I can second the recommendation to look into Harmony Assistant. While it
is not as flexible with regard to graphic editing and output as one would
like to be, it is a very interest environment in which to produce music,
and is, perhaps, the shape of things to come in a future generaiton of
programs.
Further encouraging some diversity in our field, may I note two
less-expensive programs: Lime ($65) can handle most small projects and
has a few interesting built-in features, for example a tuning table,
defining a pitch bend for each of 35 combinations of notes and accidental,
and also a really easy way to do non-alligned measures -- perfect for
Ockeghem. Turandot ($165) is a nice little program made in Hungary with
output rather close to that of the Editio Musica Budapest (wouldn't it be
great -- if only to avoid software monocultures -- if every country had
their own viable notation program?) and extremely robust if limited in
features. Turandot got off to a bad start due to legal threats from
another notation program, but it has an easy-to-use interface and should
be able to meet most non-professional requirements.
If the user does not require playback, then the free and open source
Lilypond is useful for more modest and conservative notation projects. If
the user is in Linux, then coupling (also free and open source) Rosegarden
with Lilypond is a possibility, but again best for more modest and
conservative projects.
Daniel Wolf
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