Re: No fiddling claim

[Kieren MacMillan]

HI Jonathan,

> what do the experienced users think about what I've said here?
> If there's anyone out there who has used other notational
> software and thinks the "less fiddling" claim is true?

I used Finale from 1991-2003, eventually becoming *quite* proficient.
Then I switched to Lilypond (around v1.8), and now consider myself at  
least as proficient [relatively speaking] as I was with Finale.
[I used Igor Engraver (v1.5) for a year or so in the interim, but  
that product died, which is why I ended up looking elsewhere and  
finding Lilypond...]

I definitely feel the "less fiddling" claim is true... for me, for  
the type of music I engrave, and for the particular quality of output  
I desire/demand.

That being said, if you don't particularly care about Finale's  
*horrible* [default] note-spacing, lyric placement, etc., then there  
would almost certainly be less fiddling time required with Finale — I  
just find that with Lilypond, I do almost no note or lyric  
adjustment, measure width/spacing adjustment, and so on, which are  
the activities that took up the bulk of my "tweaking" time with  
Finale. [Disclaimer, the last version I used was 2003, so things  
might be much better now.]

Right now, I estimate the following for my engraving work using  
Lilypond:
  1. Basic note entry (including *all* items, e.g., slurs,  
articulations, fingering, etc.) requires 20%-50% as long as I used to  
spend with Finale.
  2. Spacing tweaks (notes, lyrics, vertical spacing, etc.) requires  
less than 5% of the time I used to spend with Finale.
  3. Specific tweaks (like the ones you mention) take 2-5 times [!!]  
as long as I used to spend with Finale.

I roughly estimate that #1 represents 50% of my total engraving time,  
#2 is about 40%, and #3 is the final 10%. So taking the *worst case*  
scenario [for Lilypond], a hypothetical piece that would take 100 min  
to engrave in Finale means:
   (50 min @ 50% time) + (40 min @ 5% time) + (10 min at 500% time)  
= 25 min + 2 min + 50 min = 77 min = 77% of the time I used to spend  
doing the same work in Finale.

This is obviously non-scientific and anecdotal to the extreme... but  
the final result (i.e., that I *never* spend more than about 3/4 of  
the time I used to working in Finale) seems about right. I tend to  
feel like I currently get things done in 1/2 the time, on average.

Of course, YMMV — in particular, if the spacing atrocities in Finale  
aren't where you spend your time, you will not see nearly as much  
benefit from using Lilypond, and in fact it may overall require more  
time.

Hope this helps!
Kieren.