Many software programs provide only limited backwards compatibility, allowing you to save your file in a previous format but with the warning that some formatting features will be lost.
Others have figured out how to go through several major releases without altering their data structure, so compatibility remains perfect between releases, changing only the way the user interacts with the data structures instead of changing the structures themselves. Mature applications such as word processing are like this -- with all the font alterations and page-layout issues and graphics placement already solved most of what remains is the interaction between user and data.
Notation is still a growing field and has yet to mature, as Coda's developers learn how to include more aspects of notation control, which constantly changes the data structure.
Eventually (soon?) Finale will reach maturity and will be able to maintain a constant data structure across releases.
Craig Parmerlee wrote:
At 05:51 PM 6/5/2003 -0400, Aaron Sherber wrote:
I admit that many of Finale's new features have looked like marketing-driven things to help sell the product to new users. And I, like many other users, have my own personal list of thing I wish Coda would fix or improve instead of giving us multi-colored icons. But I would say that for frequent users, it takes only a little bit of added value to make the upgrade worth it over the course of the year.
$100 isn't going to make or break me. If there were even the slight possibility that 2003 were better than 2002 WITHOUT ANY DRAWBACKS, I would spend the upgrade money the first day they announced the product. But each Finale release has a HUGE drawback. Coda is possibly the only vendor of a major software product that does not provide backwards compatibility. That means that if I upgrade to 2003, I no longer can exchange files with friends and collaborators who are still using 2002.
That is stupid programming.
That is stupid marketing.
If they would use just a little bit of sense here, they's have my upgrade money in the bank within a week of each announcement. But they've chosen an obtuse approach, so I choose to wait until there is enough extra value to compensate me for the aggravation they cause me by not having inter-release compatibility like 99.999% of the other software vendors out there.
I hope 2004 is a killer because I'd like to upgrade. But if it doesn't save files back at least to F2002, then I'll probably skip the 2004 upgrade too unless it is an absolute blockbuster.
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-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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