Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 30 Jun 2009 at 22:33, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 30 Jun 2009 at 19:03, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 30 Jun 2009 at 7:24, Phil Daley wrote: I'm flabbergasted at the opposition the mere reporting of a fact has generating. Because it isn't a fact. Yes, it *is* a fact: The studies where, in FACT, done, and did, in FACT, reach the conclusions I reported. This is the only FACT that I reported, but you and others: You've reported hearsay. The factual basis for it remains elusive. How is it hearsay to report what the studies found? Are you claiming the studies *didn't* find this? If so, isn't it incumbent on *you* to provide the refutation, rather than for me to prove that what you've asserted is wrong? I don't have anything TO refute even if I wanted to, and that is my point. You haven't tried. Show me the study, and I'll tell you what I think. The discussion has been going on for days and days. It's only now that you ask about seeing it, despite the fact that you've posted time and again providing commentary on the subject? If you continue to allude to it as fact (no, the capitals are clearly important: FACT) while also acknowledging ignorance of how it was implemented, I don't think I'm the one with anything to prove. I don't give a rat's ass about these studies. They are what they are. If you find the conclusions problematic, then it's not my job to show you why they aren't. Nor is it my job to research them so that you can disprove them. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 6/29/2009 09:00 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 20:53, Christopher Smith wrote: On Jun 29, 2009, at 8:35 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 13:33, Christopher Smith wrote: I'm just saying that just because the study may be valid, it doesn't mean it applies to ME. Why would you find it important or necessary to say so? Well, you know, just because! Why are YOU so implicated in the conversation? I'm flabbergasted at the opposition the mere reporting of a fact has generating. Because it isn't a fact. It is a study of a certain select group of people, obviously, those not familar with the program or keyboard usage. You keep saying you don't have a dog in this race. I do; it's my own practice, which I am constantly trying to improve and speed up. I'm not convinced that the study concluding mousing is faster applies to me using Finale, Did anyone say it did? What puzzles me is why others have such a short fuse when it is merely pointed out that studies have shown that most people are faster with the mouse. Because a lot of people are faster with the keyboard. It all depends on who you test. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 30 Jun 2009 at 7:24, Phil Daley wrote: At 6/29/2009 09:00 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 20:53, Christopher Smith wrote: On Jun 29, 2009, at 8:35 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 13:33, Christopher Smith wrote: I'm just saying that just because the study may be valid, it doesn't mean it applies to ME. Why would you find it important or necessary to say so? Well, you know, just because! Why are YOU so implicated in the conversation? I'm flabbergasted at the opposition the mere reporting of a fact has generating. Because it isn't a fact. Yes, it *is* a fact: The studies where, in FACT, done, and did, in FACT, reach the conclusions I reported. This is the only FACT that I reported, but you and others: It is a study of a certain select group of people, obviously, those not familar with the program or keyboard usage. ...respond as though I said the studies were correct. I never said any such thing, nor implied it. You're reacting, irrationally and emotionally, to something that has never been said. You keep saying you don't have a dog in this race. I do; it's my own practice, which I am constantly trying to improve and speed up. I'm not convinced that the study concluding mousing is faster applies to me using Finale, Did anyone say it did? What puzzles me is why others have such a short fuse when it is merely pointed out that studies have shown that most people are faster with the mouse. Because a lot of people are faster with the keyboard. It all depends on who you test. And the FACT of the studies' results does not challenge that one iota. It's that FACT that you seem to be missing. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: On 30 Jun 2009 at 7:24, Phil Daley wrote: At 6/29/2009 09:00 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 20:53, Christopher Smith wrote: On Jun 29, 2009, at 8:35 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 13:33, Christopher Smith wrote: I'm just saying that just because the study may be valid, it doesn't mean it applies to ME. Why would you find it important or necessary to say so? Well, you know, just because! Why are YOU so implicated in the conversation? I'm flabbergasted at the opposition the mere reporting of a fact has generating. Because it isn't a fact. Yes, it *is* a fact: The studies where, in FACT, done, and did, in FACT, reach the conclusions I reported. This is the only FACT that I reported, but you and others: You've reported hearsay. The factual basis for it remains elusive. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 30 Jun 2009 at 19:03, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 30 Jun 2009 at 7:24, Phil Daley wrote: I'm flabbergasted at the opposition the mere reporting of a fact has generating. Because it isn't a fact. Yes, it *is* a fact: The studies where, in FACT, done, and did, in FACT, reach the conclusions I reported. This is the only FACT that I reported, but you and others: You've reported hearsay. The factual basis for it remains elusive. How is it hearsay to report what the studies found? Are you claiming the studies *didn't* find this? If so, isn't it incumbent on *you* to provide the refutation, rather than for me to prove that what you've asserted is wrong? -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: On 30 Jun 2009 at 19:03, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 30 Jun 2009 at 7:24, Phil Daley wrote: I'm flabbergasted at the opposition the mere reporting of a fact has generating. Because it isn't a fact. Yes, it *is* a fact: The studies where, in FACT, done, and did, in FACT, reach the conclusions I reported. This is the only FACT that I reported, but you and others: You've reported hearsay. The factual basis for it remains elusive. How is it hearsay to report what the studies found? Are you claiming the studies *didn't* find this? If so, isn't it incumbent on *you* to provide the refutation, rather than for me to prove that what you've asserted is wrong? I don't have anything TO refute even if I wanted to, and that is my point. Show me the study, and I'll tell you what I think. If you continue to allude to it as fact (no, the capitals are clearly important: FACT) while also acknowledging ignorance of how it was implemented, I don't think I'm the one with anything to prove. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 6:40, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: I don't know the study designs, nor do I know the nature of the testing or the user population. I don't get where this kind of statistical illiteracy comes from... Wanting to know the basic details of a study before accepting an assertion of results is statistical illiteracy? Who is asking you to *accept* the results? The studies are what they are. If you dispute them, do so. Otherwise, you're just complaining about a result you don't like. I'm agnostic one way or the other -- I don't care what the studies say -- I'm just reporting. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 1:47, Christopher Smith wrote: Now, it was not entirely scientific (I chose my tasks to represent what I normally did a lot of, and I WAS more used to my usual routine, even after practicing the others) but my conclusion was more or less that you should do what you think is fastest What I don't understand about this discussion is the idea that what you just said should need to be said. The results of a statistical study of people's behavior is no PROSCRIPTIVE, but DESCRIPTIVE. That's is, it doesn't say what people SHOULD do, but describes how people behave. Every individual is different and every single user on the Finale list could be faster with the keyboard and it wouldn't invalidate the studies done by Apple and Microsoft. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:30, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: [snip] I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? To sell mice. *snort* Yes, that's it -- Microsoft's mice are such high-profit items that they want to sell them. If they're not such high-profit items, why do they sell them? After all, Microsoft is a software company. And Bill Gates and his heirs-to-the-company are much too smart to sell items they take a loss on. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:21, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. (BTW, those who think there's no keyboard equivalent of RIGHT-CLICK on Windows are wrong -- there's an entire key devoted to it on any standard Windows keyboard, including laptops) Of course, Apple and Microsoft had a vested interest in the research proving that mousing was faster. They do? How, exactly? They sell mice. They sell machines with user interfaces based on mousing. They tout the use of the mouse as the best user-interface. What could be more vested than that? Finding research to support what you are already marketing is high-stakes aspect of modern marketing. That is one of the unspoken assumptions behind much of the criticism of the reported results, yet nobody that I've ever seen has ever bothered to unpack that and explain exactly why Apple and Microsoft would benefit from misrepresenting research results. I'm not saying they misrepresented any research results. I would never accuse them of that, but I will suggest that they may have set up the research in a manner which would more likely result in one conclusion over another. It's one thing to misrepresent results, but it's quite another to skew the tests to favor one response over another. Pollsters do that all the time. Sure, in the early days of the Mac (in the 80s), when Apple was promoting the first mainstream GUI, there was resistance and a need to promote the utility of the mouse. But that's long in the past, and Microsoft has always maintained full keyboard compatibility (e.g., all menus are keyboard accessible and always have been -- it's built into MS's development tools and always has been). If they were so all-fired devoted to mousing, why would they offer that? Because they need the support of power users to show the non-power-users that a particular program or UI is worth investing in. Power-users will memorize keystrokes, non-power-users will mouse. They can use the same software, making its marketability much greater. Has any truly independent research verified their results? I can't cite chapter and verse, but I believe so. For many users who get comfortable with the mouse as a way of avoiding memorizing all sorts of keyboard shortcuts, it truly is faster. But for those who have memorized keyboard shortcuts, for many applications (I would put Finale when used in Speedy Entry without a midi keyboard attached into this category) every time the hands have to leave the keyboard to move the mouse, time is lost. So you say. The research says the opposite. Until you can demonstrate that the research is flawed and produces unreliable results, I'm going to believe those who've actually taken the time to design mechanisms for testing the proposition, rather than going with the gut feelings of individual users. And that's fine -- I'm not trying to convince anybody to adopt my point of view. But just as I don't accept Republican-sponsored polls which show that the vast majority of Americans espouse Republican Ideals and I don't accept Democrat-sponsored polls which show that the vast majority of Americans espouse Democrat Ideals (they can't both be correct, can they?) I also don't accept mouse-vendor research which shows that using a mouse is the faster interface. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 11:08, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:30, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: [snip] I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? To sell mice. *snort* Yes, that's it -- Microsoft's mice are such high-profit items that they want to sell them. If they're not such high-profit items, why do they sell them? After all, Microsoft is a software company. And Bill Gates and his heirs-to-the-company are much too smart to sell items they take a loss on. My guess is that they want to have a reference quality design. There are no mice better than Microsoft mice, in fact. But to argue that they would alter the design of their OS's and softwware simply to promote the sales of their mice is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And that's what your suggestion comes down to, that they would intentionally skew their research results to favor the mouse and then redesign their software to fit those results, and all of it in order to promote sales of an item that costs less than a single copy of Windows. This is crazy conspiracy theory reasoning and not worthy of even one more line of response. The assertion is completely implausible on its face and the idea that anyone would seriously promote the idea suggests to me that reason has been thrown out the window and there's massive irrationality in operation at this point. