I never found the keypad input on Sibelius inconvenient, on the contrary.
Usually, when writing in Sibelius I don't touch the mouse at all, because Sibelius is intended to be used solely by keystrokes.
Maybe I will just need more time to adjust to Notion, but nevertheless a few things I would like tremendously:
- Enter ties, slurs, accidentals, articulations etc without having to leave edit mode: Example in Sibelius: numpad 4 gives you a quarter note, numpad comma gives you a dot, D then inputs a dotted D on the staff. Enter makes a tie to the next note. And so on.
- Backspace should delete last input and moves the input cursor back
- left/right arrow selects notes
Additionally I think the Sibelius input is faster because the keystrokes are easier. A slur is just "S", not "Cmd-S". Press D and press Space to make the slur go one note further, Shift-Space to have it go one note back. Very easy to remember.
Another thing making note input very easy in Sibelius are pre-filled bars. All bars have a pause in them, so if in Sibelius I have an instrument beginning on count 3, I only have to select the whole pause and press numpad 4 (which converts the whole pause into as many quarter pauses as fit in the bar), press arrow right to move to the third beat and start inputting notes. 1 mouse click, 2 keystrokes.
See
http://www.novatlan-sound.de/2.jpgIn Notion I have to move the playback line to the 1st beat, enter two quarter pauses (2 keystrokes on q and a click each) and then place my notes. Many more clicks and keystrokes.
When having, say 10 pause bars it gets even more pronounced:
Sibelius: No clicks, no keystrokes because all bars not containing notes do contain pauses by default.
Notion: You have to enter the pauses manually. 20 keystrokes and 10 mouse clicks. How can I input pauses without using the mouse?
Wouldn't it make sense to have pauses by default? After all, if there are no notes to play for an instrument, it has pauses, at least I do it this way. Or do you leave thoese bars completely empty? In the demo songs they are filled with pauses, as I am used to.
Navigating inside the score is very difficult, too. I like having the area in which I am writing in the middle of the screen. In Sibelius, I can just drag the whole score paper around - in Notion this does not seem to be possible. In very large scores, I have to grab the scrollbars with the mouse, because I cannot use a mouse wheel. A score like
http://www.novatlan-sound.de/1.jpg or the "Awakening Notions" demo score is incredibly clumsy to navigate inside if you are not able to drag the score around.
So the score is always on the very left of my screen while I would like it to be in the middle or even on the right in the case of i.e. lead sheets:
http://www.novatlan-sound.de/3.jpg