i think this kind of competition will tell more about the skills of individual engravers than the programmes themselves.
how can you limit and check the control parameters? time limitations can't be controlled and don't take into account how much time and effort the user has spent on their templates and working space. are other programmes allowed as assistants and to what degree? iKey/QuicKeys for workspace efficiency? illustrator for graphics? font creation programmes? james ingram used finale + graphics programmes + his own (not commericially available) programmes on scores that won important european competitions in his time as a stockhausen slave... er, collaborator, i meant. one programme's ease of use to the new user might be counterbalanced by another's elegance in high-end beyond-publication quality control.
i have my developed my own fonts, which as a set are more coherent (for new music notation) than most users' setup in finale / sibelius so score loses here because font use is limited; but score's spacing algorithm is better than other programmes... but i can nudge each individual note with beat charts in finale. but... but... and... but... although...
a more interesting task for me would be to develop a competition to see which "camp" can get more beneficial and widely relevant improvements for the next version of the programmes. well, i won't risk a bet on who the winner would be but there are strong indications that score would be the loser, and by r-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-l-l-y far. in fact i'd put a lot of money on that one.
-- Daniel Wolf wrote:
Some years ago another engraving-oriented list sponsored a competition to see how well various notation programs handled the reproduction of, I believe, two samples of music. If I recall correctly, the organizer of the list who had, it should be noted, a substantial committment to Score basically abandoned the competition, but not until after it had become clear that several Finale users had achieved the best results. That was something of a fiasco, and, given the importance of the individual engraver to high-end usage, was probably bound to be problematic when framed only in terms of comparing software. However, I still think that a comparison of this sort could prove very useful if framed less in terms of a competition than in trying to show how various programs and users deal with specific engraving problems. Would anyone else be interested in organizing such a comparison?
At 14:01 -0700 6/29/09, Richard Yates wrote:
As the second place finisher (and Finale user) in the competition I can say that there were many methodological problems with the contest despite attempts to minimize them.
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