It would appear that staff view is a part of Sonar that can be lumped in with Session Drummer, VC-64 and beatscape. THey have it, so they continue to give it away. To those that have moved on there's not much joy but to brand new users it's an exciting feature. Actions speak louder than words, so I think it's safe to say that SV is a dead duck. I don't use staff view but just in case I ever needed it, I went and bought Notion to fill the gap. Now I has a staff view.

cparmerlee
To try to match Finale or Sibelius in capability would be a vast undertaking, and a very expensive one, both in terms of money and in terms of the focus it would take away from the current product, which still needs to move forward.  The Spreadbury project at Steinberg definitely intends to take on head-on the best of the notation products, but they are probably spending well over $20 million, and that would initially just yield a stand-alone notation product, not improved notation in Cubase.  Of course, one assumes that they would marry those functions eventually, but we're probably talking 2020 for something like that.
 
While the notation world should welcome the Steinberg project (given the limited pace of development on both Finale and Sibelius), it would be insane for Gibson to try to do that.  But fixing some basic bugs and weak features in the Sonar notation engine doesn't seem like an impossible task, nor one that requires an exceptional amount of expertise in the notation field.  It is a limited thing.
 
OTOH, nobody understands MIDI better than Cakewalk.  All the high-grade notation products can export and import MIDI.  And many of them can export and import MusicXML in a comprehensive way.  Even if you don't have MusicXML experts on staff, nearly all competent programmers today are knowledgeable of working in XML, and the MusicXML schema is well defined.  It isn't that complicated, and you would be able to ignore 80% of it anyway.  With a strategy of more seamless interoperability with the major notation products, you would have access to most of what Steinberg might be able to do by 2020, and I bet an import/export process could be built a lot faster than building a whole new notation product. Such a project would give you greatly improved interopberability with all the important notation products out there.  As a strategic planner, I would think that such integration would be a minimum requirement for competing against Steinberg as they do begin to bring their new notation product to market.  (Hint: the Spreadbury product will undoubtedly support MusicXML and MIDI interfaces.)

Agreed regarding your first point. Regarding the latter we're already thinking quite deeply about a more universal strategy. And I know Daniel well - I'm a Sibelius user myself and have been in touch with him over the years about interop issues :) Even offered to hire some of their dev's when they had the Avid layoff. They have the brightest minds in the notation space in his team and its still an immense challenge for them last I spoke to him...

Hi Noel,  Did you get in contact with any of the Finale people. MakeMusic went private and moved the operation from
Minn. to Colorado.  I know some of the development team didn't make the move and you can tap their expertise.

Though notation is a non-issue for me, I want to take my hat off to you guys for your persistence and passion. I hope you get at least most of what you want. I never thought this thread would have the legs it has had. And there is more of you than I would have thought. Anywho, kudos and carry on.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Agreed regarding your first point. Regarding the latter we're already thinking quite deeply about a more universal strategy. And I know Daniel well - I'm a Sibelius user myself and have been in touch with him over the years about interop issues :) Even offered to hire some of their dev's when they had the Avid layoff. They have the brightest minds in the notation space in his team and its still an immense challenge for them last I spoke to him...

I wish you well on that activity.  I'm not trying to specify a particular implementation -- only to lay out the possibility for something that should be achievable, affordable and valuable to the market.  I do hope you don't limit yourself to a solution that is dependent on Steinberg's project, as it is not a real thing yet and has zero percent market share today.  The advantage of a generalized import/export process is that it could cover over 90% of the notation users out there -- everything from Finale/Sibelius at the high end to MuseScore at the free end.  In particular, with a reasonable integration with Musescore, Sonar users might decide they don't really need any Score View inside the DAW, and you could potentially simplify the Sonar product.  Addition by subtraction.
 
Did I mention free?  http://musescore.org/node/102

+1 for music xml import

Vote for musicXML support in Features and Ideas.
go here:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3152945
click on the number of stars you want to give it. (on the right).

I posted a long list of stuff to the features forum, for those interested.  It's titled "A large Staff View feature list."  I tried pasting the link here but evidently I don't know how to forum.
 
 
 
 
 

I'm hoping the "final solution" is a combination of a few fixes to the existing SV as well as a robust MXML interface.
 
SV fixes for MIDI entry / editing / basic lead sheets or part printing within Sonar.
 
MXML export for those who require engraving quality printing using dedicated notation programs and MXML MIDI import for those who compose in Finale / Sibelius type programs.

pbognar
I'm hoping the "final solution" is a combination of a few fixes to the existing SV as well as a robust MXML interface.
 
SV fixes for MIDI entry / editing / basic lead sheets or part printing within Sonar.
 
MXML export for those who require engraving quality printing using dedicated notation programs and MXML MIDI import for those who compose in Finale / Sibelius type programs.

I think just about everybody would be happy with that !