Volunteers for a few comparison experiments

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,

while Janek is writing down his experiences with a complex engraving 
challenge I thought it would be a good idea to do some honest 
comparisons with other tools face with the same challenge.

Janek is somewhat disappointed by aspects of LilyPond's performance, and 
I have the idea it would be good to put him (and his readers) in the 
right perspective by having some actual comparisons. While I have to 
admit he's right with his criticisms I assume in some (or all) aspects 
other tools would have failed completely ;-)
And as I'm not happy with this unbacked assumption I would like to have 
some volunteers willing to engrave a few complex examples with Finale 
and Sibelius (up-to-date versions and sufficient experience required).

I'm not sure if this will lead to publications in our blog, but it's 
possible.
And I'm not interested in simple proof of LilyPond's superiority but 
honest comparisons.

So if you're using one of the mentioned tools or any other engraving 
software, feel comfortable enough with it to do serious engraving of 
complex piano music and are interested in such a benchmark, please 
contact me.

What we'd be interested in is basically:
- What does the program achieve with only the musical structure entered 
(no manual tweaking)?
- how problematic/tedious/reliable is it to improve the sample to 
publication quality?

Looking forward ...
Urs