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 11:06, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:21, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. (BTW, those who think there's no keyboard equivalent of RIGHT-CLICK on Windows are wrong -- there's an entire key devoted to it on any standard Windows keyboard, including laptops) Of course, Apple and Microsoft had a vested interest in the research proving that mousing was faster. They do? How, exactly? They sell mice. They sell keyboards, too. They sell machines with user interfaces based on mousing. And that support full use with keyboard only, as well. They tout the use of the mouse as the best user-interface. Where? When? Please cite examples that are publicly accessible somewhere. What could be more vested than that? Finding research to support what you are already marketing is high-stakes aspect of modern marketing. Why would they intentionally skew their research to reach a predetermined conclusion that might very well be wrong? That is, why would they specifically choose to design their software to work poorly? This is just absolutely idiotic. You're suggesting the stupidest possible type of conspiracy theory. There is no logical justification possible for the motives and actions you attribute to Microsoft (and you seem to have forgotten that Apple got there first). That is one of the unspoken assumptions behind much of the criticism of the reported results, yet nobody that I've ever seen has ever bothered to unpack that and explain exactly why Apple and Microsoft would benefit from misrepresenting research results. I'm not saying they misrepresented any research results. Then what's the problem? I would never accuse them of that, but I will suggest that they may have set up the research in a manner which would more likely result in one conclusion over another. In terms of study design, that's far worse than misrepresenting their research results. That's intentionally setting out to skew your research to reach a predetermined conclusion. Is that what you're willing to accuse them of? Why would they do that? How could they benefit from designing their software using principles that they don't know are correct? It's one thing to misrepresent results, but it's quite another to skew the tests to favor one response over another. Pollsters do that all the time. I beg to differ. If you read the main polling websites (pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com) you'll find that the fact is that most variation in polls is due to random noise and incidental issues of question wording. Almost never is a poll intentionally designed to produce a particular result. So, no, pollsters do *not* do it all the time -- they almost never do it (and no reputable pollsters *ever* do it). The question remains: How would Microsoft benefit from skewing the research results? Sure, in the early days of the Mac (in the 80s), when Apple was promoting the first mainstream GUI, there was resistance and a need to promote the utility of the mouse. But that's long in the past, and Microsoft has always maintained full keyboard compatibility (e.g., all menus are keyboard accessible and always have been -- it's built into MS's development tools and always has been). If they were so all-fired devoted to mousing, why would they offer that? Because they need the support of power users to show the non-power-users that a particular program or UI is worth investing in. Power-users will memorize keystrokes, non-power-users will mouse. They can use the same software, making its marketability much greater. Huh? This sounds like something everyone should be for. Why would they need to skew research results to prove what everybody should agree is good design? Again, you have no case here. The actions you attribute to Microsoft are not logical, and you cannot explain that away. Has any truly independent research verified their results? I can't cite chapter and verse, but I believe so. For many users who get comfortable with the mouse as a way of avoiding memorizing all sorts of keyboard shortcuts, it truly is faster. But for those who have memorized keyboard shortcuts, for many applications (I would put Finale when used in Speedy Entry without a midi
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Given that you can't tell us what was tested, how it was tested or when this was done, I don't know what it is a result OF, and so no, I don't accept it at face value as proof of anything at all. David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 6:40, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: I don't know the study designs, nor do I know the nature of the testing or the user population. I don't get where this kind of statistical illiteracy comes from... Wanting to know the basic details of a study before accepting an assertion of results is statistical illiteracy? Who is asking you to *accept* the results? The studies are what they are. If you dispute them, do so. Otherwise, you're just complaining about a result you don't like. I'm agnostic one way or the other -- I don't care what the studies say -- I'm just reporting. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 10:50 AM -0400 6/29/09, David W. Fenton wrote: The results of a statistical study of people's behavior is no[t] PROSCRIPTIVE, but DESCRIPTIVE. That's is, it doesn't say what people SHOULD do, but describes how people behave. All very true, but let's not forget the dirty little secret of statistical studies. The selection of subjects is crucial to the final result, and it's VERY easy to skew the results in advance by careful selection of subjects. (Similarly, the medieval Church required courses in logic as a part of education (and probably still does), because they understood perfectly that logic can be used to prove anything you want as long as you control all the initial assumptions!!) Select subjects at random and you get the bell-shaped curve. Select any other way and you have skewing built in. Statistical analysis loses validity to the extent that subject selection is not completely random (Statistics 101!), because the statistical tools ASSUME random selection and therefore project their results back to the specific population sampled and NOT to the general population. (Also Statistics 101: the results of most statistical studies map accurately only to college Sophomores, because the subjects of most statistical studies, especially in the early days, were college Sophomores!!) So did MS and Apple sample the entire population at random? I doubt it. That would have given them results with validity but very low applicability because a vast majority of the general population are, in fact, computer illiterate (or naive, which is a much nicer word!), even though WE might not think so. No, they probably would have sought out experienced computer users, although not necessarily users of specific programs if the experimental design followed acceptable guidelines. So right there, that limits the universe to which the results apply AND it skews the results unless they were clever enough to control for the ways their subjects already used their keyboards and mice. And I'd also bet that they allowed the subjects to self-select themselves as well (by putting up notices or recruiting in locations where they could expect to find users), and that's definitely a no-no but it's the easy way out. Several years ago there was a European study of perfect pitch which claimed to find that certain areas of the brain were active in people who had perfect pitch and not in people who did not. Sounds valid, right? But it wasn't, because they recruited their subjects by going to a music conservatory and asking for people who claimed to have perfect pitch! In other words, the experimental team were studying a human attribute that they themselves could not define, did not understand, and did not use preliminary screening tests for, and their subjects were self-selected! The fact that they DID get results makes it an interesting study, but only a preliminary one since they had no control subjects. So yes, I can question the validity of the studies you cite, BUT on the basis of their probable subject selection rather than on any other aspect, and I can question it without studying the full experimental reports (which I did for the perfect pitch article), but questioning it does not mean rejecting it. And questioning is a basic component of scientific method. I fully understand and appreciate your comments, David, but also those who raise questions for their own reasons. For myself, I studied keyboard (it was called typing in those days and used real typewriters!) in high school and taught myself to use the mouse in middle age, and I do whatever is comfortable for ME, as I imagine we all do. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 29, 2009, at 11:08 AM, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:30, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: [snip] I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? To sell mice. *snort* Yes, that's it -- Microsoft's mice are such high-profit items that they want to sell them. If they're not such high-profit items, why do they sell them? After all, Microsoft is a software company. And Bill Gates and his heirs-to-the-company are much too smart to sell items they take a loss on. Oh, come on! They aren't JUST selling mice; they are selling the whole computer lifestyle! Way more money in that than just a $25 mouse! Someone suggested that the study is valid as applied to the average user - great! That doesn't mean that a power user can't be faster with other tools. Obviously, there is a lot more money to be made by designing the whole system to appeal to a middle-brow clientele. That's where the bucks are.f Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 29, 2009, at 10:50 AM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 1:47, Christopher Smith wrote: Now, it was not entirely scientific (I chose my tasks to represent what I normally did a lot of, and I WAS more used to my usual routine, even after practicing the others) but my conclusion was more or less that you should do what you think is fastest What I don't understand about this discussion is the idea that what you just said should need to be said. The results of a statistical study of people's behavior is no PROSCRIPTIVE, but DESCRIPTIVE. That's is, it doesn't say what people SHOULD do, but describes how people behave. Every individual is different and every single user on the Finale list could be faster with the keyboard and it wouldn't invalidate the studies done by Apple and Microsoft. Oh, I'm just saying that just because the study may be valid, it doesn't mean it applies to ME. I try that argument on my wife with fatty foods, too. It also has limited appeal. 8-) Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 17:22, Owain Sutton wrote: Given that you can't tell us what was tested, how it was tested or when this was done, I don't know what it is a result OF, and so no, I don't accept it at face value as proof of anything at all. I have never at any point in this discussion claimed the studies PROVED anything -- that's your projection. And perhaps the reason why the discussion has been so unprofitable, i.e., because you're reading something nobody has claimed. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 12:55, John Howell wrote: At 10:50 AM -0400 6/29/09, David W. Fenton wrote: The results of a statistical study of people's behavior is no[t] PROSCRIPTIVE, but DESCRIPTIVE. That's is, it doesn't say what people SHOULD do, but describes how people behave. All very true, but let's not forget the dirty little secret of statistical studies. The selection of subjects is crucial to the final result, and it's VERY easy to skew the results in advance by careful selection of subjects. That's a statistically solved problem. You present your results in terms of likelihood of reproducibility. A p=5 rating means that 95% of the time the results will be the same. That's a fairly high standard for research like this, and not likely to be what was used. I don't know the statistical specifics. I do know the studies were conducted by professionals who, at least after the triumph of the GUI, didn't really have any need to promote mouse usage any more than was already the general practice. That is, there's no reason why those conducting the study would need to nudge the results in any particular direction. (Similarly, the medieval Church required courses in logic as a part of education (and probably still does), because they understood perfectly that logic can be used to prove anything you want as long as you control all the initial assumptions!!) Select subjects at random and you get the bell-shaped curve. Select any other way and you have skewing built in. Do you really think that the people at Apple and Microsoft were statistically naïve enough to not account for these factors? Statistical analysis loses validity to the extent that subject selection is not completely random (Statistics 101!), because the statistical tools ASSUME random selection and therefore project their results back to the specific population sampled and NOT to the general population. (Also Statistics 101: the results of most statistical studies map accurately only to college Sophomores, because the subjects of most statistical studies, especially in the early days, were college Sophomores!!) I think the paragraph above is very sloppily worded. Not all statistical tools assume random distributions because not all natural distributions are random. So did MS and Apple sample the entire population at random? I doubt it. Statistics tell us that doing so would not have improved the accuracy of the survey once they had surveyed an appropriately large population. That would have given them results with validity but very low applicability because a vast majority of the general population are, in fact, computer illiterate (or naive, which is a much nicer word!), even though WE might not think so. No, they probably would have sought out experienced computer users, although not necessarily users of specific programs if the experimental design followed acceptable guidelines. Rather than speculate about what did or didn't happen in order that you can dismiss the results of the study, why don't you look them up and find out? Remember, I'm not promoting the validity of the studies, just pointing out that the conclusions fly in the face of conventional wisdom. So right there, that limits the universe to which the results apply AND it skews the results unless they were clever enough to control for the ways their subjects already used their keyboards and mice. And I'd also bet that they allowed the subjects to self-select themselves as well (by putting up notices or recruiting in locations where they could expect to find users), and that's definitely a no-no but it's the easy way out. Bet all you want. You might be able to find out what actually happened in the studies instead of just speculating about it. Several years ago there was a European study of perfect pitch which claimed to find that certain areas of the brain were active in people who had perfect pitch and not in people who did not. Sounds valid, right? But it wasn't, because they recruited their subjects by going to a music conservatory and asking for people who claimed to have perfect pitch! In other words, the experimental team were studying a human attribute that they themselves could not define, did not understand, and did not use preliminary screening tests for, and their subjects were self-selected! The fact that they DID get results makes it an interesting study, but only a preliminary one since they had no control subjects. So yes, I can question the validity of the studies you cite, BUT on the basis of their probable subject selection rather than on any other aspect, and I can question it without studying the full experimental reports (which I did for the perfect pitch article), but questioning it does not mean rejecting it. And questioning is a basic component of scientific method. You've questioned an imaginary study, not any
