jatoth
How comical, calling waiting over seven years, "wanting immediate changes now".
As I said:
- Some people seem to feel that the presence of long-standing bugs indicates a cavalier attitude toward users. However staff view was integrated into SONAR many, many years ago. Developers have come and gone, the company has been sold and purchased twice, and I doubt whether anyone currently at Cakewalk is particularly familiar with the code. I do not know if parts of it were licensed. I believe there were also MIDI issues that needed to be addressed first, because staff view is based on MIDI.
I am talking about
today. Some people want immediate fixes now, and based on this thread I am not wrong with that assessment.
Nice work Kamikazi! An impressive list, I know there's more as you missed my posts.
Kind of quantifies "just a few vocal users".
Unfortunately there are duplicates, so it's not the 121 users it appears to be (which unfortunately demonstrates it
is a very small number of users compared to the total installed SONAR base), and the links don't work so it's impossible to check the posts to see if people were vocal supporters or offering comments. I picked one referenced user at random (djwayne) and didn't find any posts in January. I picked another one (svenarne) and his post said: "I admire the patience of the Staff View People! You haven't got thrown a bone since the early 2000s, but you still hang in there! I can actually read and write music to a fair degree, but I rarely ever use notation when DAWing." I don't see that as a big vote on the importance of staff view to that user. And as I said:
- Cakewalk takes surveys of the active user base regarding priorities because the people in forums tend to be the most vocal and not always the most representative. My personal opinion is that people in forums are often highly engaged, which adds weight to opinions given here, but that doesn't necessarily overrule what a scientific survey with a statistically representative sampling of active users indicates.
Let's suppose that those 120 referenced posts are indeed from unique users, which they aren't, and that all the posts express the importance of staff view to the user, which apparently not all of them do. And let's suppose the number of enthusiastic SV supporters is actually 10 times that, or 1,200 people. That's
still a small portion of the installed base.
Please, think logically for a second:
- If Cakewalk had internal research that showed something was extremely important to a significant percentage of its user base, and
- Implementing it would bring in large amounts of revenue, and
- The company had the technical ability to implement those changes
What possible reason would the company have for
not doing it? Answer:
They wouldn't, they would jump on it. So why aren't they jumping on it? I've already explained why.
So if they're not jumping on an overhaul, is it logical to assume Cakewalk doesn't care about SV? No,
because otherwise they wouldn't be making fixes. Also note that there are people who
do use staff view and have said so in this and other threads. So I think it's important to at least note that it does meet the needs of some people. It makes no sense to consider SV as "all or nothing" where either you pull it out completely or fix it completely as that would be disservice to those who
do use it. As noted, although I don't use it for day-to-day note entry, I do use it and would miss it if it wasn't there. Besides, if it was removed, that would preclude ongoing fixes that would eventually enhance functionality. They may come too late for users who require more from staff view than it currently provides, but it would serve new users well in the future.
And now, it's time for
me to think logically. Some people will continue to believe that SV is vitally important to the user base, that including a hot staff view would bring in considerable revenue, and Cakewalk has the resources
at the present time to comply with the requests for staff view improvements.
Based on all available factual information, none of these beliefs is true. I have tried my best to present an objective view of the situation, with the
ultimate irony being that I am one of the people pushing for staff view improvements; but
because I am, I've researched the topic and as a result understand the obstacles involved in making that happen. I have nothing more to say, so there is no point in continued participation in this thread unless challenged, or something points out something I said that's inaccurate and I need to acknowledge that. I believe that my opinions are based on facts that may not make some people happy, but are indeed facts. If other people want to believe something else, they're free to do so.