From: milo@cbnews.cb.att.com (guy.f.klose)
Subject: Re: What is available for the classical composer/musician?
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 16:13:44 GMT

In article <music.718636087@batman>, music@moravian.edu (Steve Heller) writes:
> Be aware that The Copyist, while having the capabilities to do just
> about any kind of music printing, is NOT an easy to use program, nor
> is it very well documented. Anyone who has ever used Finale on a Mac
> and Copyist on an Amiga KNOWS how BAD Copyist really is

Hmmmm...I'm checking out the AMAX II+ route to see Finale for myself, but
if all you have is an Amiga, then your two choices are Copyist and DMCS.
DMCS will allow things such as MIDI input from a keyboard, but the best that
Copyist will allow is input from a standard MIDI file.

Come to think of it...if you have a Dr. T sequencer, with MPE, you may be
able to enter notes in a sequenced line, and then jump over to Copyist.
It would probably display what you just entered.  But, that is still much
different than single note entry from a keyboard.

Actually, I don't think Copyist is too difficult to use...granted it's not
as easy to place notes as with DMCS, but Copyist (as Ed pointed out) is a
different kind of a program.  It very definitely is more like a desktop
publishing program...kind of like a graphics editor that has very poor
text editing features.  Probably the most annoying part is moving from
Amiga keyboard to mouse back to keyboard all the time.  I find the
mnemonic commands are pretty easy to use once you get the hang of them.

With my recent work with Copyist, I made a long list of missing and
bonehead features, which I plan on sending to Dr. T.  Unfortunately,
that list is at home, and I can't remember everything on it.  But
here's a few:

No undo feature (you won't realize how important this is until Copyist
                 deletes something that wasn't even highlighted...you
                 can wipe out entire lines on the page without even
                 knowing that will happen)

inserting and deleting measures/phrases -- want to add a missing measure?  then
                 first move everything else over to make room for it

really primitive articulation marks -- every non-piano instrument has
                 extensive articualtion marks...Copyist basically gives
                 you sfz and hats.  Everything else you have to kludge.

non-basic articualtion -- I was doing jazz scores...forget about fall-offs,
                 glissandos, shakes, doits, and stuff like that.  Draw them
                 in by hand afterwards.

no repeat signs -- this one is extremely aggravating.  90% of every score
                 in the world must have some kind of repeat signs.  In
                 Copyist you have to kludge them, and the kludges don't
                 look right.

endings -- the marks for endings are primitive, and aren't even correct

two-measure repeat signs are missing, so you have to kludge them

multi-measure rest signs are primitive

In real notation, whole rest and half rests are slightly different (the whole
                 rest is slightly larger)...but in Copyist they are identical.

--
That's all I can think of for the moment.  Some of you may think that these
topics are pretty picky.  From my point of view, Copyist bills itself as a
"professional" notation package, and if it doesn't have something like
repeat signs, or doesn't offer a whole range of articulation marks, then
it can hardly be considered professional.  Steve Heller is right...it is sad
that this is the most advanced package for the Amiga (although I must admit to
ignorance of the TeX package for music).

On the bright side, its notation is sufficient for the majority of use,
and it's printing is far superior to DMCS.  If you're satisfied with DMCS,
then you certainly don't need to check out Copyist.

I have some other problems with Dr. T, and I may address those in a separate
letter to them.  An upgrade to Tiger Cub, which was strictly bug fixes (like
working with 2.04) and no new features, was $25 with a $4 charge card fee.
That was more than half what I paid for Tiger Cub to begin with.  I think
that's pretty outrageous.  The 16% charge card fee, too.

-- 
Guy Klose
milo@mvuxi.att.com