The end of Finale

Bach5G · by **Bach5G** » 2024-08-26 8:47 p.m.

An email from the makers of Finale:

Today, we have important news to share with you regarding the future of Finale. Effective immediately, we are announcing these changes to the Finale software:

There will be no further development on Finale, or any of its associated tools (PrintMusic, Notepad, Songwriter)

It is no longer possible to purchase or upgrade Finale in the MakeMusic eStore

Finale will continue to work on devices where it is currently installed (barring OS changes)

hyperbolica · by **hyperbolica** » 2024-08-26 9:13 p.m.

I moved from Finale to Musescore. You don't have to use the site to use the software, and the software is free. I like it well enough. It works for what I do.

Dennis · by **Dennis** » 2024-08-26 10:30 p.m.

[quote="Bach5G"]An email from the makers of Finale:

Today, we have important news to share with you regarding the future of Finale. Effective immediately, we are announcing these changes to the Finale software:

There will be no further development on Finale, or any of its associated tools (PrintMusic, Notepad, Songwriter)

It is no longer possible to purchase or upgrade Finale in the MakeMusic eStore

Finale will continue to work on devices where it is currently installed (barring OS changes)[/quote]

If this was April 1 I'd be suspicious, but as far as I know there is no August Fool's Day.

This will make a lot of music publishers very unhappy if they had no advance warning. It will be interesting to see what they move to--MusicXML, maybe?

Bach5G · by **Bach5G** » 2024-08-26 11:36 p.m.

[quote="Dennis"]<QUOTE author="Bach5G" post_id="251713" time="1724719634" user_id="2999">
An email from the makers of Finale:

Today, we have important news to share with you regarding the future of Finale. Effective immediately, we are announcing these changes to the Finale software:

There will be no further development on Finale, or any of its associated tools (PrintMusic, Notepad, Songwriter)

It is no longer possible to purchase or upgrade Finale in the MakeMusic eStore

Finale will continue to work on devices where it is currently installed (barring OS changes)[/quote]

This will make a lot of music publishers very unhappy if they had no advance warning. It will be interesting to see what they move to--MusicXML, maybe?
</QUOTE>

Dorico.

Digidog · by **Digidog** » 2024-08-27 1:45 a.m.

WTF!!

This is devastating news for me, since my entire body of work is edited and formatted in Finale. I have been a Finale user for almost 30 years, and though this termination from a business perspective probably has a logic, I deem it a reprehensive letdown and treachery - almost on a personal level.

This goes to show that practical operation, use and needs means nothing to financial accounts and greedy profiteers. It wouldn't have taken much investment to keep the software up to date as a useful tool for a small group of users, in a waning market and business segment.

Now I can only hope for some other software to be retro compatible and as versatile. For a while I have been wondering when the next updates would come....

D@mn it! Dam^ it! )amn it!

(Insert complementary four letter words of choice here: ;as an illustration of how pi$$ed I am.)

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-27 1:49 a.m.

Really disapppintimg they aren’t open sourcing it. It wouldn’t necessarily cost them anything to do that and others would be happy to pick up the torch unburdened by legal repercussions for doing so

Bach5G · by **Bach5G** » 2024-08-27 2:03 a.m.

I suppose it would cut into their Dorico sales.

I glanced at the Dorico offerings. They look fine.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-27 4:27 a.m.

Is Dorico related? I thought they were completely different companies, even accounting for the assortment of parent companies involved

dbwhitaker · by **dbwhitaker** » 2024-08-27 10:14 a.m.

If you take the company's announcement at face value it seems unlikely that open sourcing it would lead to useful support or enhancements. If the company that originally developed it finds it too unwieldy to maintain I don't think volunteers are going to have the resources to do it.
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cmcslide · by **cmcslide** » 2024-08-27 10:18 a.m.

Best thing to do right now is to create PDF's of all of your Finale files to preserve the formatting. Finale files can also be exported to MusicXML, which can be opened in other notation software, though there will be formatting issues. Obviously MakeMusic (makers of Finale) have a business arrangement with Steinberg, makers of Dorico, since they have a pretty competitive cross grade price.

JohnL · 2024-08-27 10:38 a.m.

Hopefully MakeMusic will work with Steinberg (Dorico) to add an import filter to allow Dorico to open Finale files. Not holding my breath.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-27 12:16 p.m.

