noynekker
C'mon Cakewalk, throw us a morsel, anything, make triplets work properly, how about bringing back those nice note length buttons, or some macros to save editing one note at a time, anything.
 
How about a targeted Staff View survey/poll ? . . . to settle it for all time, to find out what percentage of  Cakewalkers actually want staff view improvements in the development dollars. If we win, we win, if we lose . . . we go away quietly (and never waste any more of anyone's time on Staff View promotion threads)

jfcomposer
As a programmer, though, I realize that the people who wrote Sonar's staff view are probably long gone, and the code is easily 15 years old at this point... probably 20. 

jfcomposer
 
As far as the surveys, I keep hearing about them but have yet to be involved in one.  

jsg
When I see users advocating to drop the notation editor, I think to myself, pity these poor musicians.

outland144k

jsg
I have said this before and will keep saying it:  Music notation has been around, and evolving for over 1000 years and there are many reasons for that.   Bringing another sense, the eye, to music composition, brings more brain power to the creative process.  the greatest masterworks of classical music could not, and would not, have been written without it. 
 
The advantages of notation are numerous.  Unlike the piano-roll view, which has been around for a few decades, notation is precise, and an ingenious method of controlling and enhancing voice-leading and counterpoint.   Orchestration could not be done without it, at least not to the degree possible that notation affords us.  At present, there are only five DAWS that have a notation editor:  Sonar, Cubase, Digital Performer, Logic and Pro Tools.   Somebody told me the other day that Reaper is getting in on the game, but I am not sure.  I hope so.  
 
There are many features in Sonar I don't use, for example the PRV, many plugins that ship with Sonar, the drum editor view and others.  But I don't lobby Cakewalk not to include those aspects of the program, I just don't use them.  When I see users advocating to drop the notation editor, I think to myself, pity these poor musicians, if they knew how notation could make their music far more detailed, textured and nuanced, they might feel differently.  I am not saying that people should use the notation editor, that's for them to decide, I am saying they should stop lobbying CW to get rid of it. 
 
All professional composers, arrangers and orchestrators read and write music.  It's a given.  Sure, people can write great tunes and wonderful songs without notation and many people have.  And for improvisation, nobody needs notation, particularly for solo or free improvisation.  But try writing a concerto, a symphony, even an extended work for solo piano, or try composing a film score for a group of 10 musicians and you'll immediately see why notation is so valued and has been for centuries.   Turning on the sequencer and improvising tracks onto the hard drive will simply not yield the same degree of depth and precision, not to mention the time wasted trying to communicate to other musicians what you want them to play and how you want them to play it.
 
I hope Cakewalk gets the drift of this post and realizes that a professional DAW is for professional musicians.  The staff view is indispensable for serious (and not-so-serious) composition.  
 
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com
 

With all due respect, you offer some thoughts worth consideration, but I fear there are at least several ideas that are, if you will, simply incapable of being proven (though, to be fair, would have to be understood as incapable of being disproved as well.)
 
First, I'm not at all sure anyone is suggesting that Cakewalk strip out of Sonar the music printing features that are already in place. Since, I can't recall anyone arguing for this here, I'll just let you consider where/when you believe you saw it. I have seen what I believe is an argument against further development from many. I do not think you have to ask people to stop "lobbying" to have Cakewalk remove these features; as far as I can see, no one has been doing that.
 
I'm not sure where your comments on improvisation are coming from, so I'll just mention that I'm a bit mystified at how that fits in here. If it has something to do with what I wrote, I'll simply apologize that I wasn't clearer: I do read music very well, but do not prefer working from brain to paper (or notation) to recording. It is more direct for me to eliminate "the middle man", if you will. I do sometimes refer back to staff view to see how the music looks. It's not a case of "either/or." At the same time, I'm not sure that it can be said that "all" professional composers read music. I vaguely remember Danny Elfman having to explain how he wrote the symphonic score to the first Tim Burton Batman movie without formal musical training (and getting quite a bit of grief from a music composition professor in the pages of Keyboard magazine). I personally know an individual who has issues with notation who has done work for CBS and NBC. I'll not mention his name here, as I'm not sure that he would appreciate having his name broadcast in such a way.
 
As far as the interaction between improvisation and composition is concerned, I doubt that they exist in as hard and fast distinction  as you seem to allude. There is a real question in my mind as to when the "germ" of improvisation becomes composition full-blown. I know sometimes I'll play something, edit it, add to it, edit some more, make changes, infinitum ad nauseum. I've written rock and jazz oriented and classical works this way. 
 
It is also a given that many or the greatest classical composers were also great improvisers; I wish we could ask them when they considered that their various works passed from improvisation into "serious" composition. Granted, they developed their ideas. But at just what stage of development did they consider their compositions to pass into the realm of the profound? Compounding the difficulty of determining this is the fact, generally admitted by musicologists, that "Art Music", properly speaking, was born after Richard Wagner (he being the last "popular" composer to write for the orchestra.)
 
If this sounds at all snarky, I do not intend this to be. I do have what seem to be some disagreements with some of what you wrote, but if your paradigm works for you, that's great.