Hello Daniel,

congratulations to you and your team for an obviously very smooth transition to Steinberg!

I am using Sibelius for years now, and there were quite a few points which I did not understand - you tell about the restrictions of old code.

Just one word: tuplets. Please do not make such mistakes with your new software!
I am not such a fan of the ribbon, like probably many of us. So I am pleased to hear there will be a different solution.

All - and I really mean all - functions should be reachable with as less keystrokes as possible. Sibelius still had to many functions which could only be chosen by mouse. You know score by Andreas Press? In a way, that's what I mean, but with the many comfortable possiblities of a modern GUI-program, of course.

There should be a real possibility to insert freely positioned and designed text- and pictureframes like in any other professional DTP-program (I still like Quark5, for example). The handling of text items in Sibelius did seem very awkward and unflexible sometimes. One example: why do Instrument names at the left in a score behave different from other text items, if you try do double-click them?

There a many standards in Microsoft environments which were not equally handled in Sibelius (of course, as an originally acorn-based software). Why not offer a section in preferences, where users can easily switch between MS- and Mac- and perhaps even more -based standards, so we all can use our stupid Microsoft or Mac preoccupied brains?

In Sibelius, the buttons to reposition or redesign items is very handy. But quite often I chose Crtl-a, used one of those buttons and realized that I was a bit too quick. There should be a possibility to leave specified items out of a general repositioning and redesigning.

Speaking of dynamics as p, f, mf and so on: I always missed the possibility to position them centered under notes, sometimes even with a fixed amount of offset to the left. The general positioning of text styles was not helpful in this regard.

A right click on a certain object should offer all possibilities to change this object which are available (if - or when - working with a mouse).

I would like to work with a real stepless zooming function again...

I am sure I will offer a few more points in the next weeks... Just one more point concerning PhotoScore: I tried each new version of this program, and only now it is worth it's money (but only if you get educational rebates, that is). Even now the recognizing of text e. g. is a catastrophe, as if there is no OCR-Software out there which is able to read whole books of letters. Can't you work together with a scanning software company which is able to write code? For instance, look at the result of scans of a drumset part...

Thank you for your work and your unique ability to communicate with us users! (I once mailed you concerning the Sibelius sound maps and my wish to make Peter Siedlaczeks Orchestra compatible to Sibelius - your reaction was awesome for a probably extremely busy product manager). That is a such a high value for every company which can't be paid by any money. I seriously do not understand AVID at all...

That's for now, I am sure I will be back again. I am - like many other users - excited to see which - I am sure - great new product will emerge. Please, take your time and try to fight unreasonable company deadlines as hard as you can! Quality is what we need, not a product which is launched because of share holder interests! (Look at Berlin Airport).

Yours

Wolfram Domay
Germany