I've been a longtime user of Notion. Before I even had MPP '
Music Printer Plus', from the same developer (Nineties), it was a pure DOS application. With Windows, it didn't work anymore, so a stepped over to Finale (I own all the version from 1998 until now, but I have to say that I'm very disappointed in Finale and the development. It stopped evolving somewhere around 2012. All the later upgrades where merely visual changes, but they didn't add any functionality, they where rather annoying changes of positions functions in the lay-out.
So I decided to start with
Notion. At first I was overwhelmed with the intuitive interface and the ease of use (in comparison to the complex interface of Finale). But since I write music for live orchestra, I had to deliver neat parts and scores. That was the first small disappointment: the engraving possibilities of Notion were (and still are) very limited, and the midi or XML output as well!!! That means that it's hardly possible to export midi or xml to (let's say) Finale to build a good printable score there. Too many details get lost during export, as well as the entire score lay-out... But still, I love Notion for its easy workflow.
An other matter is the handling of velocities. As mentioned here, you can change individual notes, but it's not possible for groups of notes! For heaven's sake why? And I could sum up a whole series of shortcomings as to performance data (to name one: the mordents). All other apps have the most functional articulations in symbol and performance. Ive feature requested this so often, but so far in vain. Maybe you can program these features in Notion and other CCs, but I'm a composer, not a technician or programmer. Isn't that the task of the developers?
In the last years I always record a midi performance of my works. For that purpose I bought Studio One Pro. A great DAW, but again Presonus let's down the classical composers with their DAW. It has tons of features for pop music makers (without any notation), but hardly any for score writers. Here also the feature requests are being neglected greatly. And there is another matter. So many people have asked for a full integration of Notion in Studio One. There has been some effort, but nothing worth mentioning actually. Rewire (audio) is one possibility, midi import another and the last one seems to be the best: score import directly from Notion into Studio One. That is a real time saver, but again it's not perfect: too many articulations and performance symbols are not being imported. (Hairpins, staccatos and note velocity luckily are).
So I'm still a Notion users, hoping for the better. But maybe we - note writers - are a minority and commercially not interesting enough... I don't know.
What I do know is that in the near future the virtual music will change a lot and that goes for both DAW users and 'notationalists' .
The London Symphony Orchestra that comes along with Notion has a very poor sound quality, but it's so nice to work with when creating a new score (not paying any attention to the sound and techniques). The better performance can be made easily with other VSTs (some built in with decent presets, like VSL), but again these are only roughly usable. The rest must be done in a good DAW with full featured instrument libraries and detailed midi programming. As long as Notion is not an integrated part of Studio One (next to the piano roll) it will remain a time consuming business to create a realistic performance.
I don't want to persuade anybody to use Notion, but I wanted to give my opinion, experience and feelings about Notion. Despite the negative experiences here and there, I will continu to use it, until somebody can persuade me to make a change...
Jos