Chuck Israels wrote:
On Jan 6, 2006, at 5:08 PM, Christopher Smith wrote:
On Jan 6, 2006, at 6:59 PM, Owain Sutton wrote:
Christopher Smith wrote:
Really, though, there IS a limit to how intuitive a complex program
like Finale could be.
Why?
No, I don't think it's an antagonistic comment. I think it's a
valid question. Music notation, while complex, isn't *that*
complex. The arrangement of the notation on the page, with as
little effort as can be achieved, is the difficult task. I don't
see that there's an obvious limit to how far this process can go.
If your comment was intended to say "there's a limit to how
intuitive an interface such as that of Finale can be", then that's a
different matter.
I honestly don't see the difference. Finale is one of the most
powerful notation programs on the planet, and its interface reflects
that. Balancing off getting things right without our input against
giving us the power to change things is VERY complex! Sibelius maybe
takes things out of our hands a bit more in return for a simpler
interface (which I don't think I could live with as easily) while
Score, by all reports, let you do almost ANYTHING while doing almost
nothing for you, and was beastly difficult to learn and use.
To use an example I gave in the original post - what is the most
"intuitive" keystroke for toggling between Page and Scroll View? To
answer my own question, there is none. That is one of the limits one
comes up against rather quickly.
Or my other example - Staff tool, Smart Shape tool and Speedy Entry -
all start with S, so which one gets assigned to the S key? Whoops!
That key is not available. Neither are the second letters. Maybe a
bigger keyboard...
Christopher,
In response to the last suggestion: you can add an extension keyboard
that can be mapped to combination keystrokes. I have one set up for
tool selection, but I'm not sure it saves much time compared to mousing
for tools. Put on the left, it pulls your LH away from stuff it is
often otherwise poised to do, and put on the right - beyond the mouse,
it's as far away as (or further than) a mouse reach for a tool. All in
all, I'm underwhelmed, gadget oriented though I may be. Anyone who
thinks this would be good to try is welcome to write me for details,
but I'm just not sure it's worth it.
One terrific feature of Sibelius which Finale would do well to copy is
that all keyboard shortcuts can be user-programmed to be whatever the
user wants them to be.
don't like ctrl-s for save? Change it to whatever you want. Hate using
the numeric-keypad for selecting note values? Change them. I recently
discovered that (my new year's resolution was to get to know Sibelius
better) and I simply assigned the same number keys that Finale uses so I
can use what is basically a Sibelius-version of Finale's speedy entry.
I think that if Finale were to add this feature we would be able to
avoid this ongoing discussion about intuitive user interface, as we make
our own interface which would presumably be intuitive to us as individuals.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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