On 30 Jun 2009 at 13:28, John Howell wrote: > It seems that add-ons should not be considered in any fair > comparison
I think it depends on what you're testing. If you're testing the bare application, out of the box, then you test it as installed by default. A version of Patterson Beams ships by default with Finale, so I don't see why it shouldn't be considered part of Finale, even if it *is* ultimately provided by a 3rd-party developer. And even with that, applications don't exist in a vacuum, but within an ecosystem. An app with a plugin platform that has lots of useful plugins that extend the app is more useful than an app with no plugin platform, or no community of plugin developers. Sure, it's theoretically possible for the main developers of the app to include absolutely everything that anyone will ever need within the main application. In a perfect world, it is indeed possible. But it helps to have a bigger ecosystem. Visual Basic was a success in its day because it was a versatile development platform, but also because there was a huge community of developers working with it. That's part of the consideration that needs to go into committing to a platform. Whether or not it should be part of a "contest" comparing apps depends on the definition of terms of the contest. If the contest is defined to be limited to using the app as shipped without any add- ons, then obviously, additional plugins wouldn't apply. So, it all depends. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
