In the pitched battle between Sibelius and Finale, one constant criticism has been that Sibelius sacrifices control and power in an effort to make matters simple for the end user. Advocates of Finale always claim a superior ability to fine-tune notation layout.
That this is so — or has been so — is pretty much admitted in a remarkably honest blog posting by Daniel Spreadbury, ¬†who happens to be the Senior Project Manager at Sibelius. As I come to Sibelius from Finale, my own particular complaint has always been about slurs. About slurs Mr. Spreadbury writes:
…it turns out that sometimes you simply need the full control afforded by all of the cubic B√©zier‚Äôs control points, so the first thing we set out to do in Sibelius 6 is provide access to all of those control points. Slurs now show six handles, all of which can be manipulated with either the mouse or the keyboard, and numerically using the Properties window. Furthermore, we made it possible to adjust the positions of each of these control points separately for slurs that cross a system or page break.
Finale users will recognize what this means — Sibelius now handles slurs much as Finale does.
Mr. Spreadbury addresses other factors in the development of Sibelius 6 as well in his blog post on “The Story Behind Sibelius 6.” For me, Sibelius 6 now represents the ideal balance between simplicity and powerful composition notation. It’s hard to imagine that Finale is capable of doing something that Sibelius can not — and Sibelius handles matters much more intuitively. I highly recommend this software.
It’s interesting, too, that Sibelius is willing to address its software challenges in a public venue such as this. Be sure to read the entire blog entry here.
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