Some days ago @University for Music, Vienna, I had a talk with the professor who teaches digital notation. I asked about Dorico. She told me, with Sibelius and Finale, any score imaginable can be produced. Dorico is only useful for simple scores.
What do you think? Is the difference between F, S and D really that big? Or is it habit that Dorico is not yet taught at the university?
But that is so vague as to be meaningless. If you mean some very specific modern notation techniques, then yes, Dorico cannot yet do some of those things. But as a professional musical who makes his living from Dorico, I find the characterization of it as āamateurā or āhobbyistā to be a bit offensive. And ignorant (Iāve heard this before, usually from people who know nothing about the software).
And itās understandable that people use what they are familiar with. These other notation programs have many decades of a head start. And some of these professors have been using them for 30 years or longer. Of course they are going to use what they are familiar with. But I believe Dorico is unquestionably the future.
Edit: just to clarify, I understand you were asking the question and not necessarily saying that yourself.
Iād be curious to see some scores produced by this so-called expert on digital notation (whatever that meansā¦).
Uh, wut?
One glance at @benwiggy ās or @klafkid ās scores would beg to differā¦
I can only presume said professor either knows little of Dorico (Perhaps they last seriously investigated version 2?) or means advanced āmodernā notation (and even then, dorico is no slouchā¦ itās mostly cutaways that are the problem at this point).
Iām guessing this professor only knows about the SE version, in which case sheās right. But oh my how wrong she is if she thinks thatās true of Pro.
There have been various reports over the years of performance issues when using hundreds of flows and very large collections of players. But I doubt that any notation program performs significantly better on those very large-scale projects than Dorico 5.
And performance is only one aspect of the experience. I can produce my work at least twice as fast, and with far fewer errors, than I ever could with Finale. I have maintained a SIbelius license, but I never found SIbelius to offer enough advantage to justify serious consideration of moving from Finale. Therefore, I canāt comment on how suitable Sibelius would be for large, complex projects.
I would disregard this professorās opinion unless she can offer something more concrete. it sounds like she is not very informed, which one might think would be an embarrassing position for a professor of digital notation.
In my experience, at this point itās a trade off.
The biggest thing Dorico cannot do are cutaway scores - thatās fairly obvious. Also some graphical things like breaking staffs and drawing elephants for 3 bars is not possible.
(There are more small details, somewhere I made a list onceā¦)
But the ease and customizability of other aspects are not to be underestimated for contemporary notation:
And the old āclassicsā which are also significant in my opinion:
Maybe I forgot something, but I am convinced that for most contemporary music Dorico is superior by now. Even workarounds I use are (slash regions for empty bars, chord regions to adjust instrument changes etc) are much more stable than how my scores felt like when still using Sibelius.
In the end I think itās a trade off: surely one can do more in other programs, but everything takes so much longer. If itās really important itās easy and IMHO quicker and better looking to take the output of Dorico and make adjustments in Affinity of adobe.
Also itās quite the question what she really teaches. Does she teach beginner level of notation for instrumentalists or is she doing research on the boundaries of conventional notation?
I at least see Dorico being used in more and more German universities, especially for arranging and low level notation classes for instrumentalists, because itās so easy and the layout is such a no brainer.
I think the person mentioned in the original post has confused the word āsimpleā with the word āconventionalā. Mahler 8, for example, uses conventional notation, but you couldnāt reasonably describe it as āsimpleā.
I find Dorico Vs Sibelius to be roughly analogous to Mac Vs PC. Dorico and the Mac do what they do better than anything else out there, and what they donāt do, they donāt do at all. Sibelius and PC, you can normally bully into doing a slightly rubbish approximation of anything you want, but it will be slightly rubbish and take ages.
What is this, the 90sā¦? 
Letās leave those tired comparisons on the bonfire.
@Pepinello Iād seriously urge you to contact this professor again, and suggest she re-assesses her opinion. Dorico may be less fluent with more contemporary, graphical scores; but it can handle complex conventional notation much more easily and more attractively than the others.
Itās the 2020s and sadly still just as trueā¦
Just like Linux has been on the verge of a major market breakthrough since the 90s, all modern pop music has been rubbish and nothing like the amazing music from 30 years ago since the 90s, and opera has been about to have a massive revival of popularity in young people due to some terribly good looking person singing it badly into a microphoneā¦ since the 90s. Some stuff never changesā¦
Pffff! Just another āprofessorā living in fairyland. Ignore them and only listen to people who can back up what they say with data and research.
Academics often donāt work in the real world (I can say that having been an academic - and apologies to any academics here who do have day jobs and get real work done 
)
But theyāre in a position where impressionable people are constantly asking their opinion, so often theyāll give their opinions about everything, even if they donāt know what theyāre talking about.
Somebody came here a while ago asking if he could notate as a Film composer, b/c his profs advice was that he wouldnāt be able to work fast enough. My response to that is, does that prof work as a professional film composer?
Arguably, the very definition of an academic is someone who does back up what they say with data and research.
Great point but in practice it doesnāt work that way. Itās a big problem in STEM communication. Scientists do some research and discover something new - like some new battery tech, solar PV tech, etc. Gets interviewed, inevitably gets asked what it means. Researcher replies with āthis could XYZā - lead to unlimited energy, solve the climate crises, etc. Public hears this, but finds that 99% of the time that prediction does not occur, because academics know how to research, but not how to turn that research into reality (specifically product)
End result is, public ignores science because it never becomes true, or because it changes. The former is a false impression due to this inability of academics to communicate, and the latter is how itās supposed to work (we change our minds when better information is available.)
Point being academics are not broad thinkers typically - thatās a different kind of person. Theyāre narrow, depth thinkers. So ask them about their particular research (getting to your point) and theyāll give you the best opinion in the world. Ask them about something outside of their research and theyāre generally not better than anybody else.
Just to continue a little.
For me, the point here is what are the routes to help guide the professor make a more informed opinion.? Maybe her students bring ānoticeā of how good/useful/easy theyāve found this new notation software to be (that theyāve been using in their āspare timeā). Or, fellow academic staff recommendations; evidence coming to her from respected or favoured professional musician/performer/composer/conductor using the softwareā¦ The list can go on.
The upshot, itās obvious its a very tough, ongoing exercise to win proverbial hearts and minds.! Just getting it in to āyoung peoplesā hands to try for example, is a massive battle (especially given āfreeā alternatives, etc.).
Anyone got any brilliant marketing/promotion tips or schemes up their sleeves.?
Other than building word-of-mouth (which hopefully will eventually reach the professor), I had the idea of pursuing āstrategic alliancesā - theyāve always got to be worth seeking outā¦ maybe with popular/like minded YouTube vloggers for example (i.e. offer Dorico as prizes to folk like Ryan Leach, who runs occasional composing competitions on his channel - heās a Dorico convert) and such likeā¦
Or, a social media āchampionā if you will - not a āproduct championāā¦ someone very active with plenty of followers on Twitter, TIkTok, Insta, fb whateverā¦ someone enthusiastic (probably young/with energy)ā¦ Theyāre out there, doing stuff already; just need to lookā¦ 
It also always nags me a little why we donāt see big parent Yamaha, flexing its muscles in Doricoās direction a bit more. Maybe Iām wrong and they do what they can (in education field) already.? Who knowsā¦
Each student must be his own teacher.
From vinylI have some great professor for music: Keith Jarrett, H. Hancock, Coltraneā¦ unfortunately I never took a lesson with them.
take Doricoās demo and make up your mind as a student teacher
She should have a chat with Alan Silvestri. And do some homework on updates.
hell, Iād KILL for a chat with Silvestri.