I didn't really mean that as an exact date or even a comment 
specifically about Finale.  What I should have said is "the 1980s way of 
doing things."

All of the notation products of that generation (Encore, Overture, 
Finale, etc) can reasonably be called "note paint programs".  That is to 
say, they all provided ways to paint notes, rests, and other musical 
markings onto a canvas.  Once painted, much of this was static.  There 
was some ability to "float" items, say, by inserting measures.  But 
basically, what you painted remained as it was painted until you 
explicitly painted something different. Along the way, some clever 
people produced some powerful plug-ins that allowed certain re-painting 
operations in bulk.  It worked OK, and still does for many people.  But 
this static painting/re-paining approach has some fundamental 
limitations, especially in the area of layout.  There have been some 
attempts in Finale to automate the layout and collision avoidance.  
Despite all the effort, I consider that mostly a failure because part 
editing remains a very tedious process that often requires 30% of the 
project time.

And some of that just doesn't work.  I am a stickler for cautionary 
accidentals.  IMHO, the only way to do this reliably in Finale is by 
hand, painstakingly checking every single note. There is a plug-in that 
is supposed to apply cautionary accidentals, but it isn't reliable and 
often does more damage than it corrects.  Moreover, it is always a batch 
process.  If you add new passages, they don't get cautionary accidentals 
automatically.  The same can be said for many operations in Finale.  
(e.g. multi-measure rests.)  These are batch processes, not real time.

Today's way of doing things separates the idea of "music entry" (as 
opposed to "note entry") from the process of presenting the score and 
parts.  The layout is governed by rules, and these rules are applied in 
real time to all current AND FUTURE material in the score.  I have very 
limited usage of Dorico at this stage, but everything I have seen tells 
me it works very well and reliably.

I would compare this to the first generation of WAV editors like 
CoolEdit and Audacity.  You could use these tools to make 
transformations to a sound file, such as applying compression, 
normalizing, or equalizing.  But it is always a batch process. You have 
to do the transformation manually, then go back and listen to know if 
the results were as intended.

Today, anybody serious about sound sculpting uses a DAW (Cubase, 
StudioOne, Cakewalk, Protools, etc).  With any DAW, you operate on the 
material in real time -- even while the sound files are playing -- to 
dial in the results you want.A person can use Audacity, and some people 
still do.  But the world has mostly moved on to real time.


On 4/20/2018 1:04 PM, Robert Patterson wrote:
>> the 1985 way
> In fairness, the 1985 way was ProCo. If you mean the 1989 way, it was this
> <https://www.dropbox.com/s/f2d6ftebwxzsyu0/Screen%20Shot%202018-04-20%20at%2011.54.54%20AM.png?dl=0>
> .
>
> While I'm the first to recognize Finale's limitations, I think you a being
> overly harsh.


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