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 13:33, Christopher Smith wrote: I'm just saying that just because the study may be valid, it doesn't mean it applies to ME. Why would you find it important or necessary to say so? Who has made any assertion to the contrary? -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 29, 2009, at 8:35 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 13:33, Christopher Smith wrote: I'm just saying that just because the study may be valid, it doesn't mean it applies to ME. Why would you find it important or necessary to say so? Well, you know, just because! Why are YOU so implicated in the conversation? You keep saying you don't have a dog in this race. I do; it's my own practice, which I am constantly trying to improve and speed up. I'm not convinced that the study concluding mousing is faster applies to me using Finale, and I already gave the reasons why I think so. People on the list can read that, or not, and try it themselves, or not, and maybe improve their own speed, or not. That's what the list is for, isn't it? Who has made any assertion to the contrary? Why nobody! I imagine, though, that the topic has garnered such interest because everyone has their own way of working that DOESN'T include constant mousing. If I had found that more mouse than not was actually faster, I would have shared it with everyone in the hopes of helping them out too. Just like when I discover a new (for me) feature that improves workflow. However I DID say that I wasn't as slowed down by the mouse as I thought I was. That might be of general interest to all (especially those who aren't as anal as I am and devise their own time trials.) Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 29 Jun 2009 at 20:53, Christopher Smith wrote: On Jun 29, 2009, at 8:35 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 29 Jun 2009 at 13:33, Christopher Smith wrote: I'm just saying that just because the study may be valid, it doesn't mean it applies to ME. Why would you find it important or necessary to say so? Well, you know, just because! Why are YOU so implicated in the conversation? I'm flabbergasted at the opposition the mere reporting of a fact has generating. You keep saying you don't have a dog in this race. I do; it's my own practice, which I am constantly trying to improve and speed up. I'm not convinced that the study concluding mousing is faster applies to me using Finale, Did anyone say it did? [] Who has made any assertion to the contrary? Why nobody! I imagine, though, that the topic has garnered such interest because everyone has their own way of working that DOESN'T include constant mousing. So do I. I use the keyboard far more than I use the mouse. But I'm not threatened by the conclusions of the Apple and Microsoft studies, so I don't feel much need to point out that I'm not one of the people the results describe. What puzzles me is why others have such a short fuse when it is merely pointed out that studies have shown that most people are faster with the mouse. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Kim Patrick Clow wrote: On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Owain Sutton m...@owainsutton.co.ukwrote: Measuring 'numbers of clicks' isn't a good way of rating productivity, however - I very rarely resort to the mouse to make such changes, in Word or in OpenOffice. Multiple clicks either indicates an unawareness of keyboard shortcuts, or an unavailability of them for the software in question. I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. Sibelius allows for user-defined keyboard shortcuts to do just about everything. Wouldn't it be nice if Finale did the same? -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. (BTW, those who think there's no keyboard equivalent of RIGHT-CLICK on Windows are wrong -- there's an entire key devoted to it on any standard Windows keyboard, including laptops) Of course, Apple and Microsoft had a vested interest in the research proving that mousing was faster. Has any truly independent research verified their results? For many users who get comfortable with the mouse as a way of avoiding memorizing all sorts of keyboard shortcuts, it truly is faster. But for those who have memorized keyboard shortcuts, for many applications (I would put Finale when used in Speedy Entry without a midi keyboard attached into this category) every time the hands have to leave the keyboard to move the mouse, time is lost. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Owain Sutton wrote: I'm with you here. The absence of consistent access to 'properties' in Finale context menus is one thing I'm regularly surprised by anew. They seem, instead, to be 'things we guess you might want to do' menus. Funny how people are dissing Sibelius for not providing a properties option in right-click menus, yet aren't at the same time dissing Finale for the same lack. Hmm . . . -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Owain Sutton wrote: I can see how the regular use of a persistent 'properties' window makes sense for some users, who will be routinely modifying all sorts of details. However, I think what is the unspoken query here is Why can't I change the appearance of text as easily as in Word? In other words, drop-down boxes. Yes, Word automatically assigns styles according to what you choose, but 99%+ of users never notice this. (Whether that's a success of the 'style' implementation or a criticism, I'm not sure.) But that complaint is as valid about Finale as about Sibelius. They both such at handling text. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
DANIEL CARNO wrote: Interesting thread guys, First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. The properties window is brought to the screen with a keyboard shortcut. Since Sibelius allows for re-mapping the keyboard to implement most of its features, I have programmed the letter P to bring up the properties box, instead of the Sibelius default, Playback. Hope this clears a few things up. I'd just like to add that practically everything Sibelius can do can be mapped to keyboard shortcuts from within the program, user-definable. No need for QuickKeys or any other macro-keyboard program to run in the background. It is possible to do away with the Sibelius numpad entry system and to define things in a manner which makes sense to the user, not forcing the user to use keystrokes that make sense to a programmer. Things are not as obtuse as some people are making them sound. Imagine people dabbling with Finale and not finding how to do things holding this conversation about how obtuse Finale is. Both programs could use UI improvements, but at least Sibelius lets the user try to come up with a better system which is individualized. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: [snip] I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? To sell mice. The less useful concept isn't an accurate one in my opinion -- I think that both Apple and Microsoft design their software more and more for the lowest common denominator of user, not the power user. Look at the menus that appear in Word -- it really pisses me off to have to click on more to see all that should have shown up on a menu in the first place, because most of the time what I want to do is hidden in the more category. Yes, I could edit the menus (all software should have user editable menus!) but if they weren't trying to hide the entries which are more confusing to the casual user or to the person who only types business letters, I wouldn't have to. But corporate America has shown time and time again (look at all the horrible pharmaceuticals that kill users but are still forced through the FDA testing and onto the marketplace) that it will design something and then find the research to prove that it is the best way that could have been designed. Like the tobacco industry finding doctors to verify that smoking cigarettes doesn't cause cancer. I have absolutely no confidence that the giants of the computer world have any interest in designing anything other than that which will make them the most profits and will appear with the most flash and glam so the uninformed public will buy it. That it may also be useful to the informed public is merely an added benefit, but the usefulness to the informed public is limited by what will make it the most profitable, not the most useful. I was just discussing the iPod Touch with a friend who is disappointed in the battery life while watching videos, and he raised the point that by making the battery 1mm thicker the battery life could have been significantly increased (he's an engineer and so not uniformed on the subject) yet they chose to go with the thinner battery. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Darcy James Argue wrote: [snip] Regardless, even once I know the actual height of the character (or lines of text) I'm trying to center vertically, having to run these calculations is an enormous pain in the ass. Finale's had vertically centered text for as long as I've been using the application -- there's no reason why Sibelius shouldn't be able to do this quickly and easily and without the user having to break out a calculator. That is true. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: On 27 Jun 2009 at 19:32, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: On Sat, June 27, 2009 7:25 pm, David W. Fenton wrote: All I know is what the researchers report, that overall, mousing is faster than keyboard. I don't know exactly how they tested, but the results have stood up over many years of assault from those who didn't believe them. Was it general public or touch-typists? I'm gonna guess general public, which would make a huge difference. If you have to look, I'd guess mouse is faster. I would assume that they tested reasonable users. I don't know the details of the study design, but Apple and Microsoft have both replicated it repeatedly. I would think both companies have very smart people working for them who know how to design scientifically valid studies, and thus think it's ridiculous to raise trivial objections like the idea that they just didn't test people who know the keyboard shortcuts. Apple and Microsoft hire very smart people -- and very smart people know how to manipulate statistics. Far earlier than personal computers, Mark Twain made the observation that there are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. Any researcher with an agenda can get the data to support that agenda, and companies who are desigining user interfaces around a mouse and who want to sell lots of units of mice would want data to prove that they're right. Doesn't matter how old the research is, until a truly independent research company with no possible agenda other than the truth ran a study, I would hold any data from Microsoft and Apple concerning computers to be suspect. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 28, 2009, at 9:11 AM, dhbailey wrote: DANIEL CARNO wrote: Interesting thread guys, First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. The properties window is brought to the screen with a keyboard shortcut. Since Sibelius allows for re-mapping the keyboard to implement most of its features, I have programmed the letter P to bring up the properties box, instead of the Sibelius default, Playback. Hope this clears a few things up. I'd just like to add that practically everything Sibelius can do can be mapped to keyboard shortcuts from within the program, user- definable. No need for QuickKeys or any other macro-keyboard program to run in the background. It is possible to do away with the Sibelius numpad entry system and to define things in a manner which makes sense to the user, not forcing the user to use keystrokes that make sense to a programmer. Things are not as obtuse as some people are making them sound. Imagine people dabbling with Finale and not finding how to do things holding this conversation about how obtuse Finale is. Both programs could use UI improvements, but at least Sibelius lets the user try to come up with a better system which is individualized. Dennis B-K posted on this subject at length a couple of years ago (he may even have an article online somewhere!) and he says (and I agree) that UI design is extremely important insofar as factory assignments of shortcuts is concerned. Yes, we want to be able to edit them if they don't suit us, but YES! we want carefully researched and chosen shortcuts pre-assigned, out of the box by default. For example, in previous versions, metatools for dynamics were not preassigned. Starting from (I think) version 2002, 4 for forte and 7 for piano, with all the others stepped in between, is so simple and logical, yet I didn't think of it when I was coming up with my own homegrown assignments, and I gladly adhered to the intelligently-chosen Finale defaults as soon as I could. I am impressed, in fact, with a lot of Finale's preassigned metatools and how logical and easy-to-remember they are, and especially with how large numbers of them fit easily under one hand (two handed metatools slow me down!) and especially again with how many of them fit under my LEFT hand, so I don't have to let go of my mouse. I never would have thought of these myself, and would have ended up with the edges of my monitor upholstered with Post-Its reminding me of what metatools I assigned where. (I am presently down to five Post- Its total.) Don't forget, too, that TG Tools (pro version) lets you come up with all kinds of keystroke equivalents that Finale wouldn't allow. I deplore the necessity of this third-party solution, but at least one exists for the pro user. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Friends, I've stayed out of the affray over whether mice or command line entry is faster. I do remember reading some of the research when it come out, however, and one thing I remember from the research is that the test subjects were drawn from across the spectrum of user abilities, from brand new, never before touched a computer, through power users, and I further remember that the results were that while for most people, mice were faster and more intuitive, but that when it came to power users, their productivity was higher with a command line (keyboard) interface than with a mouse. Microsoft and Apple both had a vested interest in selling as many machines as they could, and since the power user was a small part of the potential market, the idea was to make the user interface as easy for everyone else as possible. ns ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:13, dhbailey wrote: Funny how people are dissing Sibelius for not providing a properties option in right-click menus, yet aren't at the same time dissing Finale for the same lack. Hmm . . . This is not about dissing one program or the other. The discussion started with Darcy commenting about Sibelius's properties sheet as the only way to alter certain things directly. Finale doesn't have that problem -- it's easy to alter text on an individual basis without needing to access any esoteric dialogs. Finale may not be uniform in applying Windows standards for context menus, but if the features are easily accessible and discoverable without that, I don't see the issue. In the case of Sibelius, the feature was not easily accessible or readily discoverable. Implementation of Windows UI conventions would have rectified that. But far be it for me to defend inconsistencies in Finale's UI. I have not and would not do that. The reason it's not been brought up that much in the present discussion is because that's not what the discussion is about. I see nothing unfair about that. