A little additional on my look at the new demo Sibelius.

I believe they are making a big marketing error in removing the help file from the demo. What looks like a helpfile in the new demo version is actually just a brief "pamphlet" that raises more questions than it answers, and they do not clearly tell you that it's not the real thing. The "user guide" actually prevents you from accessing the "real help," in the way you could in the previous demo.

Several things in Sibelius are extremely idiosyncratic - but with full documentation one can probably work around them. IF my present interpretations are correct, this $600 program is every bit as good (with some adjustment in operator practices) as the $80 Rhapsody I've been using - that was "bought off the market" by the big guys some years ago and can't be upgraded.

So the extra $520 gets me - the same useful capabilities, except that it will run cleanly on XP.

Sibelius does (they say, although you can't try most of them in the demo) do some things my older program wouldn't, like better tab resources, and automation (if it works) of chord insertions. (Rhapsody was only "semi-automatic.") It does appear to have good utilities for "parting out" arrangements - but I don't see a personal need for that, at least at present.

I'm a little concerned about how flexible it is with respect to non-music notations, as almost all text functions seem to be "fixed format" and in many cases "fixed position." I'm sure(?) there are ways to make "marginal notes," but I couldn't find them (yet) in the demo version. It seems a little much to have to save as a graphic and paste into a document just to be able to place "freehand" adjacent text.

The demo version also gives the impression that you can only insert two verses of lyrics in a score - but I can't believe that's sufficient, so I'll presume (for now) that it's just another place where the limited demo documentation doesn't tell you everything.

The bottom line, though, is that it's the most reasonable thing I've found for making printed music that looks like commercial quality stuff (or at least looks as good as what I got with my old program).

I'm not down to the bottom line yet, and although I'm still not fully convinced, it is looking a little better in the performance category - but there's still the price.

John