Allen J. Fisher wrote: > >My name is Allen Fisher and I am a Coda employee and occasional lurker on >this list. During the time I've been on the list, I've noticed some >complaints about Finale's default settings. Specific suggestions on what >could be done to improve this area of Finale are often in short supply. If >any of you have specific suggestions on improving Finale's defaults, I'd >like to hear from you. We are at a point in the year when we are looking at >the default files and deciding what changes are to be made. Please feel free >to share them with me, either on or off-list.
Hi, Allen, and thanks for being willing to listen. I'm one of those who dislikes the defaults, for the simple reason that they look amateurish in spite of improvements, and who believes that the product should function at optimum output right out of the box. (The power users disagree, of course, because they LIKE to tweak!) But I'd like to suggest that a list of suggested improvements is a rather poor way to approach the problem, given Coda's history of ignoring such requests. No, there is no universally-accepted standard of what looks good on a page of music. But there are many, many examples of fine engraving practice from many 19th and 20th century publishers, any one of which would make a very fine default indeed. IMHO, the answer is not to have engineers tinker with an art form they barely understand, but to hire as a consultant someone who has encyclopedic knowledge of the history and practice of music engraving to design the best-looking default settings in existence. It would be a godsend to those of us who have no intention and no need of becoming programmers! Mark of the Unicorn did an exemplary job with the default output of Mosaic (especially important because tweaking is essentially impossible), and apparently Sibelius offers several "house" settings that do the same. All that's needed is for Coda to take responsibility for following the pathway that others in the industry have already followed. And by the way, our music department started with Mosaic, switched to Finale about 4 years ago, and will probably make a decision to switch to Sibelius within the next month because starting this summer we are moving to Mac OS X and must have a product that is compatible with it. John John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