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:21, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. (BTW, those who think there's no keyboard equivalent of RIGHT-CLICK on Windows are wrong -- there's an entire key devoted to it on any standard Windows keyboard, including laptops) Of course, Apple and Microsoft had a vested interest in the research proving that mousing was faster. They do? How, exactly? That is one of the unspoken assumptions behind much of the criticism of the reported results, yet nobody that I've ever seen has ever bothered to unpack that and explain exactly why Apple and Microsoft would benefit from misrepresenting research results. Sure, in the early days of the Mac (in the 80s), when Apple was promoting the first mainstream GUI, there was resistance and a need to promote the utility of the mouse. But that's long in the past, and Microsoft has always maintained full keyboard compatibility (e.g., all menus are keyboard accessible and always have been -- it's built into MS's development tools and always has been). If they were so all-fired devoted to mousing, why would they offer that? Has any truly independent research verified their results? I can't cite chapter and verse, but I believe so. For many users who get comfortable with the mouse as a way of avoiding memorizing all sorts of keyboard shortcuts, it truly is faster. But for those who have memorized keyboard shortcuts, for many applications (I would put Finale when used in Speedy Entry without a midi keyboard attached into this category) every time the hands have to leave the keyboard to move the mouse, time is lost. So you say. The research says the opposite. Until you can demonstrate that the research is flawed and produces unreliable results, I'm going to believe those who've actually taken the time to design mechanisms for testing the proposition, rather than going with the gut feelings of individual users. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:30, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: [snip] I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? To sell mice. *snort* Yes, that's it -- Microsoft's mice are such high-profit items that they want to sell them. BTW, MS's mice are some of the best in the business. Certainly MS has an interest in promoting a high-quality mousing experience as a way of making their GUI easy to use, but I've always thought of MS's mice as more a matter of demonstrating to the other manufacturers how to make a good device, rather than as a profit center. But, please, provide us with sales figures and demonstrate to us exactly how important the sales of MS mice are such a crucial part of MS's cash flow that they'd purposefully design their OS's and all their software around a UI that is inferior, just so they can make money selling hardware that costs less per unit than the OS itself. The less useful concept isn't an accurate one in my opinion -- I think that both Apple and Microsoft design their software more and more for the lowest common denominator of user, not the power user. Look at the menus that appear in Word -- it really pisses me off to have to click on more to see all that should have shown up on a menu in the first place, because most of the time what I want to do is hidden in the more category. Yes, I could edit the menus (all software should have user editable menus!) but if they weren't trying to hide the entries which are more confusing to the casual user or to the person who only types business letters, I wouldn't have to. Microsoft has acknowledged that adaptive menus were a huge mistake. Indeed, dynamic menus completely contradict the whole purpose of a menu, which is to present a MENU of all the available choices. If you hide some of them, it defeats the purpose of a menu. Certainly, Windows and all the MS apps have always allowed the user to turn off adaptive menus (and I certainly do at all opportunities), but they decision to implement themm was a mistake, an effort to reduce the complexity of menuing systems that had become too complicated for users to comprehend. The ribbon interface was MS's effort to address the problem definitively. Whether or not you believe MS made the right decision depends, I think, on how you use MS's applications. I'm agnostic, myself, but I haven't used the ribbon interface much at all. I admire the forward thinking reflected in attempting to redesign a major UI component to address the problems that have developed in the old system. I don't know if it is ultimately a plus or not. The rest of your absolutely ridiculous post, I'll leave unaddressed, except to say that: Mice don't cause cancer. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:37, dhbailey wrote: Apple and Microsoft hire very smart people -- and very smart people know how to manipulate statistics. Put up or shut up. Either you can provide some citation somewhere where some expert shows how Apple and MS's research is flawed, or you have nothing at all except irrational hatred of the result. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:56, Christopher Smith wrote: For example, in previous versions, metatools for dynamics were not preassigned. Starting from (I think) version 2002, 4 for forte and 7 for piano, with all the others stepped in between, is so simple and logical, yet I didn't think of it when I was coming up with my own homegrown assignments, and I gladly adhered to the intelligently-chosen Finale defaults as soon as I could. I find the pre-assigned dynamics metatools useless. Indeed, I usually delete many of the dynamic marks from the expression list, because I don't need and , and almost never use fff or ppp. I have always mapped my dynamics in this fashion: 1 f 2 p 3 ff 4 pp 5 mf And that's it. I don't need metatools for any of the other dynamics, because I don't need other dynamic marks regularly enough to need shortcuts. Mapping them in order from loud to soft would be completely counterintuitive to me, as it would mean that the most commonly used dynamics (the ones in the middle) do not get the lowest metatool numbers. All that said, the great thing about metatools is that, whatever the defaults, you can change them to suit yourself. That's good program design. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 3:30 PM -0400 6/26/09, Darcy James Argue wrote: And when I am trying to do something I don't know how to do in an application I'm not 100% familiar with, I tend to look in the *menus* -- I don't think I'm that unusual in that regard. And the Properties Window is indeed accessible through the menus: Window Properties, although there's a simple keyboard shortcut. The window I've totally stopped using is the Navigator Window. I'm sure it makes sense to the developers, and to some users, but it's completely unintuitive to me and drove me nuts! But that's just me. If a feature is not accessible via the menus, but only appears in a separate, context-sensitive window when you have precisely the right object selected, it's easy to overlook. It's certainly a very different UI philosophy from Finale. And I have to ask again, why would one NOT expect a different UI philosophy from a different development team? Seems pretty logical to me. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 4:31 PM -0400 6/26/09, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 22:19, Torges Gerhard wrote: Am 26.06.2009 um 22:12 schrieb David W. Fenton: If there's a properties sheet that's not accessible on Windows via right click, then it's a nonstandard implementation of a properties sheet, and would confuse me, too. It's a floating window, like a palette in a painting program. Always on top of other windows of the same program. And how do you retrieve or dismiss it? Simple: Option/Apple + p toggles it on or off. Or you can go through the Window menu. And as I mentioned before, you can not only move all these windows around, but you can set their transparency as you please. Regardless, it should be accessible via the standard UI convention, and on Windows, that is right clicking the object to get a shortcut menu that offers a PROPERTIES choice. There's nothing esoteric about that -- it's been the standard UI convention for this in Windows for almost 15 years. Er, ... not everyone uses Windows, so it isn't a standard UI convention for everyone at all. (And I hardly need to point out that not everyone even LIKES Windows!) The program that really broke the Apple rules was Composer's Mosaic, which set up its own mini-menus, and therefore they couldn't be called every time Apple upgraded their OS. But that was MotU's problem, not Apple's. Failure to implement standard UI conventions is a user-hostile action on the part of programmers. Again, despite Microsoft's desires, there are other operating systems in use and have been for a long time. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 14:06, John Howell wrote: At 4:31 PM -0400 6/26/09, David W. Fenton wrote: Regardless, it should be accessible via the standard UI convention, and on Windows, that is right clicking the object to get a shortcut menu that offers a PROPERTIES choice. There's nothing esoteric about that -- it's been the standard UI convention for this in Windows for almost 15 years. Er, ... not everyone uses Windows, so it isn't a standard UI convention for everyone at all. But for all Windows users, it's standard UI convention, and on Windows versions of the software, the OS's UI conventions should be followed. [] Failure to implement standard UI conventions is a user-hostile action on the part of programmers. Again, despite Microsoft's desires, there are other operating systems in use and have been for a long time. Where do you get the idea that I'm saying the Mac version should follow Windows UI conventions? I've explicitly said multiple times in this thread that an app should respect the UI rules of the OS that it's running on. Sibelius is flouting one of the most basic and most discoverable UI conventions ON WINDOWS. On the Mac, this is neither here nor there, and I haven't claimed that the Mac version of Sibelius should follow Windows conventions (though my understanding is that Mac applications do, in fact, often adapt the Windows context menu approach). -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 8:43 PM -0400 6/26/09, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 20:23, John Howell wrote: and most Mac users don't even have multi-button mice (although I do happen to have one). Oh, come on! That dogma went out the window years ago! I'm afraid I don't know anything about dogma, but I do know what has shipped with the Apple computers I've gotten over the years. My mouse was a Christmas present from one of my kids, who knew it would be useful to me, as is my add-on full Apple keyboard for home use, another present. So complaining about what right-clicks do or do not do isn't very useful either. The single button mouse has a command that is equivalent to the right click. I seem to recall it's some form of slow click, but I could be misremembering. Control + click. Especially useful on trackpad laptops. Just for the record, I really hated the trackpad when I got my first laptop, but now I'm very comfortable with it. One gets used to anything with practice. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 6/28/2009 12:56 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: Until you can demonstrate that the research is flawed and produces unreliable results, I'm going to believe those who've actually taken the time to design mechanisms for testing the proposition, rather than going with the gut feelings of individual users. For one thing, both Apple and Microsoft SELL mouses. But you probably believe all the drug company research, too. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 14:49, Phil Daley wrote: At 6/28/2009 12:56 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: Until you can demonstrate that the research is flawed and produces unreliable results, I'm going to believe those who've actually taken the time to design mechanisms for testing the proposition, rather than going with the gut feelings of individual users. For one thing, both Apple and Microsoft SELL mouses. Such a huge portion of their profits But you probably believe all the drug company research, too. Brilliant comparison, Phil -- drug companies subsidize studies of their mainline products in order to sell their mainline products. Microsoft and Apple subsidize studies of the user interface in order to promote a minor part of their product lines, at the expense of what might be the best design interests of their principle products. If you believe that, then you probably subscribe to just about every conspiracy theory ever promulgated by the lunatic fringe. Get realistic, folks. MS and Apple really don't have a monetary interest in promoting mouse usage as a way of promoting hardware sales. Claiming that makes you look batshit crazy. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28.06.2009 John Howell wrote: Control + click. Especially useful on trackpad laptops. Just for the record, I really hated the trackpad when I got my first laptop, but now I'm very comfortable with it. One gets used to anything with practice. I have had laptops for more around 12 or 13 years. I really hated the first one's trackball. Now I love the trackpads and find it hard to use a mouse. And I find real right buttons on trackpads a nuissance. The Apple solution with control click suits me well. Johannes ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28.06.2009 Phil Daley wrote: For one thing, both Apple and Microsoft SELL mouses. To defend David on this one: they also sell keyboards, no? If anything they both sell operating systems which relies heavily on the mouse. I don't know, I personally don't think such research really tells you anything at all. If I had to do everything with the keyboard in Finale I would be slower. But I am certainly faster with some actions by using the keyboard. I also used to have some rather clever macros, although most of them have become redundant with certain improvements in Finale. Johannes ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009, at 1:56 PM, John Howell wrote: At 3:30 PM -0400 6/26/09, Darcy James Argue wrote: And when I am trying to do something I don't know how to do in an application I'm not 100% familiar with, I tend to look in the *menus* -- I don't think I'm that unusual in that regard. And the Properties Window is indeed accessible through the menus: Window Properties, although there's a simple keyboard shortcut. Well, obviously, but that was clearly not the kind of accessibility I was talking about. The *elements* controlled by the Properties window -- in this case, font and font size -- are nowhere to be found in the menu bar menus, nor the contextual menu you get by right- clicking text. How is a novice user supposed to that in order to modify these parameters, they have to go digging in the Properties window (which is not open by default and not mentioned in the early tutorials)? And I have to ask again, why would one NOT expect a different UI philosophy from a different development team? Seems pretty logical to me. John, show me *any* other application, of any kind, that deals with fonts and does not have a dedicated Font menu or Font panel. Sibelius's way of working may seem logical in retrospect, but it's totally unlike anything else out there. It's not just different from Finale, it's different from *everything*. