Finale, Sibelius, LilyPond, etc.

[Fred Blumenthal <xd2fabl...>]

A few comments on the discussion of music software.
We're the people reputed to scold each other for buying retail; I hope 
nobody's paying full Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price for music 
software.  I'm much more familiar with Finale than Sibelius (and disagree 
about Sibelius being more widespread), but I note that CodaMusic, the 
manufacturer, sells Finale for about $600, and in an advertisement in "The 
Choral Journal" one source advertises Finale for about $200.  And 
sometimes an educational or religious discount might apply.
A comparison was made with the .doc format in word processing.  It's 
possible to copy and paste between Microsoft Word (.doc) and Lotus WordPro 
(.lwp), and this might be possible with other word processing programs, 
too.  And one format that these two programs share is Rich Text Format 
(.rtf).  So one could "save as" a file in Word as .rtf, open it in 
WordPro, and "save as" in .lwp.  I haven't experimented with copying or 
resaving between Finale and Sibelius (or Encore or LilyPond),  but I would 
hope the manufacturers of the commercial music software would be open to a 
universal format, one beyond .mid so as to be applicable to the 
print-ready score.  I might some day want to share scores with a shayner Yid 
who uses Sibelius.
Fred Blumenthal
xd2fabl (at) us(dot)ibm(dot)com