dc wrote:
Robert Patterson écrit:
The whole point being to try to make a dent in Sibelius sales. I.e.,
new customers.
And what if they end up making a dent in their own sales? With more
users switching to Sibelius? I must confess that I'm very tempted to put
my 100 bucks towards a cross-grade (how much does it cost?). Not only
they won't fix the bugs, they won't even acknowledge them, and that
really gets very tiring.
The cross grade is $199, and then you'd have to buy the Dolet plug-in
for Finale to be able to get the most transparent transfer of files from
Finale into Sibelius. They've pretty much abandoned the "import of
Finale files" feature since Finale keeps changing their file format and
not releasing the file format data, and Finale includes an elementary
MusicXML export function. Sibelius has an Import MusicXML feature, so
that makes file transfer easier, but the full Dolet for Finale will do a
better job (and can do batch processing, I believe -- check out the
Recordare website to verify that before purchasing), should you want to
make the jump to Sibelius.
With the new Panorama view in Sibelius and the increased adjustability
of things, it may go far to pleasing unhappy Finale users.
Since I don't have either Finale2008 or Sib5 yet, I can't compare other
than to say that the list of things fixed and added to Sib5 is vastly
more impressive than Finale2008's list. At least I finally got a
tracking number for Fin2008 so I'll be able to see how things work and
whether the ongoing bugs will be a problem for me. So far the major
complaints haven't affected me (any lyric usage I've had to do in
Fin2007 hasn't involved melismas so the hyphen bug hasn't struck and I
rarely use the 9 key to flip enharmonics in Speedy, preferring to delete
one spelling and enter the correct spelling).
Sibelius' ability to "save as version ..." allowing someone using
version 5 to share a file with someone using version 2, who can do full
edits to what shows up on the computer screen and send it back to the
version 5 user makes it much more user-friendly than Finale, where both
users have to be on the same version (or use the full Dolet plug-in at
an extra cost for easiest/best MusicXML transfer) for full interchange
of files in both directions.
Of course, Sibelius is now owned by Avid, which is a major player in
computer music and audio software and hardware, so there is definitely a
major corporation's protection and resources as well as a major
corporation's commitment to keep Sibelius going. With Finale we have
MakeMusic whose only other major product seems to be SmartMusic
Accompaniment stuff, and from complaints posted on this list over the
past few weeks, they don't seem to be supporting that any better than
they are supporting Finale.
It is hardly encouraging as we look into the future and try to see what
sort of future upgrades we'll get for our beloved Finale. Will there
ever be a "Linked Score/Parts v2?" Or will it continue to be "Linked
Score/Parts v1.1" and then "v1.1.1" with tiny improvements but no real
attention paid to the issues which make many Finale2007 users still have
to maintain two separate files, one for the score and one for the parts.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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