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Johannes Gebauer wrote: On 28.06.2009 Phil Daley wrote: For one thing, both Apple and Microsoft SELL mouses. To defend David on this one: they also sell keyboards, no? If anything they both sell operating systems which relies heavily on the mouse. I don't know, I personally don't think such research really tells you anything at all. If I had to do everything with the keyboard in Finale I would be slower. But I am certainly faster with some actions by using the keyboard. I also used to have some rather clever macros, although most of them have become redundant with certain improvements in Finale. Johannes I think a return put-up-or-show-up is necessary: if the research wasn't done by observing up-to-date computer-literate users on recent operating systems, then it's fundamentally flawed for the present discussion. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Darcy James Argue wrote: ... show me *any* other application, of any kind, that deals with fonts and does not have a dedicated Font menu or Font panel. Sibelius's way of working may seem logical in retrospect, but it's totally unlike anything else out there. It's not just different from Finale, it's different from *everything*. I agree. As a long-time Finale user I knew I would have to devote new brain cells to learning Sibelius, but I hoped that the Mac way of doing things would help me out. By the Mac way, I'm talking about exploring the menus, memorizing the keyboard commands along the way, and generally seeing what happens. (I read manuals for fun, but starting there is like asking for directions. Not cool.) It took me a couple of days just to figure out how to put in slurs, dynamics, articulations and other text items with complete control over font, size and appearance. Most of these things don't appear in the menus in the Sibelius 6 demo. Now that I know how, it is easy, but it was frustrating at first. And surprising too, given how often we hear that Sibelius is so intuitive. I'm just saying... -Randolph Peters ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 28 Jun 2009 at 23:30, Owain Sutton wrote: I think a return put-up-or-show-up is necessary: if the research wasn't done by observing up-to-date computer-literate users on recent operating systems, then it's fundamentally flawed for the present discussion. Look, this research has been done repeatedly over the last 25 years and repeatedly has found the same results. Either show that the research is wrong by citing someone with expertise to criticize the studies Apple and Microsoft has done, or recognize that perhaps you don't know how the majority of users interact with their computers. I'm not saying the studies are right. I'm saying THEY EXIST and they have repeatedly concluded that mousing is faster. I don't know the study designs, nor do I know the nature of the testing or the user population. All I know is that Apple and Microsoft have extensive usability labs with professionals trained in testing usability and that is the conclusion they've reached when they've studied the issue scientifically. If you want to dispute it, by all means -- show how the studies were flawed. But all I hear is anecdote -- well, *I* function better with the keyboard -- which has nothing to do with the subject in question, which is not about individual users but about aggregated results from tests of lots and lots of users of different capabilities and backgrounds. It all reminds me of the Republican morons who claim there's no climate change because June has been colder than normal -- in that case it's confusing weather with climate. In the present situation, it's confusing individual experience with the results of testing large populations. Nobody is claiming, including Apple and Microsoft, that for EVERY SINGLE USER, the mouse is faster than the keyboard. But that's what the hostile response seems to me to indicate, that people think a statistical study is invalid if there are any exceptions to its conclusions. I don't get where this kind of statistical illiteracy comes from, or why it's such a religious issue. I function better with the keyboard, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest to find that most people in the studies on the subject manage to do better with the mouse. Why should anyone be upset about such a thing? Puzzled, sure. I'm certainly surprised that so many people function better with the mouse (particularly after watching so many people who are completely inept with the mouse), but so what? I don't have to understand it. Perhaps with proper training in using both the mouse and the keyboard those people's test results would change -- it certainly seems that way to me, as I've done a lot of training of people who have problematic interactions with their computers. But the point remains: At least two companies with a vested interest in creating the best products for their customers have repeatedly found in studies that my common sense does not apply to as many people as I would think. So what? -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: I don't know the study designs, nor do I know the nature of the testing or the user population. I don't get where this kind of statistical illiteracy comes from... Wanting to know the basic details of a study before accepting an assertion of results is statistical illiteracy? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 28, 2009, at 12:56 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: Until you can demonstrate that the research is flawed and produces unreliable results, I'm going to believe those who've actually taken the time to design mechanisms for testing the proposition, rather than going with the gut feelings of individual users. Back in 1999 or thereabouts (WOW! Do I really keep emails that old? Apparently!) Peter Castine argued a similar point, having done his masters thesis on the subject. I did some tests on the version of Finale I had at the time (probably 98) and tested the hypothesis that doing certain actions ONLY with the mouse was faster than doing them ONLY with the keyboard, and I compared them with what I thought was best practice. To try be a fair emulation of an experienced user, I practiced the combinations until I was fluent, then repeated the same action five times in a row while timing myself. The results of my little tests were as follows: The combinations that I thought were the best practice (usually, selecting and dragging with the mouse, but nudging and using metatools and keyboard shortcuts where possible) were, predictably enough, the fastest. Next were keyboard only. I was hampered by the Mac's lack of menu equivalents like Windows has had since forever, but I got through it. with the help of a macro program (programming the macro was not timed). Tasks like selection were slow, and probably skewed the results. Slowest of all was the mouse alone, but not by as much as I had thought originally. Nested menus slowed things up considerably (as I predicted). I did NOT select a bunch of representative tasks, indeed I tested NO system or file tasks at all. I did note entry, assigning expressions and articulations and page layout in Finale, which I was spending most of my time on. Now, it was not entirely scientific (I chose my tasks to represent what I normally did a lot of, and I WAS more used to my usual routine, even after practicing the others) but my conclusion was more or less that you should do what you think is fastest. An additional conclusion was that my impression when I was doing the test was that the mouse was WAY slower, but the actual times were not as long as they SEEMED to be when I was in the process. In other words, mousing FEELS really slow, but it isn't really as slow as you think it is. So gut feeling does affect our choices after all? You know, like you speed to the next intersection way faster than the guy next to you, only to wait at the red light while the guy you passed glides up beside you. You FEEL like you are moving faster, though you are both waiting at the next red light. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
I expect the users who were tested were not that familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. It's obviously faster to make a few keystrokes that navigating a set of menus with a mouse. At 6/26/2009 09:33 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 27 Jun 2009 at 2:20, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. And the tests run by third parties? I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
exactly-keyboard shortcuts have a steeper learning curve-pianists are pretty good with them, though :p 2009/6/27 Phil Daley p_da...@tds.net I expect the users who were tested were not that familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. It's obviously faster to make a few keystrokes that navigating a set of menus with a mouse. At 6/26/2009 09:33 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 27 Jun 2009 at 2:20, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. And the tests run by third parties? I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 2:25 AM +0200 6/26/09, shirling neueweise wrote: It's not even on Sibelius' schedule to implement. sibelius policy is to let you know this isn't needed by many users, we won't implement it. but with a smile, direct from the CEOs. I've heard about that, but I believe it is ancient history and has been for years. At present there is a Senior Product Manager on the Sibelius List (the writer of the Reference Manual, in fact), who gives clear and honest answers regarding potential future upgrades, and will say whether something is on their list or not, and will sometimes give the technical reasons, but will not give such stupid answers. As I said, ancient history. Shame MakeMusic has no interest in that kind of communication with their users. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 7:50 AM +1000 6/26/09, Matthew Hindson (gmail) wrote: Can Sibelius now have bar numbers centred, automatically underneath each bar of the lowest staff in the piece? Couldn't before. In a word, yes, in Sibelius 5 at least. Bar numbers were a mess in Sibelius 4, only because the adjustments and choices were spread over 3 or 4 different places. Not in 5, and I assume not in 6 either. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
It's funny you should mention that - I only ever use the left shift key, even when the other key to be pressed is under that hand. Rather like double-stopping a violin :) Adam Golding wrote: exactly-keyboard shortcuts have a steeper learning curve-pianists are pretty good with them, though :p 2009/6/27 Phil Daley p_da...@tds.net I expect the users who were tested were not that familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. It's obviously faster to make a few keystrokes that navigating a set of menus with a mouse. At 6/26/2009 09:33 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 27 Jun 2009 at 2:20, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. And the tests run by third parties? I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 22:16, Christopher Smith wrote: On Jun 26, 2009, at 9:16 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. Yeah, but mousing is not faster when you start going into menus three layers deep, and have to aim and click a little button. A single, or even two or three, keystrokes is faster by far. Plus, the more you use a certain keystroke, the faster you get at it. Mousing speed reaches its upper limit quickly. I would assume (though I can't say for sure) that such a scenario would have been part of the test suite. It's made up for, though, by the mouse's ability to pick out an item among hundreds on a screen, and click-and-hold or click-and-drag, plus all other goodies a mouse GUI brings. THAT stuff is very slow with keystrokes, which may have skewed the results. Let's say that sometimes a mouse is faster, and sometimes the keystroke is faster. Maybe a mouse is faster ON AVERAGE, but I bet an experienced user using their own choices can beat the control groups handily. All I know is what the researchers report, that overall, mousing is faster than keyboard. I don't know exactly how they tested, but the results have stood up over many years of assault from those who didn't believe them. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 27 Jun 2009 at 7:54, Phil Daley wrote: I expect the users who were tested were not that familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. What an incredibly stupid response. It's obviously faster to make a few keystrokes that navigating a set of menus with a mouse. You really think that Apple and Microsoft didn't control for user experience? This is OLD research. It has been replicated REPEATEDLY. I don't like the conclusion as it seems counterintuitive, but it is what is it is. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Sat, June 27, 2009 7:25 pm, David W. Fenton wrote: All I know is what the researchers report, that overall, mousing is faster than keyboard. I don't know exactly how they tested, but the results have stood up over many years of assault from those who didn't believe them. Was it general public or touch-typists? I'm gonna guess general public, which would make a huge difference. If you have to look, I'd guess mouse is faster. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 27 Jun 2009 at 19:32, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: On Sat, June 27, 2009 7:25 pm, David W. Fenton wrote: All I know is what the researchers report, that overall, mousing is faster than keyboard. I don't know exactly how they tested, but the results have stood up over many years of assault from those who didn't believe them. Was it general public or touch-typists? I'm gonna guess general public, which would make a huge difference. If you have to look, I'd guess mouse is faster. I would assume that they tested reasonable users. I don't know the details of the study design, but Apple and Microsoft have both replicated it repeatedly. I would think both companies have very smart people working for them who know how to design scientifically valid studies, and thus think it's ridiculous to raise trivial objections like the idea that they just didn't test people who know the keyboard shortcuts. This isn't news. I'm surprised people in this forum treat this as though it's new information. It's been decades since the first Apple research showed this, and it's been replicated repeatedly. The conclusion completely contradicts my perception of my interaction with the PC, but that isn't what the research was testing. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
