It is my experience that most engravers thrive off of "default settings", having the software do their work in analyzing and correcting for visual beauty, logical layout, and such. It is erroneous to do so. It is misleading to advertise that software does the engraving for you while you whistle a theme into your computer microphone. Defaults are a starting point in quality music engraving: no more and no less.

In my years of following the developments made in computer engraving, I can assert that quality has little to do with the platform used. It is not true that "ties look bad in Finale" and that "Score output completely looks like hand-engraved material." What is true is that the operator of either platform, be it Finale, Score, or Graphire Music Press, can and should achieve results which are in every way pleasing to the eye, clean, consistant, and easily legible.

After thousands of pages of engraving with a computer, it has become something like second nature to me, not unlike playing a musical instrument.

The problem with relying soley on default settings to achieve good results in music engraving is that the grammar involved in graphical music notation is extremely complicated. Not only are engravers involved in proof-reading the musical text, we also have the responsibility to present that text in a pleasing, highly ledgible manner. Given the multitude of unforeseen situations in musical print, this is much to ask for of a robot computer program. Granted, computer software has come a long way along the road paved by traditional music engraving. However, for centuries it has been created soley by people with a trained eye for structure, layout, and beauty, most of these having been scholarly monks!

To imitate the work of a human eye and hand with a computer has been the past-time of many a computer programer for the past half-century. The birth of desktop publishing has further added fuel to the burning desire for people to achieve their published results more quickly than ever before. The upside is that projects can be sent back and forth around the globe in seconds. However, whereas the monk would take an occasional break and simply go to Mass, today's engravers are often kept working overtime battling it out with their "stubborn computer!"