It wouldn't have to be "volunteers" per se. There are a lot of instances of much more complicated software stacks being made available, such as to the Apache foundation, which pays developers to maintain software or other models where there are open licenses (which includes MuseScore). Millions of lines of code isn't necessarily indicative of complexity, nor is it the ultimate measure of its utility as even if there was never sufficient interest to compile and take-over the project, it would allow contributors to make, for example, a converter from Finale files to existing formats like MuseXML.

mwpfoot · by **mwpfoot** » 2024-08-27 12:17 p.m.

There's a "limited time" teaser price on Dorico for Finale users, $150 I think? I'll be doing that.

Loooong time Finale user but man am I tired of all the nudging bumping fixing fitting. It took as long to format GOOD parts as it did to arrange!

I'm cautiously optimistic to be forced to be done with it, if that makes sense.

:idk:

Digidog · by **Digidog** » 2024-08-27 12:31 p.m.

[quote="JohnL"]Hopefully MakeMusic will work with Steinberg (Dorica) to add an import filter to allow Dorica to open Finale files. Not holding my breath.[/quote]

I'd very surprised if they spent as much as a dime and a second on backwards compatability. To make for compatability is often complicated and adding a lot of code to the already existing programming, opening up for many glitches and bugs.

Fortunately I have all my notation work in PDF:s but that is a meagre solace, since I often use the Finale files as templates for new scores. To create new global chord adaptations, new articulation measurement settings, new note spacing settings, new typefont positionings and new sound maps for the various ensembles - is not what I look forward to.

Well: It was to be expected; software has a lifespan and for Finale this was it. I still think they could have prepared and treated us users much, much better!

The question is now: Which has the best viability, the longest life expectancy, Dorico or Sibelius?

JohnL · by **JohnL** » 2024-08-27 1:18 p.m.

[quote="Digidog"]I'd very surprised if they spent as much as a dime and a second on backwards compatability. To make for compatability is often complicated and adding a lot of code to the already existing programming, opening up for many glitches and bugs.[/quote]
If it was a matter of MakeMusic providing a service/feature for the benefit of the users that they're in the process of abandoning, I'd agree. There'd nothing in it for them. But there is something in it for Steinberg/Dorico, in the form of many thousands of soon-to-be abandoned Finale customers who will be having to choose between Dorico and Sibelius.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-27 2:27 p.m.

Dorico would be expected to support it as well, potentially for a long time, and may not have exact feature parity with everything Finale has done over the last 30 years. If it was a separate organization (something like this would likely not be a huge stretch if the code were available), writing even a simple command line converter to take a final file and convert it to, say, music XML automatically shouldn't be hard if there isn't an expectation of support.

SteveM · by **SteveM** » 2024-08-27 3:21 p.m.

Doesn't Finale already export to MusicXML?

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-27 4:37 p.m.

You have to have a running version of Finale, and they’re going to turn off the activation server next year. So yes; but it’s not a permanent solution.

harrisonreed · by **harrisonreed** » 2024-08-27 4:50 p.m.

Finale kind of ... Wasn't that good, though, right? They finally realized there was no further development that could be done on something that hasn't changed since the 1700s. Dorico and Sibelius 100%

JohnL · by **JohnL** » 2024-08-27 7:53 p.m.

The latest:

Dear valued Finale customer,

Earlier this week, we announced the end of development on Finale. Based on your feedback, we have these important updates to our original announcement:

Finale authorization will remain available indefinitely

We've heard your concerns. They are valid. We originally announced that it would no longer be possible to reauthorize Finale after August 26th, 2025. But as a result of our community’s feedback, Finale authorization will remain active for the foreseeable future. Please note that future OS changes can still impact your ability to use Finale on new devices.

Finale v27 to be included with Dorico Pro Crossgrades

We are currently working on a solution for all customers who have purchased or intend to purchase a Dorico Pro crossgrade to be able to download Finale v27. This will ensure that you can export your Finale files using MusicXML 4.0, the most robust version of MusicXML available. Thank you for your patience, we will provide more information soon.

We hope these updates will help make your transition to Dorico even easier. We will continue to provide updates about the Finale sunset as more information becomes available.

I see on some message boards that the Dolet plug-in for Finale will allow you to batch convert entire folders of Finale files to MusicXML. Might be useful for people with large libraries of music in Finale format.

Digidog · by **Digidog** » 2024-08-28 5:21 a.m.

[quote="JohnL"]If it was a matter of MakeMusic providing a service/feature for the benefit of the users that they're in the process of abandoning, I'd agree. There'd nothing in it for them. But there is something in it for Steinberg/Dorico, in the form of many thousands of soon-to-be abandoned Finale customers who will be having to choose between Dorico and Sibelius.[/quote]

The million dollar question is now: Which is most viable, Dorico or Sibelius? I have, myself, a hunch that Dorico is the more modern coding, and thus with a longer life expectancy, but right now it feels like tossing the dice.....