--- On Sat, 6/27/09, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz bath...@maltedmedia.com wrote: Was it general public or touch-typists? I'm gonna guess general public, which would make a huge difference. If you have to look, I'd guess mouse is faster. Having to look is what slows me down when I work with a mouse - if I'm doing something that I can just use the keyboard for, I don't look at the screen, just type, and it's much faster. -- Io la Musica son, ch'ai dolci accenti So far tranquillo ogni turbato core, Et or di nobil ira et or d'amore Poss'infiammar le più gelate menti. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
I'm actually working in Sib 5 tonight. Here are some incredibly frustrating things that I couldn't get Sib to do: - insert a blank page in the middle of a document - add a Text Style that aligns to the vertical center of a page (I use these for page number arrows) - repeat the main headers (including page numbers) on added blank pages I also always find it incredibly frustrating that there is no mechanism in Sibelius for directly changing the font and/or font size. Everything has to be done via Text Styles. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009, at 4:39 AM, Darcy James Argue wrote: - add a Text Style that aligns to the vertical center of a page (I use these for page number arrows) Er, page TURN arrows. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hello Darcy, Am 26.06.2009 um 10:39 schrieb Darcy James Argue: I'm actually working in Sib 5 tonight. Here are some incredibly frustrating things that I couldn't get Sib to do: - insert a blank page in the middle of a document Easy. Insert a page turn (cmd-Enter), select its symbol and change it to special page turn in the properties window. You could make shortcut for that. - add a Text Style that aligns to the vertical center of a page (I use these for page number arrows) There already is one: Create - text - Empty pages test - Simple text (centered) - repeat the main headers (including page numbers) on added blank pages Works here automatically, though there are special text styles for it, too. I also always find it incredibly frustrating that there is no mechanism in Sibelius for directly changing the font and/or font size. Everything has to be done via Text Styles. Hmm. What would be more direct? Gerhard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
2009/6/26 Darcy James Argue djar...@earthlink.net I'm actually working in Sib 5 tonight. Here are some incredibly frustrating things that I couldn't get Sib to do: - insert a blank page in the middle of a document Layout Break Special Page Break... (or Ctrl+Shift+Enter shortcut) - add a Text Style that aligns to the vertical center of a page (I use these for page number arrows) You can do the next best thing and say put the text at 130 mm (or whatever) from the top margin. Be sure to use a system text style, based on Title, or Composer, etc, and not a staff text style like Technique or Expression. - repeat the main headers (including page numbers) on added blank pages The normal header and footer text styles should work already and repeat across music and blank pages on left or right or both sides. New text styles based on these will also work. To print the current page number, use the wildcard \$PageNum\. I also always find it incredibly frustrating that there is no mechanism in Sibelius for directly changing the font and/or font size. Everything has to be done via Text Styles. It's in the Text pane of the Properties window, font and size selection and Bold, Italic, Underline attributes, which can be applied to any portion of the text. Text styles can be powerful when used exclusively, but we're not limited to them for good reason (otherwise text like p cresc. would be impossible because p is in the music text font). Andrew ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi Andrew On 26 Jun 2009, at 6:47 AM, Andrew Moschou wrote: You can do the next best thing and say put the text at 130 mm (or whatever) from the top margin. But this is not the next best thing. If I want a 96 pt. page turn arrow vertically and horizontally centered on a 9 tall page, what values do I enter? Well, it depends how tall the font arrow glyph is. But how do I know how tall it is? I would have to buy a font editor to find out. And then what if the client decides they want 9.5 tall paper instead, mid-project? The whole UI for this is a bit absurd -- Finale can do this easily, Siblelius makes me eyeball it. The normal header and footer text styles should work already and repeat across music and blank pages on left or right or both sides. This does not work for new pages added before the first page. I also always find it incredibly frustrating that there is no mechanism in Sibelius for directly changing the font and/or font size. Everything has to be done via Text Styles. It's in the Text pane of the Properties window, font and size selection and Bold, Italic, Underline attributes, which can be applied to any portion of the text. Ah, so *that* is where it is hidden! Thank you, that is extremely helpful. (I should have known to check there -- Sib hides a lot of its more useful features in the Properties window.) Text styles can be powerful when used exclusively, but we're not limited to them for good reason (otherwise text like p cresc. would be impossible because p is in the music text font). I have always done that by using the keyboard shortcuts for the dynamic p and then typing cresc. -- or, when there is no keyboard shortcut, but selecting the needed symbol by right-clicking. I wasn't aware you could also do this via the Properties window, so thanks for the tip. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi guys, Sibelius's Daniel Spreadbury monitors the Finale list so he emailed me with additional info. I've reproduced it below with my replies. HI Daniel, Thanks for your reply -- much appreciated. On 26 Jun 2009, at 2:25 PM, Daniel Spreadbury wrote: Hi Darcy, I happened to see this post of yours on the Finale mailing list and wanted to try to offer you some assistance: 1. To add a blank page at the end of the score, select the final barline, and choose Layout Break Special Page Break. In the dialog that appears, choose the number of pages, and away you go. Aha! It would not have occurred to me to select the final barline. I did a search for blank page in the manual, which did not turn up any helpful info. I see now that if I had searched for blank pages (plural), the special page breaks item is the fourth result, but it didn't occur to me that I'd get different results searching for blank page vs. blank pages. 2. You can't centre text vertically on a page, Feature request please! but if you know your page dimension, you can create text that is vertically aligned halfway down the page via the Edit Text Styles dialog (notwithstanding your dislike of text styles!). Actually, this doesn't work for my purposes. I would need to know not just the page size but also the font height of whatever character or characters I am using. If I'm using multiple lines of text I'd need to know the total height of all of the lines. I don't dislike Text Styles! I just disliked having to create a new text style every time I wanted to modify the font or font size of a single element. (I didn't know this could be done via Properties.) 3. You can edit the font, style and size of any text object directly using the Text panel of Properties (switch on Window Properties to see this). You can use this to e.g. change a single piece of text from 24pt to 27pt, or change its font, or make it bold, etc. Gotcha. Hope this helps, It does and is much appreciated. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi David, The Properties window does not open by default when you launch Sib. It's not mentioned in any of the basic tutorials. It was a while before I even realized it existed. It takes up a lot of screen real estate so I tend to leave it closed when I work. It's context- sensitive, so you can't see all the things it is capable of controlling at a glance -- you have to select an object first to see what properties are available for modification. And when I am trying to do something I don't know how to do in an application I'm not 100% familiar with, I tend to look in the *menus* -- I don't think I'm that unusual in that regard. If a feature is not accessible via the menus, but only appears in a separate, context-sensitive window when you have precisely the right object selected, it's easy to overlook. It's certainly a very different UI philosophy from Finale. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY On 26 Jun 2009, at 2:49 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 14:27, Darcy James Argue wrote: Sib hides a lot of its more useful features in the Properties window. While I haven't used Sibelius, the idea that access to the properties of text would be hidden by putting them in the properties window seems completely absurd to me. A properties sheet is the first place I'd look! -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 15:30, Darcy James Argue wrote: The Properties window does not open by default when you launch Sib. It's not mentioned in any of the basic tutorials. It was a while before I even realized it existed. It seems obvious to me since the introduction of Windows 95 that if you want to manipulate the characteristics of anything at all on screen, you right click on it in hopes of getting a menu choice to view the object's properties. Perhaps this is a Windows thing, but it is bog standard UI on Windows that a properties dialog is a couple of clicks away for any clickable object. It takes up a lot of screen real estate so I tend to leave it closed when I work. It's context- sensitive, so you can't see all the things it is capable of controlling at a glance -- you have to select an object first to see what properties are available for modification. I don't quite understand why you'd want it to work any other way. It's certainly the convention for properties dialogs as implemented in Windows applications for 15 years or so (and it was present before that in MS Office 4.3, and before that in Borland's products, though it was called the object inspector). And when I am trying to do something I don't know how to do in an application I'm not 100% familiar with, I tend to look in the *menus* -- I don't think I'm that unusual in that regard. Certainly one of the Windows UI rules is that any shortcut menu should be accessible from the standard menu without the requirement for a right click (or the neglected properties button on any standard Windows keyboard). Many applications (including MS's own), and particularly Finale, ignore this rule, in fact, so I'd say you're certainly correct to expect a menu option in Sibelius to give you access to the properties sheet for whatever is currently selected. If a feature is not accessible via the menus, but only appears in a separate, context-sensitive window when you have precisely the right object selected, it's easy to overlook. It's certainly a very different UI philosophy from Finale. I would not be stymied by the lack of a menu choice. Indeed, I'd much more likely right click than go hunting for a menu choice. I guess this UI convention has not been around long enough for it to be second nature to Mac users. And it's yet another of those things that the computer software makers slip into to their products in the interest of making things EASY!!! and INTUITIVE, yet nobody ever gets any training on these aspects of of user interface. It's been that way since the advent of GUIs, where you're supposed to be able to figure it out, but you're out of luck if nobody has ever clued you into the secrets. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi David, Objects in Sibelius can't be right-clicked to invoke Properties or a contextual menu. You have to open the Properties window, then left- click on the object, then open a bunch of disclosure triangles in the Properties window to see if what you want to do is there. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY On 26 Jun 2009, at 3:59 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 15:30, Darcy James Argue wrote: The Properties window does not open by default when you launch Sib. It's not mentioned in any of the basic tutorials. It was a while before I even realized it existed. It seems obvious to me since the introduction of Windows 95 that if you want to manipulate the characteristics of anything at all on screen, you right click on it in hopes of getting a menu choice to view the object's properties. Perhaps this is a Windows thing, but it is bog standard UI on Windows that a properties dialog is a couple of clicks away for any clickable object. It takes up a lot of screen real estate so I tend to leave it closed when I work. It's context- sensitive, so you can't see all the things it is capable of controlling at a glance -- you have to select an object first to see what properties are available for modification. I don't quite understand why you'd want it to work any other way. It's certainly the convention for properties dialogs as implemented in Windows applications for 15 years or so (and it was present before that in MS Office 4.3, and before that in Borland's products, though it was called the object inspector). And when I am trying to do something I don't know how to do in an application I'm not 100% familiar with, I tend to look in the *menus* -- I don't think I'm that unusual in that regard. Certainly one of the Windows UI rules is that any shortcut menu should be accessible from the standard menu without the requirement for a right click (or the neglected properties button on any standard Windows keyboard). Many applications (including MS's own), and particularly Finale, ignore this rule, in fact, so I'd say you're certainly correct to expect a menu option in Sibelius to give you access to the properties sheet for whatever is currently selected. If a feature is not accessible via the menus, but only appears in a separate, context-sensitive window when you have precisely the right object selected, it's easy to overlook. It's certainly a very different UI philosophy from Finale. I would not be stymied by the lack of a menu choice. Indeed, I'd much more likely right click than go hunting for a menu choice. I guess this UI convention has not been around long enough for it to be second nature to Mac users. And it's yet another of those things that the computer software makers slip into to their products in the interest of making things EASY!!! and INTUITIVE, yet nobody ever gets any training on these aspects of of user interface. It's been that way since the advent of GUIs, where you're supposed to be able to figure it out, but you're out of luck if nobody has ever clued you into the secrets. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hello David, Am 26.06.2009 um 22:12 schrieb David W. Fenton: If there's a properties sheet that's not accessible on Windows via right click, then it's a nonstandard implementation of a properties sheet, and would confuse me, too. It's a floating window, like a palette in a painting program. Always on top of other windows of the same program. Gerhard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Both, I am pretty sure (though I've not used Sibelius for Windows.) Right-clicking in Sib (after left-clicking an object to select it) does invoke a contextual menu, but Properties is not one of the options. For instance, if I left-click then right-click a bit of title text, my contextual menu has: Cut Copy Paste Delete Capture Idea Voice Hide or Show Color Reapply color You will notice there is nothing in there about either Properties or Fonts. If I want to modify the font, I have to left-click the title text, open the Properties window, click the Text triangle to expand it, then choose the font from a pull-down menu. (Or go to Edit Text Styles and create or modify a Text Style.) Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY On 26 Jun 2009, at 4:12 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 16:04, Darcy James Argue wrote: Objects in Sibelius can't be right-clicked to invoke Properties or a contextual menu. You have to open the Properties window, then left- click on the object, then open a bunch of disclosure triangles in the Properties window to see if what you want to do is there. On Mac or Windows? Or both? If there's a properties sheet that's not accessible on Windows via right click, then it's a nonstandard implementation of a properties sheet, and would confuse me, too. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
