Klarinet Archive - Posting 001113.txt from 2003/06

From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Grrrr - silly software!
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 16:39:06 -0400

Yes, indeed. When I got into this hobby around 1995, I asked one of our
electronic musicians at the university where I teach which music notation
software he would recommend. He told me that Finale is the software of
choice, so I started with a pirated version 3.0 until I was sure I liked it
then I bought a legal version 3.7. When I discovered that Coda makes every
new version (about once a year) to write files which cannot be read by
earlier versions I was very angry, so I decided to continue to make my
files available via version 3.7. Meanwhile the other competitor, Encore,
went bankrupt. Sibelius began to emerge around 1998 or so and seems to be
a stiff competitor with Finale. I figure what it will take is for some
eager beaver in software to receive sufficient funding to figure out the
Sibelius and Finale files and simply to write a program which will convert
between the two. Of course that will mean figuring out little changes that
have been made in succeeding versions so as to have a broad compatibility.

I'm happy with Finale, but not at all happy with the people at Coda
Software. Moreover, they're missing a good bet, in my opinion by not
offering a sufficient number of pieces of music on a CD-ROM along with a
complete version of Finale (for transpositions, part extraction,
etc.). They wouldn't have to offer more than about 20 pieces of music to
be competitive with sheet music publishers (if they sold it for the
Educational/Theological price of around $250). I don't know why they don't
do it. Someone ought to do it. Maybe Sibelius.

Oliver

At 07:52 PM 06/28/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>Am I right in thinking that Finale is the grown up product of choice
>over there whilst Sibelius is over here?

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