[quote="Matt K"]Dorico would be expected to support it as well, potentially for a long time, and may not have exact feature parity with everything Finale has done over the last 30 years. If it was a separate organization (something like this would likely not be a huge stretch if the code were available), writing even a simple command line converter to take a final file and convert it to, say, music XML automatically shouldn't be hard if there isn't an expectation of support.[/quote]

I just saw the two following-up emails where they admit to let the authorisations be indefinitely open, and they half-promise compatability and hint at the possibilities of bulk converting files to compatible formats. I don't know..... I have seen this developer BS before and I'm not yet convinced they will go to any lengths to ensure uncorrupted transfer of formats.

[quote="harrisonreed"]Finale kind of ... Wasn't that good, though, right? They finally realized there was no further development that could be done on something that hasn't changed since the 1700s. Dorico and Sibelius 100%[/quote]

Layout-wise, nothing could beat Finale. For over thirty years Finale was the only notation software that gave you total control of, and option to tweak, all useful details of layout and sheet display. It is only the last one or two years, that Sibelius and Dorico were beginning to catch up.

As a working musician you surely know how great pieces and arrangements can be utterly ruined by poor layout, writing and disposition of the music, by making rehearsals unwieldy and performances confused - just from visual deficits. Though I over the years, as I'm sure you have, have developed a strong sense of note-deciphering skills that let me read thirtyfifth-generation copies of hundred and fifty years old scribbles, I have little patience nowdays for spending rehearsal time with unnecessary interpretation of what's written, rather than the music itself. Finale was, until only about one or two years or so ago, the only notation program that let me make as legible as possible layouts - as to the standards I have for making music legible and layouts easily understood.

The only real setback with Finale, was that it was kind of obvious that the coding was getting old. Some program functions had glitches and - if not bugs then serious mishaps - faults that made the program work in old-fashioned manners; like zooming tools not doing correct zooming, tools for handling mass instructions not processing very quickly and accurately (missing the whole of the mass marked) and a substandard hardware handling - like MIDI, sound boards or graphics.

To me, I could live with all those flaws as long as the layout options and global settings for disposition and layout were better than any other there was, but though I was pi$$ed at how Make Music at first treated me as a user, I find some solace with their promises of leaving the authorisations indefinitely open, making a smooth compatability to Dorico possible, and sweetening me up with a transition discount on Dorico.

The discount deal is a reality, and I implore them to make the other two promises real too......

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-28 8:27 a.m.

Yeah when I wrote that they were still saying the registration servers would be shut down next year. Muse score actually has a CLI that lets you use a lot of the features for exporting. I have an automated script that whenever something is dropped in git repo (which is where I store my MuseScore files), it automatically detects the changes and creates a full set of PDF exports and XML files, since the default is also a binary format now.

I’m actually a little surprised at the lack of automation in the industry generally. There’s AI chord symbol generation (you start typing the chord and it guesses what you’re doing so you can nominally do it faster) but then basic things like formatting, exporting, versioning, and putting parts in front of musicians is still embarrassingly manual and tedious, as far as I can tell.

I’ve thought about coding a browser based engraving tool since it seems like virtually all of the problems people run into are either 1) licensing issues or 2) os problems. Making it browser based would basically solve all of those problems and enable a lot of cloud based advantages like automatically pushing changes to receiving devices.

There are two commonly used business intelligence tools: PowerBI and Tableau. Both have a free version that allows you to read files generated from their paid applications. Having something like that would decouple the paid version of a product but avoid situations like what just happened. It’s unlikely to actually be built that way, though that’s how I would build it if I were to do it.

Maybe I should dust off the cobwebs of my JavaScript knowledge….

bitbckt · by **bitbckt** » 2024-08-28 8:29 a.m.

After Avid off-shored development of Sibelius and canned nearly every working engineer with domain knowledge of music engraving, Yamaha-Steinberg picked up the pieces and Dorico was born. Choosing to newly adopt Sibelius at this point seems unwise.

harrisonreed · by **harrisonreed** » 2024-08-28 9:37 a.m.

Sibelius has always had the ability to do any layout you wanted -- it just has different controls to do so. On either program you will get poorly engraved charts that scream "made on Finale" (huge engraving font with too much space and a second page with only one staff on it) or "made in Sibelius" where you get some weird margins and choice of font.

Anyways, I think Sibelius had an easier learning curve (I only used version 6), and I've seen far more terrible finale scores than Sibelius ones. That may be because way more people use Finale overall.

