BTW It doesn't take that long to work with score. There are menus to
click and choose things like any other windows program but the keyboard
is always quicker. I can issue a command "st 99 5" which will cycle
through every slur on the page by pressing <enter> making changes as a
go. Indeed using the st command you can cycle through each of Score
parameters making changes without touching the mouse.
Also Score installs from one floppy disk. Makes you wonder the junk the
other programs have since these days they install from a DVD.
Well, one main reason might be because the bulk of the programs is related
to playback (sibelius 4 comes in a cd, which isn't by any means full - sib
5 comes in a dvd, mainly due to the sound sets, I think). Sibelius 3 was
30Mb big, and 5 goes up to 300mb without soundsets, I think. Of course,
there are many things about score that don't get mentioned in these
replies, like:
- no playback whatsoever (doesn't bother me personally, but I think many
people expect/depend on that from a notation program)
- display is ugly and out-of-date, you must use your imagination to look
at grey, low-resolution graphics and imagine a beautifully prize-winning
score.
- you work only with the fonts the program brings, and print by loading
them to a postscript printer (at least it was told me so by experienced
scorers in their office). Or after having a batch of eps files for an
x-page score (see next item), convert and join them to a pdf.
- the program works like a plate-modelled system: if you have a score with
40 pages, you will have *one separate score file per page* (yes, you read
it right), just like it happened if you would be working on copper plates.
(Then add more x files for the parts to that). afaik there are plugins
that remove one bar from one file to add it to the next one, make the
printing easier, etc. etc., but that's still archaic. And scorers love it
that way.
I find strange that for one hand scorers pledge for stability and really
tight standards that only their program can offer - and yet they can't run
their program nowadays with it being in a simulated environment, after
tweaking lots of things in their system to get it working (including
printing and midi capabilities) at standards from 10 years ago.
Unfortunately the program doesn't seem to develop: for years the windows
version has been announced as finished (only the documentation missing),
and no one has ever saw a glimpse of it, even scorers are complaining
about the lack of (promised) updates. I for one would like to try it, but
I won't be wasting my time simulating an environment that isn't actual
anymore for a program which I don't know yet if I can work with, so I
would have to wait paciently for the new windows version.
Look at the websites for both Finale and Sibelius they only mention
individual users and not major publishing houses. This is major
opportunity that both Finale and Sibelius have failed to realise.
Look at http://www.sibelius.com/selection/index.html, was that what you
were talking about?
Tradition might have a role in the importance of score around
well-established publishing houses: as I guess, score was the only
professional notation software around for years (starting in the 80s?),
and it works in the same way that copper-plates do. So the people already
working for publishers like that found a program that was built on their
ways - and of course must be said, was well-enough developed to allow them
a precise control of their outputs. And only the best and more traditional
publishers (with already centuries of existence) could afford to have the
workshops for copper plates in the first place, so they would prefer to
choose a system that was a) the only one existing at the time, and b) was
developed based on their maturelly-developed working methods. And that
creates a stable working environment, which continued as of today - until
due to technology developments they are really forced to modernise their
software, and change to more actual softwares.
I'm making this up as I go, but it seems logical to me.
I don't know about Bärenreiter, but I know that Henle went from Score to
Sibelius (and maybe finale): Joachim Linckelmann (the person in charge of
the german version of sibelius and responsible for Notensatzdienst
Freiburg, which you find many times in the previous list) worked on the
font himself, as he reports in
http://de.groups.yahoo.com/group/sibelius-music-german/message/4157 (yahoo
german sibelius list, I guess you might have to be signed in and read
german to understand it).
All this doesn't so much point to the strengths of Score but weaknesses
in the other two and their inability to listen to needs of their
customers.
that is true, both sib and fin are working more into nivelling everything
by a sub-standard to get enough market share, as to really finding a
definite solution. and with the competition getting more and more
agressive, it doesn't look good for users who care about quality.
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