I am one of the users who have Sibelius 5 for the client or two who requires that and use Finale (since 3.7.2 and now 2010) for most things. That withstanding, don't you all think it's pretty cool that Sibelius' product development man, while monitoring the Finale list, is willing to jump in and help?? Sure accentuates the difference in how Sibelius and MakeMusic treat their customers, doesn't it? Just a thought, now back to work Rick Neal Darcy James Argue wrote: Hi guys, Sibelius's Daniel Spreadbury monitors the Finale list so he emailed me with additional info. I've reproduced it below with my replies. -- Rick Neal Teacher, Composer, Arranger, Bassist, Guitarist rickm...@earthlink.net rickm...@gmail.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 22:19, Torges Gerhard wrote: Am 26.06.2009 um 22:12 schrieb David W. Fenton: If there's a properties sheet that's not accessible on Windows via right click, then it's a nonstandard implementation of a properties sheet, and would confuse me, too. It's a floating window, like a palette in a painting program. Always on top of other windows of the same program. And how do you retrieve or dismiss it? Regardless, it should be accessible via the standard UI convention, and on Windows, that is right clicking the object to get a shortcut menu that offers a PROPERTIES choice. There's nothing esoteric about that -- it's been the standard UI convention for this in Windows for almost 15 years. Failure to implement standard UI conventions is a user-hostile action on the part of programmers. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 16:27, Darcy James Argue wrote: Right-clicking in Sib (after left-clicking an object to select it) does invoke a contextual menu, but Properties is not one of the options. Two clicks is user-hostile and nonstandard behavior. Any click should select the object. It's these kind of little details that always made it hard for me to even attempt to use Sibelius. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26.06.2009 David W. Fenton wrote: It's these kind of little details that always made it hard for me to even attempt to use Sibelius. Well, I don't see that Finale is any better in regarding UI standards. It has in fact been known for having a rather non-standard UI. Johannes ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Interesting thread guys, First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. The properties window is brought to the screen with a keyboard shortcut. Since Sibelius allows for re-mapping the keyboard to implement most of its features, I have programmed the letter P to bring up the properties box, instead of the Sibelius default, Playback. Hope this clears a few things up. Dan Carno -Original Message- From: finale-boun...@shsu.edu [mailto:finale-boun...@shsu.edu] On Behalf Of David W. Fenton Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 4:33 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do On 26 Jun 2009 at 16:27, Darcy James Argue wrote: Right-clicking in Sib (after left-clicking an object to select it) does invoke a contextual menu, but Properties is not one of the options. Two clicks is user-hostile and nonstandard behavior. Any click should select the object. It's these kind of little details that always made it hard for me to even attempt to use Sibelius. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 16:53, DANIEL CARNO wrote: First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. Standard Windows UI is that the context menu include PROPERTIES at the bottom of it. Are the Sibelius menus configurable? -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi Dan, On 26 Jun 2009, at 4:53 PM, DANIEL CARNO wrote: Interesting thread guys, First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. No you can't. At least not in Sibelius 5 for Mac. When I right-click on a piece of title text before left-clicking on it, I don't get the contextual menu for the title text. I get the generic contextual menu instead, which appears if you right-click on a blank portion of the score. To get the actual, you know, *contextual* menu for the title text, you need to select the title text first (by left-clicking), then right-click on it. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 26, 2009, at 2:41 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote: Hi guys, Sibelius's Daniel Spreadbury monitors the Finale list so he emailed me with additional info. HOLY CRAP! (sorry for the strong language. Actually, not really.) Man, this is the kind of support we want from our notation software of choice, isn't it? He even monitors the COMPETITION'S grassroots listserve for info about what pros are looking for, and to jump in and offer solutions when he ISN'T EVEN ASKED, and it isn't even his job at the company, really. I must say, it is things like this that kick me closer to the S camp, especially after the dismal upgrade of 2010 Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
I'm with you here. The absence of consistent access to 'properties' in Finale context menus is one thing I'm regularly surprised by anew. They seem, instead, to be 'things we guess you might want to do' menus. Johannes Gebauer wrote: On 26.06.2009 David W. Fenton wrote: It's these kind of little details that always made it hard for me to even attempt to use Sibelius. Well, I don't see that Finale is any better in regarding UI standards. It has in fact been known for having a rather non-standard UI. Johannes ___ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi Darcy, Hmm. I wonder if this is a platform difference? On my PC (Sib 5), when I right-click on a blank part of the score, I get the create menu. When I right click directly on title (or any other) text, I get a context menu that includes, among the usual items (cut, copy paste), hide/show, voice, color, etc. Sib 6 includes more items, but neither version includes properties (a weakness as far as I am concerned, since it does not allow for changing properties with macros). Dan -Original Message- From: finale-boun...@shsu.edu [mailto:finale-boun...@shsu.edu] On Behalf Of Darcy James Argue Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 5:47 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do Hi Dan, On 26 Jun 2009, at 4:53 PM, DANIEL CARNO wrote: Interesting thread guys, First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. No you can't. At least not in Sibelius 5 for Mac. When I right-click on a piece of title text before left-clicking on it, I don't get the contextual menu for the title text. I get the generic contextual menu instead, which appears if you right-click on a blank portion of the score. To get the actual, you know, *contextual* menu for the title text, you need to select the title text first (by left-clicking), then right-click on it. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi David, No, Sibelius menus cannot be configured; just access to them can be altered via keystrokes. The properties menu cannot be accessed via the context menu for a given object. It remains a separate window. Maybe next upgrade Dan -Original Message- From: finale-boun...@shsu.edu [mailto:finale-boun...@shsu.edu] On Behalf Of David W. Fenton Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 5:45 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: RE: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do On 26 Jun 2009 at 16:53, DANIEL CARNO wrote: First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. Standard Windows UI is that the context menu include PROPERTIES at the bottom of it. Are the Sibelius menus configurable? -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4193 (20090626) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Christopher Smith wrote: On Jun 26, 2009, at 2:41 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote: Hi guys, Sibelius's Daniel Spreadbury monitors the Finale list so he emailed me with additional info. HOLY CRAP! (sorry for the strong language. Actually, not really.) Man, this is the kind of support we want from our notation software of choice, isn't it? He even monitors the COMPETITION'S grassroots listserve for info about what pros are looking for, and to jump in and offer solutions when he ISN'T EVEN ASKED, and it isn't even his job at the company, really. I must say, it is things like this that kick me closer to the S camp, especially after the dismal upgrade of 2010 Christopher On a sidenote, I think there are many Sibelians over here and many Finalists over there... ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
I can see how the regular use of a persistent 'properties' window makes sense for some users, who will be routinely modifying all sorts of details. However, I think what is the unspoken query here is Why can't I change the appearance of text as easily as in Word? In other words, drop-down boxes. Yes, Word automatically assigns styles according to what you choose, but 99%+ of users never notice this. (Whether that's a success of the 'style' implementation or a criticism, I'm not sure.) DANIEL CARNO wrote: Hi David, No, Sibelius menus cannot be configured; just access to them can be altered via keystrokes. The properties menu cannot be accessed via the context menu for a given object. It remains a separate window. Maybe next upgrade Dan -Original Message- From: finale-boun...@shsu.edu [mailto:finale-boun...@shsu.edu] On Behalf Of David W. Fenton Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 5:45 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: RE: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do On 26 Jun 2009 at 16:53, DANIEL CARNO wrote: First of all, you can right-click directly on an object in Sibelius and bring up the context menu. Standard Windows UI is that the context menu include PROPERTIES at the bottom of it. Are the Sibelius menus configurable? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 23:50, Owain Sutton wrote: I can see how the regular use of a persistent 'properties' window makes sense for some users, who will be routinely modifying all sorts of details. I haven't seen the exact implementation of this persistent properties window, but it reminds me of the highly annoying task pane that Microsoft introduced in Office XP, continued through Office 2003 and then almost eliminated in Office 2007. If find the non-dialogue-based interaction with the task pane extremely frustrating (Word 2003's mail merge just baffles me). And Microsoft realized there was something dreadfully off with their UI, which is why they made the huge change to the ribbon interface. Whether or not you think this was a good idea is another issue. However, I think what is the unspoken query here is Why can't I change the appearance of text as easily as in Word? In other words, drop-down boxes. Yes, Word automatically assigns styles according to what you choose, but 99%+ of users never notice this. (Whether that's a success of the 'style' implementation or a criticism, I'm not sure.) Microsoft makes it possible to do things in multiple ways, either directly interacting with a particular piece of text, or altering the properties of a whole class of text objects that have a style applied to them. This is a good way to do things, as you sometimes need to override the basic style for a particular instance. This should be easy to do, not something that is complicated by the style interface. If MS had insisted on using its style editing interface (which has always been pretty hideous), everybody's Word documents would have been in 10 point Times New Roman! Styles are very powerful. But they take a lot of planning, and it's sometimes not worth it to have to go through that level of thought just to get a quick-and- dirty result. I admire the application of styles to music layout. Certainly Finale suffers from its over-flexibility (i.e., complete lack of enforcement of consistency), but rigidity is just as much a problem. I suspect that Sibelius is not as rigid as it's being made out to be, and that Finale users like me who've found it frustrating have just not figured out how Sibelius conceptualizes the desired tasks. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
