In a message dated 7/27/2010 10:00:45 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, _jphill...@makemusic.com_ (mailto:jphill...@makemusic.com) writes:
That was a change for easier full staff selection when dragging staves... Speaking of which (smile), can anybody here, or a MakeMusic rep monitoring this list, let me know (privately if you prefer) when or if Finale will make the big (and, I understand, difficult) leap to Unicode? Unless that happens soon, we'll have to change over production for our forthcoming college music theory textbook, Understanding Tonal Music, to Sibelius, which accommodates Unicode now. The TrueType versions of our ChordSymbol and JazzSymbol fonts afford distinct improvements over existing options in Finale, but with the native Unicode fonts, usable only in Sibelius, the time savings are enormous. This will greatly disadvantage Finale, since tens of thousands of music students a year will use Sibelius instead of Finale to complete their nightly homework assignments. Ayotte Custom Musical Engravings, established by my colleague Benjamin Ayotte with my help, will also be forced to switch over to Sibelius. We'd both rather stay with Finale, but Unicode entry for chord symbols using our fonts is so hugely advantageous that we'll have little choice. For lead sheets, by the way, Benjamin will help me develop a handwritten version of JazzSymbol, which I understand many jazzers want. So that will be forthcoming sooner rather than later (probably sometime this fall), based on scans of chord symbol calligraphy we will, most likely, commission. JazzHand, or whatever we'll call it, will feature the same mapping as JazzSymbol, representing a decided improvement over the existing handwritten chord symbol fonts. MakeMusic, if you're listening, we'd rather work with you than Avid/Sibelius. If you can accommodate our fonts specifically in your Unicode-based chord symbol engineering, Finale will have a clear edge in ChordSymbol entry, even beating out your newest competitor, Noteflight, in that regard. We'd be delighted to help; just let us know. Thanks much. Best, jrc Dr. John R. Clevenger, Manager The Virtual Conservatory 50 S. Patterson Ave., #203 Santa Barbara, CA 93111 Phone and fax: (805) 964-7988 (for fax, ignore answering machine) Email: _jclev...@aol.com_ (mailto:jclev...@aol.com) Web site: _www.virtualconservatory.com_ (http://www.virtualconservatory.com/) _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
