I won't get drawn too far into this debate because I also have some problems with part extraction. However, I do like the fact that it is very fast (at least on my machine) which allows me to try a few formats on individual parts before I extract them from the whole score. The few minutes that I fiddle around with various margin settings, system settings, etc. in one part to get close to what I want usually saves a great deal of time later on.I know that there has been a call to get the extracted parts linked to the score, but I have tried that in other programs and found that it created more problems than it solved. While this feature is great if you need to correct something like a note error, it is really a headache when you have to deal with adding expressions to a part that you do not need in the score.
I never use the Special Part Extraction mode because I have found it to be mostly useless as Peter mentioned. I have never worked with Allegro so I can't comment on it, but Part Extraction in Finale allows much more control over the process than it does in PrintMusic. I use PrintMusic on my laptop and when I have created larger scores in it, I usually open them up in Finale for part extraction because of how much better it works.
Just my 2¢ worth.
Jim Coull
