Thanks Tyler for the suggestion of using the new 'drag expressions'
to deal with the crippling of Staff Lists in 2k9. It's not going to
be anywhere near as convenient and efficient. I'm in the same boat as
Bernard Savoie and others who have made extensive use of SLs and I'll
probably have to have 'pre-2k9' and 'post 2k9' files littered around
my HDs, like it's not enough to have to keep practically every
version of the Finale apps that came out so as to access older files
without updating them.
I posted MM and got the following reply:
At 10:05 -0500 28/7/08, MakeMusic Customer Support wrote:
The decision to limit Finale 2009 to 4 staff groups was done after
much testing and work with clinicians. We will be limiting Finale
2009 to 4 groups at this time, but I will put in your request for
changes to be made to later versions.
I won't hold my breath.
What I find sad about this is the mindset/culture at MM, yet again.
Testing with clinicians is fine but when contemplating scaling back a
feature such as SLs that have been around for a while, wouldn't it
have made sense to run it past a bigger group of users apart from the
people who you have on your books as clinicians, undoubtedly very
knowledgeable about Finale? I mean to say, how hard would it have
been to have posted on this list and the official MM forums an
innocuous line like, 'hey, anybody out there using SLs?' (from a
'lurker' email address or an anonymous remailer if MM were paranoid
about commercial-in-confidence issues). I understand that MM might
not want to be beholden to this or any other community of users; but
instead of seeing this particular and important, long-time community
of Finale users as part of the solution, with its broad base from
amateurs to pros and international perspectives, the group is ignored
and treated like an 'other', ie the enemy.
shame because other aspects of Finale in recent years such as linked
parts and now upgrades to expressions, resizable dialogs (although
poorly implemented), scripts and aria/vst playback features are very
worthwhile. I'm not averse to change, however, it doesn't auger well
for other long-time features of Finale like Speedy entry (pitch
before duration) that I've used exclusively since v.1.x and the
powerful but lamentably-dated Shape Designer.
--
cheers, Claudio
****************************************************
Claudio Pompili
composer, sound designer, music consultant
http://www.claudiopompili.net.au/ (**2002-2003 Golden Web Award**)
Skype: claudiop_509
Australian Music Centre http://www.amcoz.com.au;
http://www.amcoz.com.au/composers/composer.asp?id=236
****************************************************
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