each individual note. admittedly it is hard to
explain, but when you see a number of scores on
the same format and quality of paper and compare
them, the score examples are slightly more
convincing, more elegant and delicate than finale
or sibelius.
(For a professional use, the time factor is also important, though you
don't mention it. How does Score compare to Finale in this regard, for
someone who knows the software of course?)
again, it is totally dependent on the job and the
notational specificities of the work.
i am interested in always improving my work, and
there are limitations to what finale allows me to
do with ease. the higher quality of output
(whcih is dependent of course on the person doing
the score) possible in score - as i see it - was
the incentive for me to seriously consider
abandoning finale. but i was told you can get a
water bottle with an upgrade as a prize for
suffering through finale's incompetences, so i
decided to stay the night.
--
From: Christopher Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Some things Finale doesn't do well in spacing: when there is a large
interval, or when the stems change direction,
yes and check out cross staff notes with the beam in between. barf-o-rama.
Also the way spacing changes when there are
accidentals - Finale doesn't do TOO
badly,
uh... sorry. can you repeat that!?
Perhaps someone with a fine engraver's eye will make a "Score spacing
plugin" one day, kind of like Patterson Beams. But I bet all the
engravers will STILL tweak the results!
yeah possibly, but given the cludgy nature of
doing it in finale, there is a significant
difference in having to do 400 edits in a score
to the spacing and having to do 30 or 50. oh
yeah and then again in the orchestral parts...
(yeah yeah usually different spacing situations,
but not an insignificant point)
--
shirling & neueweise ... new music publishers
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :.../ http://newmusicnotation.com
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
