David W. Fenton wrote:
$On 15 Oct 2007 at 15:21, dhbailey wrote:
Any combination of computer keyboard, mouse and midi-keyboard is
possible in Sibelius, just as in Finale. The one control which Sibelius
lacks that Finale has is the ability to use the up/down cursor keys to
place the pitch. And if that's a deal-breaker for somebody, that's
fine, there's no reason to switch. I certainly won't try to tell
anybody they should move to Sibelius. I will say that using a midi
keyboard along with the numpad layouts in Sibelius, I was amazed to find
that I am as fast at entering music in Sibelius as I am using Speedy
Entry in Finale, and far faster than I have ever been able to be using
Simple Entry in Finale.
My problem with the Sibelius approach is the assumption behind its
design that you will put all attributes of a note on it during the
initial entry step. I deduce that this is the assumption because it's
much more difficult to apply articulations and expressions and the
like in Sibelius after note entry than it is in Finale.
I don't find that at all in Sibelius. I have an easy time applying
articulations after the fact. My work flow in Sibelius is very much
like my work-flow in Finale always has been:
enter the notes
map out the road-map (repeats, DC, DS, Coda) -- occasionally I'll do
that first so I'll have all the measures ready to fill up. I do that
the same in both Finale and Sibelius.
enter the articulations
enter the dynamics and tempos and other expressions
I am very fast in Finale with Speedy and the Midi keyboard getting
the notes and rhythms in. I then go back and add everything else in
one pass. I tried this approach in Sib4 and found it involved a whole
helluva lot of mousing and switching keypad layouts, as opposed to
Finale where the only switching was between tools, and everything
else was with metatools (well, most everything).
Am I missing something about Sibelius?
Or is this yet another case of the abominable practice of designing a
UI on the assumption that your users will use a macro program to
create their own shortcuts?
A Macro program isn't necessary with Sibelius -- everything can be
assigned within the program itself, using the alphanumeric keys in
combination with shift or alt or ctrl (or any combination of the three
modifier keys).
You want a metatool to put staccatos? program ctrl-shft-. You want to
apply staccato to non-continuous notes in Sibelius? ctrl-click the
notes you want and then either use the numpad key or your pre-defined
shortcut and you have them all in place, something Finale can't do.
One thing that Sibelius offers that Finale doesn't is this ability to
completely define the keyboard so you can have all the shortcuts where
you want them. And with the whole alphanumeric keyboard (including the
punctuation keys) plus the modifier keys (7 different combinations of
those) gives you a whole lot of "metatools."
There's a long-time Sibelius user on that list who has reprogrammed ALL
the numpad keys to the alphanumeric keyboard so he never has to deal
with paging through the numpad palettes.
How many times on this list have people complained about not being able
to program their own shortcuts in Finale and how many have had to resort
to external macro programs? Like Sibelius or hate it, this ability to
reprogram so many of the keystrokes means that even though the UI was
designed with one particular keyboard approach, it is by no means etched
in stone like so much of Finale is. Look in Sibelius under
File/Preferences on the Menus and Shortcuts tab and see all that can be
personalized.
I'd love to see a similar customization functionality built into Finale.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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