Well if im completely honest...I wouldt pay for something like that at all, thats why I use powertab.

However im cheap =D

i like the idea of better tabbing software but whats stopping people from

Pirating

i understand how guitar pro sucks about 80% and is

really

annoying when it wont let you save when you get an error

then again certain thing i like. I say have a go at it

ever he needs idea im available

I just bought Guitar Pro and it works fine for me, there are a few things here and there that could be improved, but overall it is categorically better than powertab. Being a developer myself, I actually thought of coding my own tabbing software a while back when my powertab woes were starting to multiply, but time is required and that is something I do not have.

I'm just going to stick with powertabs

it gets the job done, and hasn't failed me yet.

What complaints do you guys have about your tab software of choice? Either power-tab or guitar pro.

I agree with Guitar Pro feeling "bloated," whenever I try to compose, edit, or read something, I can only get about a 1/3 of the page at once, which results in me getting rid of almost all the toolbars. Also, I would change scrolling with the keyboard. For example, have PageUp and PageDown scroll more than a couple of millimeters. I dunno, it's just a pet peeve of mine.

My only issue with guitar pro is importing midi often kills the entire app

My problems with Guitar Pro would be mainly the fact that in most alternative tunings, the musical notation fails to match up to the tablature.

An astounding example I'm working with right now:

Anyways, other than that it's a matter of how simplistic it is to work with non-guitar instruments. Though, I suppose that doesn't really apply here...

I usually don't use software that I can't modify. I'm a programmer. If I find a bug that annoys me and the program isn't too complicated I can usually hunt down the problem and fix it. Or if I need a certain feature, with sufficient effort, I can add it. And when I do that I want to be able to share my efforts with others, so that they don't have to be annoyed by the bug and so they can use the feature I added. So my biggest complaint would be software that doesn't let me do those things by not providing the source code under a free software license (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/about-free-software.html). Guitar Pro and Power Tab fall into that category.

There have been efforts to make cross-platform free software (open source) tablature editors. I'd recommend TuxGuitar (http://www.tuxguitar.com.ar/). It is licensed under the GPL. The great thing is that anyone, including you or a developer you hire can make changes to it. That means you can fix annoying bugs, improve the user interface, add new features, etc.

I really hope your friend considers contributing to that project, or starting his own and making it available under an equally permissive license. This way the results of his efforts will be available to all. He can make money off of it by seeking donations, putting ads on the website, and/or charging money for binary builds of the software. There's no reason making the source code available has to conflict with the ability to be compensated for his effort. And the entire community would benefit from this.

My two cents.

That's a great point seth. I couldn't agree with you more about open source software. It's what makes projects like Drupal so great. I know my friend has been learning about ways to program modularity into software, and ways to allow users to write their own plugins. I'll talk to him about that and see what he thinks.

By the way, you might know my friend, seth. He's in the computer engineering program at UMD right now, and I recall you saying you were doing the same thing. His name is Venkat (that should narrow it down, lol).

Sweet, I've been looking for a good open source tablature editor that works on Ubuntu for a while. I keep having to boot into Windows to use GP5.

One thing I'd like to see is a standard tablature file format. I think MusicXML could become one, but I'm not sure that it has all the needed guitar techniques, etc. From what I can see, gp5 is pretty much the standard format. Which sucks, because it's closed, and people have to reverse-engineer it to write GP5 importers/exporters. It's also subject to Guitar Pro limitations, like a maximum of 2 independent voices in a track. I guess I'd shoot for MusicXML as the format to use, I just think the guitar-related features aren't there.

By the way, if you are looking for another developing open-source tablature program, try Songwrite 2 (http://home.gna.org/oomadness/en/songwrite/index.html). It's really, really simple. Once you learn the keyboard shortcuts, you can go quickly. The lilypond output can produce a nice quality PDF, but sometimes it gets the voice assignments wrong (it doesn't have any concept of voices, it separates based on which strings you are on, lower 3 or upper 3, but I'm working on adding voices) It's written in Python, so it's theoretically cross-platform, but there aren't any Windows builds available. I contributed a patch making ASCII tab output a bit better.

Enterim, Guitar Pro 5 runs in Wine almost perfectly. I had some problem with a font not showing in PDF output, but otherwise it's okay.

archard, I don't know your friend Venkat, but the ECE program is pretty big I think.

I wouldnt buy any software for that use either... powertab is free and good.

TabIt is a good tab program. You don't have to worry about timing you just put down the tabs. So it's good if you don't know about music theory. But, you have to pay for it (I torrented it though ;l)

Sorry guys, but I just have to say it....

I LOVE GUITAR PRO!

The thing with the program is that you can not only tab, but make new songs for a band. (or at least a crappy copy of a song...) You can have ridicioulus amounts of tracks and give you greater possibilities than PT.

I think it's worth it if you really are serious about music.

Also, I make game music for people in GP5 even if there's better programs just because i feel like I'm home or something....

But that's my opinion.