At 7:07 PM -0400 6/26/09, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 23:50, Owain Sutton wrote: I can see how the regular use of a persistent 'properties' window makes sense for some users, who will be routinely modifying all sorts of details. I just experimented, using a Sib5 score I maintain for experimenting. I entered the word arco in Technique Text (a text class which automatically causes certain things to happen, in this case switching from pizz. to arco or back again). Using the Properties Window I very quickly changed that text to italic and then made it bold. Piece of cake, and a total of 3 clicks since I have the Properties Window open anyhow for the project I'm now working on. (It can be made more or less transparent, by the way.) Of course I didn't know I could do this until someone HERE mentioned it within the last 24 hours, but I can and I did and it worked exactly as I wanted it to! Am I wrong, or isn't arguing about the way two different development teams chose to implement any particular action something less than helpful? And as far as the Windows GUI goes, those of us who have never used Windows at all couldn't care less, and most Mac users don't even have multi-button mice (although I do happen to have one). So complaining about what right-clicks do or do not do isn't very useful either. Of COURSE any software will do things in one way or in another, and one of the most persistent complaints I've read on this List is the way functions in Finale have been moved around from one version to the next. As David Bailey has so calmly pointed out, maybe Finale does exactly what you need, or maybe Sibelius does, or maybe neither one of them does (especially in contemporary or non-measure-attached notation), but complaining just because they're different strikes me as something of a waste of time and effort. I suspect that Sibelius is not as rigid as it's being made out to be, and that Finale users like me who've found it frustrating have just not figured out how Sibelius conceptualizes the desired tasks. The best summary I've seen, David. A beginner would no doubt say exactly the same thing about Finale, coming from, say, Mosaic, or Music Construction Set!! Or Score, for that matter. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 20:23, John Howell wrote: At 7:07 PM -0400 6/26/09, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 23:50, Owain Sutton wrote: I can see how the regular use of a persistent 'properties' window makes sense for some users, who will be routinely modifying all sorts of details. I just experimented, using a Sib5 score I maintain for experimenting. I entered the word arco in Technique Text (a text class which automatically causes certain things to happen, in this case switching from pizz. to arco or back again). Using the Properties Window I very quickly changed that text to italic and then made it bold. Piece of cake, and a total of 3 clicks since I have the Properties Window open anyhow for the project I'm now working on. (It can be made more or less transparent, by the way.) Of course I didn't know I could do this until someone HERE mentioned it within the last 24 hours, but I can and I did and it worked exactly as I wanted it to! Am I wrong, or isn't arguing about the way two different development teams chose to implement any particular action something less than helpful? Yes, of course it's helpful. Applications should implement features in a way that is consistent with the platform the application is running on: And as far as the Windows GUI goes, those of us who have never used Windows at all couldn't care less, But those of us running Windows want an application that uses Windows UI conventions, just as you want an app that uses Mac UI conventions. This is not a triviality -- an app should not feel foreign to the OS it's running on. If it does, it's more difficult for users to learn and use. and most Mac users don't even have multi-button mice (although I do happen to have one). Oh, come on! That dogma went out the window years ago! So complaining about what right-clicks do or do not do isn't very useful either. The single button mouse has a command that is equivalent to the right click. I seem to recall it's some form of slow click, but I could be misremembering. Of COURSE any software will do things in one way or in another, and one of the most persistent complaints I've read on this List is the way functions in Finale have been moved around from one version to the next. As David Bailey has so calmly pointed out, maybe Finale does exactly what you need, or maybe Sibelius does, or maybe neither one of them does (especially in contemporary or non-measure-attached notation), but complaining just because they're different strikes me as something of a waste of time and effort. This is a very different kind of discussion. Applications should follow well-established UI conventions for the platforms on which they are running. Right click for properties on Windows is a UI requirement, not something that is optional. That Finale is inconsistent in implementing it is not an excuse for Sibelius to get it wrong. I suspect that Sibelius is not as rigid as it's being made out to be, and that Finale users like me who've found it frustrating have just not figured out how Sibelius conceptualizes the desired tasks. The best summary I've seen, David. A beginner would no doubt say exactly the same thing about Finale, coming from, say, Mosaic, or Music Construction Set!! Or Score, for that matter. But let me repeat that there are basic OS UI conventions that should be respected. Whether or not the Mac version exposes the properties dialog via an easily accessible shortcut menu is really irrelevant -- on Windows, that is the way it ought to be, because that's the standard for the OS and has been so for a very, very long time. Discoverability depends on consistency with user expectations, and failing to implement a properties dialog that is accessible via a shotcut menu is not helpful for discoverability. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
John Howell wrote: At 7:07 PM -0400 6/26/09, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 23:50, Owain Sutton wrote: I can see how the regular use of a persistent 'properties' window makes sense for some users, who will be routinely modifying all sorts of details. I just experimented, using a Sib5 score I maintain for experimenting. I entered the word arco in Technique Text (a text class which automatically causes certain things to happen, in this case switching from pizz. to arco or back again). Using the Properties Window I very quickly changed that text to italic and then made it bold. Piece of cake, and a total of 3 clicks since I have the Properties Window open anyhow for the project I'm now working on. (It can be made more or less transparent, by the way.) Measuring 'numbers of clicks' isn't a good way of rating productivity, however - I very rarely resort to the mouse to make such changes, in Word or in OpenOffice. Multiple clicks either indicates an unawareness of keyboard shortcuts, or an unavailability of them for the software in question. (IIRC a long-standing principle of Microsoft was that all Windows software should be potentially fully controlled by the keyboard alone - which is particularly useful when, for example, a non-standard input device for people with a disability is being developed. As long as it can create all combinations of keystrokes, it'll work. Except with software which decides it knows better, and allows non-standard use of mouse clicks etc.) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Owain Sutton m...@owainsutton.co.ukwrote: Measuring 'numbers of clicks' isn't a good way of rating productivity, however - I very rarely resort to the mouse to make such changes, in Word or in OpenOffice. Multiple clicks either indicates an unawareness of keyboard shortcuts, or an unavailability of them for the software in question. I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. Thanks Kim ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 26, 2009, at 5:43 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: The single button mouse has a command that is equivalent to the right click. I seem to recall it's some form of slow click, but I could be misremembering. Control/Click on Mac, David. Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. (BTW, those who think there's no keyboard equivalent of RIGHT-CLICK on Windows are wrong -- there's an entire key devoted to it on any standard Windows keyboard, including laptops) -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. And the tests run by third parties? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
- 2009/6/27 Darcy James Argue djar...@earthlink.net Hi Andrew On 26 Jun 2009, at 6:47 AM, Andrew Moschou wrote: You can do the next best thing and say put the text at 130 mm (or whatever) from the top margin. But this is not the next best thing. If I want a 96 pt. page turn arrow vertically and horizontally centered on a 9 tall page, what values do I enter? Well, it depends how tall the font arrow glyph is. But how do I know how tall it is? I would have to buy a font editor to find out. And then what if the client decides they want 9.5 tall paper instead, mid-project? The whole UI for this is a bit absurd -- Finale can do this easily, Siblelius makes me eyeball it. If it's not the next best thing, then what do you propose is better that it, but not as good as vertically centred text? You will need to do some calculation: Call the page height p (say 9), the top margin t (say 0.5) and the bottom margin b (say 0.75). Call the font size a (say 96 pt), this is the distance from bottom of descender to top of ascender. Note that 72 pt = 1, so a = 96/72 = 1.333 and 1 = 25.4 mm. Now the distance from the top margin to put the text is: (p - t - b - n*a)/2 = (9 - 0.5 - 0.75 - 1*1.333)/2 = 3.208 = 3.208*2.54 = 81.5 mm, where n = 1. In my testing, I found that this calcuation is accurate to within about 2 millimetres. I don't know where the error came from. Note that this calculation applies to a single line text. If you have two lines of text, then set n = 2, etc. If you client wants decides to have 9.5 paper, then set p = 9.5 and recalculate the value. There is no need to open the font in a font editor, the point size of the text tells you how tall each line is. Andrew ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On 27 Jun 2009 at 2:20, Owain Sutton wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. And the tests run by third parties? I don't know. While one could say that Apple had an agenda, MS came late to that ballgame. Why would Apple and Microsoft have an incentive to misrepresent the research? What good would it do them to design their products to be less useful than they could be? -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
On Jun 26, 2009, at 9:16 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts. And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding. It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts. Yeah, but mousing is not faster when you start going into menus three layers deep, and have to aim and click a little button. A single, or even two or three, keystrokes is faster by far. Plus, the more you use a certain keystroke, the faster you get at it. Mousing speed reaches its upper limit quickly. It's made up for, though, by the mouse's ability to pick out an item among hundreds on a screen, and click-and-hold or click-and-drag, plus all other goodies a mouse GUI brings. THAT stuff is very slow with keystrokes, which may have skewed the results. Let's say that sometimes a mouse is faster, and sometimes the keystroke is faster. Maybe a mouse is faster ON AVERAGE, but I bet an experienced user using their own choices can beat the control groups handily. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hi Andrew, On 26 Jun 2009, at 9:22 PM, Andrew Moschou wrote: If it's not the next best thing, then what do you propose is better that it, but not as good as vertically centred text? I didn't mean this is not the next best thing literally. My point was that the solution you propose is not at all comparable to just selecting the option for vertically centered text. You will need to do some calculation: Call the page height p (say 9), the top margin t (say 0.5) and the bottom margin b (say 0.75). Call the font size a (say 96 pt), this is the distance from bottom of descender to top of ascender. No, it isn't. There are differences between glyphs. Some are taller than others. Some have descenders, some don't, etc. There is no need to open the font in a font editor, Yes there is -- see above. Regardless, even once I know the actual height of the character (or lines of text) I'm trying to center vertically, having to run these calculations is an enormous pain in the ass. Finale's had vertically centered text for as long as I've been using the application -- there's no reason why Sibelius shouldn't be able to do this quickly and easily and without the user having to break out a calculator. Cheers, - Darcy - djar...@earthlink.net Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
My main issue that Sibelius cannot do is a small thing, but something I really want. That is, to be able to have a system start with (for instance) the double bar that appears at the end of the previous system. It will not do that and, according to the Sibelius people, I shouldn't want it to. However, that is a normal practice of notation where I work (Los Angeles). It's not even on Sibelius' schedule to implement. All the best, KIM R On Jun 25, 2009, at 10:00 AM, finale-requ...@shsu.edu wrote: Just out of curiosity, what can't Sibelius do which are essential for your scores and productivity? -- David H. Bailey ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Hey Kim, I agree with you. Terry Cano (Studio City) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Can Sibelius now have bar numbers centred, automatically underneath each bar of the lowest staff in the piece? Couldn't before. Matthew Kim Richmond wrote: My main issue that Sibelius cannot do is a small thing, but something I really want. That is, to be able to have a system start with (for instance) the double bar that appears at the end of the previous system. It will not do that and, according to the Sibelius people, I shouldn't want it to. However, that is a normal practice of notation where I work (Los Angeles). It's not even on Sibelius' schedule to implement. All the best, KIM R On Jun 25, 2009, at 10:00 AM, finale-requ...@shsu.edu wrote: Just out of curiosity, what can't Sibelius do which are essential for your scores and productivity? -- David H. Bailey ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do
Well, the Sibelius 6 demo showed me enough to make me think cross-upgrading (and keeping Finale going) was worth doing. So, after many years of using Finale exclusively, I've started using Sibelius. (And interestingly, even though it was a competitive upgrade, I was able to register my copy online using the 'register using someone else's computer.' I don't know if at some point in the future they'll ask for my Finale 3.7 manual pages or not). I've only had Sibelius 6 for a few days, but yes, you can center bar numbers underneath the lowest staff in a piece. The engraving rules seem fairly powerful and easy enough to make adjustments to fit one's own needs in most situations (with bar numbers, but also other situations). James Gilbert -Original Message- From: finale-boun...@shsu.edu [mailto:finale-boun...@shsu.edu] On Behalf Of Matthew Hindson (gmail) Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 5:50 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: Re: [Finale] Re: WHAT Sibelius can't do Can Sibelius now have bar numbers centred, automatically underneath each bar of the lowest staff in the piece? Couldn't before. Matthew Kim Richmond wrote: My main issue that Sibelius cannot do is a small thing, but something I really want. That is, to be able to have a system start with (for instance) the double bar that appears at the end of the previous system. It will not do that and, according to the Sibelius people, I shouldn't want it to. However, that is a normal practice of notation where I work (Los Angeles). It's not even on Sibelius' schedule to implement. All the best, KIM R ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
