Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcnc!gatech!vax!chara!daysinns!artsnet!mgresham
From: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: FINALE
Message-ID: <1076@artsnet.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 90 12:52:52 GMT
References: <12925@milton.u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Distribution: usa
Organization: ARTSNET  Atlanta, GA  USA
Lines: 101

In article <12925@milton.u.washington.edu> ramsiri@blake.u.washington.edu (Enartloc Nhoj) writes:
>I am VERY close to purchasing FINALE for the MAC.  From what I gather,
>it is perhaps the best publishing program available on any platform.
                                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I'd disagree strongly with that.
I would place both A-R Editions Sun/Unix-based system at the top,
followed quickly by SCORE version 3.0.

>My next project will require the printing of over 600 pages of music.

There's the start of your problems with FINALE.

> For example, the other day,
>a member of this group mentioned that his machine locked up once
>the file he created reached 8 pages in length.  I tried getting word
>about this from Coda but have had no luck getting "the right guy" to 
>answer for me.

You're going to have some bug appear with any of the best
programs.  However, if you're unable to get adequate answers, that
should tell you something!  A demo of FINALE I attended in St.
Paul, I noted that although the input of simpler music had a
graceful, user-appealing feel, any level of genuine complexity
both baffled the demonstrator (musically; the "can you do this"
questions primarily coming from myself anbd Alice Parker) and
required slow, extensive editing.

>Since purchasing FINALE will also mean purchasing a MAC and laser printer
>etc... (I will have to sell my Atari 4MB system with NOTATOR etc)...

No! No! NO!  There is a new version of FINALE for IBM-clone PC/AT!
I'm having someone review it right now.
Several things to know so far: If your processor time is premium,
you should know that FINALE uses a *lot* of time on screen graphics
instead of skeleton-drawn but well-placed screen symbols.
You need a very fast machine to keep from losing patience, most
recommended is a full-blown 386, not an SX.  The SX is visibly
slower.  You will also need WINDOWS 3.0.  (We're about to try it
with WINDOWS 2.0).

By comparison, I'm currently running SCORE v. 3.0 on a Packard
Bell 286-AT at 12Mz.  SCORE does not waste screen-building time like
FINALE.  (The monitor is a Hercules monochrome, BTW)  WINDOWS is
not required.  I would quickly say that your msavings in hardware
costs (buying a 286 instead of a MAC or a full-blown 386) will
more than offset the several hundred dollars more you'll pay for
SCORE.  (And I think that the MAC FINALE costs more than the
IBM-clone FINALE.)

The results from SCORE are superior, in my book.  FINALE has never
satisfied me either with their slurs or horizontal symbol spacing.

As for LEARNING CURVE:  SCORE v.3.0 is light-years ahead of
their v.2.xx on that.  Their documentation, this time developed by
William Holab (music editor at G. Schirmer, NY) is excellent,
thoroughly reorganized, and written from the professional music
editor's perspective.  The improvements in the program (text
handling, pagination, array-handling and total capacity, vastly
extended symbol libraries, more improvements in slurring,
insertion of raw PostScript commands as items, etc.) also have
made what was almost a nightmare with v. 2.x and earlier a genuine
breeze with v.3.0.

>I'd like to make sure i am not selling one headache and buying another.

Be VERY careful.  While a program like SCORE will have an
APPARANTLY longer startup to the learning curve, you will probably
find you will save time especially in editing complex
scores and in handling large numbers of pages.

Even if you DO decide on FINALE, you will probably be better off
on the IBM-clone 386 DOS platform in the long run (especially if
you finally decide you DON'T like FINALE after all).

And last, but not least, do you have any idea how long 600 pages
is going to take you?  Sounds like a hymnbook to me!  If it IS a
hymnbook, then you will surely want to use SCORE, as I've seen to
examples of hymnbooks set with FINALE.  You will have severe
problems with spacing.  SCORE has a 'justify accounting for text'
capability which solves that nicely.  (One of the FINALE hymnbooks
betrayed some cut-and-paste markings where words were positioned
BY HAND.)

When I first used SCORE (back as far as version 1.xx) it was a
frustrating experience, though the results were still the best I'd
seen.  With v.3.0, the frustration level has disappeared down to
nearly nil.  The few bugs remaining are basically extreme
array-handling situations which cause floating point errors, or
the very rare case of absent, misaligned, or mis-valued symbols
that make justification throw up (easily fixed if you save the
file before justification).

Cheers,

--Mark

========================================
Mark Gresham  ARTSNET  Norcross, GA, USA
E-mail:       ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham
or:          artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu
========================================