At 03:24 PM 6/16/02 -0400, you wrote:
On 16 Jun 2002, at 9:48, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
> On 16.06.2002 6:49 Uhr, Eric Dannewitz wrote
>
> > I am an owner of both the PC and Mac versions of Finale. I noticed that
> > you can't import MUS nor ETF files from Finale 2003 into Finale 2002 on
> > the Mac.
> >
> > I am wondering WHY Coda keeps changing the file format. Seems like
> > nothing major changed in 2003. Not even Microsoft changes file formats.
> > I can compose something on my Windows Office XP and load it into Office
> > 2001 for mac, and save it, then open it in Windows XP again.
> >
> > Any insight into this? Is a MIDI file the only resort?
>
> The new Tab format would not be supported, the new options for Engraver
> slurs would not be supported, and probably a few more things.
>
> Makes it rather difficult on Coda's part to stay backwards compatible, and
> I'd rather see Coda invest this time into new features.
>
> If you compare this to Word, the latest versions didn't need new file
> formats, because they didn't add anything new that required it. Different
> story with Finale.
First of all, it's really unfair to even attempt to compare Finale's file
format to a word processor's file format. A Word document has an
extremely simple structure, even if it has embedded graphics, Excel
spreadsheets or whatever. Finale's files are database files. Compare
Finale's file format changes to the database program in MS Office, and
you get a different story: the file format for Access has changed with
every single version. Access 2002 (the version in Office XP) is the first
to be able to use two file formats, the Access 2000 format and the Access
2002 format. This is because Microsoft has upgraded the Jet database
engine with every single version of Access *until* Access 2002, because
the Jet database engine is no longer in development. That is, there will
be no more changes/enhancements to the Jet database engine, ever. The
difference between the Access 2000 file format and the Access 2002 format
is the addition in Access 2002 of some custom properties specific to
Access 2002 that have no meaning in Access 2000. An Access 2002 can still
not be opened in Access 2000 because of these extensions, but the Access
2000 files can be opened in Access 2002 without conversion and run native.
Access 2000 allowed you to open Access 97 files without conversion (no
previous version of Access allowed this), but at the cost of doubling the
size of the file (basically, Access 2K converts the file within itself in
a manner that still allows it to be used and edited in A97), but you
can't make structural changes, only changes to data. And Access 2000
allowed you to convert back to Access 97, with the natural loss of an A2K-
specific features.
So, in a limited fashion, database file formats can be made compatible
*if* there is a lot of work done to make them so. Of course, Microsoft
doesn't release a new version of Access every year, as compared to Coda
with Finale.
My conclusion is that it's probably theoretically possible to have some
form of backwards compatibility in Finale (at least a SAVE AS PREVIOUS
VERSION), but that a company like Coda, which lacks Microsoft's vast
resources, and depends on the yearly upgrade cycle for its revenues,
simply lacks the resources to make that happen. And it wouldn't surprise
me if it didn't take a major revision of the file format to make it
possible (if the file format isn't designed for extensions in the first
place, it's usually very hard to do this kind of thing).
--
David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc
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