Kev999
The assumption seems to be that Staff View only exists for an elite who work on classical orchestration. I believe that Staff View should be part of everyone's toolkit. It's unfortunate that so many people dismiss it.

Chicken, meet egg.  More people WOULD use it if it worked better and were easier to use.  In an ideal world, staff view should be functionally equivalent to PRV (MIDI) view.  There should be no advantage or disadvantage to working in one or the other, and a person should be able to jump between the two seamlessly.  And staff view should provide a robust gateway to and from other notation products via MusicXML.

jatoth
Then come the promises. "We're looking into it", "something IS in the works", "maybe soon".

To be fair, no promises have been made; those statements are accurate because the quest for improved notation is indeed ongoing. Since Cakewalk was acquired over three years ago proposals have been made, potential solutions have been evaluated, and it's even gotten to the stage of "almost there" negotiations with some parties. But it's also true that nothing significant has happened in that time. It's not a trivial problem that lends itself to a simple solution. If it was, it would have been fixed long ago.
 
 
I believe that this thread has done nothing to either speed up or slow down implementing a solution. Cakewalk has been actively seeking answers long before this thread was started, but from a cost vs. benefit standpoint, so far any potential solutions have not been feasible for one reason or another. Yet there remains a strong desire to find and implement a better Staff View. 
 
Hey, we got ripple editing, colorization, synth recording, and a revampled PRV and Matrix View. Who knows what's next.

35mm
I think the snobby comments suggesting that most Sonar users have no notation abilities isn't going to help the cause. I personally do most of my music production by ear. However, the sequencer I used mostly in the 90's was C-Lab Notator and I can work with notation. I don't use the staff view in Sonar because it's always appeared to me to be a token afterthought and not a serious part of Sonar. If it was a more serious and functional tool, I would use it and I'm sure many others would too.
 
Sonar is very good and very functional at what it does so I can use it without any inbuilt notation and so I've been quiet in this thread so far. I do though, support the movement for better notation tools in Sonar and can't really view Sonar as a complete DAW package until that happens. I can understand that for Cake to completely develop a notation system in-house would be a massive undertaking and that its development would be at the expense of other pressing updates and developments. So maybe, rather than reinvent the wheel, a currently existing and established notation system could be licensed and integrated into Sonar. Either way, I can see it's a pretty major issue that Cake should be addressing rather than keeping it on the backburner, but snobs who believe they are the elite few who are capable of using notation, simply serve to keep it as a low priority for now.

Look, I regret you see as snobbishness what I see as a healthy respect for the achievement that western music notation has contributed to the advancement of musicality on our world.  A DAW needs a good notation editor for sequencing purposes, not for publishing purposes or rehearsal purposes.  I play be ear too, I actually think playing by ear and improv are essential skills for a musician.   Nobody is asking Sonar to merge with Sibelius and make a superduper SCRIBEDAW   ;>).  Just fix a few bugs, put back a few features and go on to other things.

35mm
I can understand that for Cake to completely develop a notation system in-house would be a massive undertaking and that its development would be at the expense of other pressing updates and developments. So maybe, rather than reinvent the wheel, a currently existing and established notation system could be licensed and integrated into Sonar. Either way, I can see it's a pretty major issue that Cake should be addressing rather than keeping it on the backburner, but snobs who believe they are the elite few who are capable of using notation, simply serve to keep it as a low priority for now.

To be clear, what most of are asking for is not a notation system but a properly functional staff view and limited printing. 
 

Not being a snob, but reading and writing music on a staff is fundamental to a traditional music education. 
 
I usually use PRV, but I do think it lacks the workflow that thinking in musical notation does.  For example, if you are working in something other than C Major, how do you keep track of your key signature in PRV?  What about triplets, dotted 1/8th notes, etc?  How do you visually indicate the length of a rest other than a blank space?
 
If you want to communicate a musical idea, written notation has proven itself as the best medium over several centuries of use.
 
What is so odd about wanting to be able to input those ideas into a DAW without hassles?

abacab
Not being a snob, but reading and writing music on a staff is fundamental to a traditional music education. 
 
I usually use PRV, but I do think it lacks the workflow that thinking in musical notation does.  For example, if you are working in something other than C Major, how do you keep track of your key signature in PRV?  What about triplets, dotted 1/8th notes, etc?  How do you visually indicate the length of a rest other than a blank space?
 
If you want to communicate a musical idea, written notation has proven itself as the best medium over several centuries of use.
 
What is so odd about wanting to be able to input those ideas into a DAW without hassles?

I respect this comment very much. And you are right/have a good point.
However in PRV it is musical as well as long as your working in a musical timeline format:
(1:01 / 2:01 = 4 beats = 1 measure) Using Snap for beat durations.
 
But you bring up some good points about sharing ideas in the format which has been used for 100's of years.
I first started playing guitar 30+ years ago. I took music lessons when I was 10 years old for piano and all we had back then was music theory to learn from.
 
However we are seeing a he decline in guitar orientated music and music driven by our 6 string friends are not as much the music of choice. now a day.
It might be possible the same thing is happening with written music. In a day we live in, tab has become more popular (for some its the lazy way of reading music) and PRV seems to have become the more popular choice of the large portion of song writers.
 
That being said, there are still scores written for movies and Staff view is important. I believe most of that can be done on a music editor software and not Sonar. but I do believe Sonar's users deserve some improvements to SV.
Because some users bought Sonar for sole use of SV. I can understand how those users would be upset.
It would be like if the PRV hadn't had improvements in 10 years or so. I would be upset. but im not sure I would put in the effort of being frustrated day after day, waiting 2 years and 5 months. I would move on to something that could allow me to use my skills in a better way. Because their is always other choices.
 

For an open source freebie check out MuseScore.  It lets you click or play notes into a staff view fairly easily.
https://musescore.org/
 
And they just added a new feature to their technology preview (nightly build):  MIDI out!
https://musescore.org/en/node/208986
 
http://prereleases.musescore.org/windows/nightly/
 
So you can now use the free LoopBe1 to send the MIDI to a softsynth, or to a VST in another host, for playback.
http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html
 
I used one LoopBe30 MIDI port to test this with Sampletank 3 standalone, as well as Kontakt Player 5 as a VST in Sonar Platinum, and the playback and play through works with no apparent additional latency.
 

chuckebaby
 
That being said, there are still scores written for movies and Staff view is important. I believe most of that can be done on a music editor software and not Sonar. but I do believe Sonar's users deserve some improvements to SV.
Because some users bought Sonar for sole use of SV. I can understand how those users would be upset.
It would be like if the PRV hadn't had improvements in 10 years or so. I would be upset. but im not sure I would put in the effort of being frustrated day after day, waiting 2 years and 5 months. I would move on to something that could allow me to use my skills in a better way. Because their is always other choices.
 

I don't really think that what most users are asking for are any additional features, or a completely integrated notation application.
 
They just want to be able to input notes without bugs, and maybe restore some functionality that was apparently removed.  If that was all Cakewalk did, they could say it was mission accomplished!
 
I agree that formatting and printout should be the domain of specialized applications.

At least a third party composer program with some elements missing might fill some of the voids. Cubase seem to have got the scoring bit a better though. For a couple of years, I used a baby version of Finale which was OK for the level I am at.
 
I think though if you are composer (frustrated one too) you do need the tools to follow that through.
 

Jerry has Sibelius (at least). Most users are looking for staff view as an entry/editing view within SONAR. 3rd party options or REWIRE don't fill the same need without major workflow changes.
Even the name used for this thread (notation) is a bit misleading as it implies that the need is more on the notation side rather than staff view as an integrated view for midi data within SONAR.