Re: engraving comparisons and other "promotional" materials

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 07/12/13 19:18, Janek Warchoł wrote:
> ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> Have you looked at "Eja Mater awful Finale.pdf"?  Do you consider the
> issues marked in red minor?  They actually make it very difficult to
> sing the rhythm correctly!

That one example in bar 69 is very "ouch", but it's the kind of problem that 
would be an issue for sightreading only -- you'd fix it and move on.  I agree 
it's nastier for choral singing (where everyone has the score) compared to 
instrumental playing, where you'd have just the single part and so only the 
conductor would have to handle that rhythmic clash.

I have to say that I do wonder if that was user error, though -- because I never 
came up with such a catastrophic misalignment when I was using Finale.  At a 
guess, perhaps caused by the user entering more notes than could fit in the bar, 
then deleting some of them, or otherwise correcting note lengths?

The one in bar 80 doesn't strike me as much of an issue.  An irritation but not 
in any way a serious problem, because it isn't out of sync with anything else 
horizontally.  I was far more concerned about the placement of the dots on the 
dotted 8ths, because that _did_ seem like something that could jar the reading 
of the single line parts, even when you "know" the rhythm.

I don't mean to dismiss your concerns here, but I think that these problems are 
small fry in the scale of the kinds of illegibility or ambiguity or simply 
reading difficulty that there can be in parts put in front of musicians.  You 
probably haven't seen some of the hand-written parts (from reputable 
publishers!) that I have ... :-)

> Do you have a spare expert Finale user?  Because the problem is that
> on the *LilyPond* mailing list it's hard to find expert Finale users.
> We'd have to hire someone, and that costs money.

No, but I imagine that if you went on the Finale mailing list and said, "Hey, 
we're trying out this challenge as part of a drive to test and improve our 
usability, anyone up for it?" you'd get some volunteers.  You don't need a 
super-hot-whizzkid-who-works-for-Bärenreiter, you just need someone who is 
competent and capable and knows their way around the software.