They're both good, I just think it's hilarious that they are still saying they are "innovating" in a field that has not really changed in hundreds of years.

Cmillar · by **Cmillar** » 2024-08-28 10:01 a.m.

After being a longtime Sibelius user, I switched to Dorico and am totally happy with it in every way.

Slight adaptation period, but no big deal. It's probably even easier for a Finale user to get used to it.

One reason I love Dorico is because their parent company is Yamaha.

Yamaha won't be bought out and sold by some investment company looking for a turn over and profit. Yamaha is never going to just disappear. Plus, they've done wonderful things for the music world in general.

Compared to the competition now:

- Sibelius; days are probably numbered and people are probably still amazed that they're around seeing as Avid is owned by a bunch of investors in the first place. Very shaky.

- MuseScore: also owned by a group of investors. And, really, people are going to put there trust in Open Source software and trust it to remain useful? That's crazy. Plus, the parent company of MuseScore has ulterior motives that are pretty shady, like trying to 'own' the music publishing business. They bought out Hal Leonard. Will Hal Leonard just become fodder for another investment buyout?

I can't conscientiously support music software owned by any investment companies when the source of that funding is pretty shady to begin with, and then you keep seeing brilliant people just being bought out and assimilated.

Dorico is the best option, and the best notation software for now and the future. I don't mind supporting Yamaha and Steinberg. Their support system is unmatched.

hyperbolica · by **hyperbolica** » 2024-08-28 10:19 a.m.

[quote="SteveM"]Doesn't Finale already export to MusicXML?[/quote]

Yes, Finale writes to musicxml. If you want to preserve the live data, not just the print pdf data, musicxml is the way to go. I moved away from Finale a few years ago, and my old stuff I bring forward to Musescore via xml. The only real problem I have with the transition is that all ties it converts to slurs. This is not a visual problem, but playback gives an articulation on a slur, not on a tie. I haven't used Sibelius or Dorico, but I found the Musescore software to be better than Finale, and it's actively being developed.

Yes, the Musescore site is shady, as I've pointed out a few times here. But you don't have to use the site to use the software. The software is free, and honestly, I'm not making a living or making any money at all writing music anyway, so why would I pay for software.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-28 1:03 p.m.

And, really, people are going to put there trust in Open Source software and trust it to remain useful?

Absolutely. Bear in mind that this site is founded exclusively on open source software. Sure there are some things that I'd do differently, but phpBB, MySQL, Ubuntu, Apache, and at least dozens of components are all open source. I work at a company that uses almost exclusively open source software, as have the last several that I worked at. It's absolutely possible for open source software to be sustainable.

That doesn't mean one shouldn't use Dorico or Sibelius, but I wouldn't use any software solely because it isn't open source.

AtomicClock · by **AtomicClock** » 2024-08-28 1:15 p.m.

[quote="Matt K"]I’ve thought about coding a browser based engraving tool since it seems like virtually all of the problems people run into are either 1) licensing issues or 2) os problems. Making it browser based would basically solve all of those problems and enable a lot of cloud based advantages like automatically pushing changes to receiving devices.[/quote]

Looks like Lilypond has the software already, and just lacks a server. Of course, it's very far from WYSIWYG.

[quote="https://lilypond.org/easier-editing.html"]LilyBin is a web-based LilyPond editor where you can typeset your scores directly online without needing to install LilyPond. Code snippets are kept available with a unique URL, like on so-called ‘pastebin’ websites. Although https://lilybin.com, where it used to be hosted, has been discontinued, its source code continues to be freely available under the MIT license; it may be found on its GitHub page.[/quote]

Digidog · by **Digidog** » 2024-08-28 4:02 p.m.

Well: As I have one chart on commission and one for my own big band project to lay up this week, I jumped on the upgrading offer and switched to Dorico.

It didn't take much research to see that Dorico was the best choice for me.

I obviously have to spend some time getting to know it, but I think it'd be doable over a couple of days.

I already miss my Finale templates and the infinite decimals determining the position of an articulation......sigh :frown:

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-28 5:10 p.m.

Last time I used it, Lilypond was more like a markdown editor. I think this is still true though it's a little hard to tell from the docs. You can write music on one pane as the source and it renders the music. That's kind of the opposite of what something like Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, or MuseScore do, which is you have a GUI which then gets translated into something that stores the file. Digging around the source code, it isn't obvious to me exactly why they call it a web based utility as I don't see anything that would make it usable inside a browser. I only looked for a minute so I may have missed something. Seems to be a C++ application for rendering and Python for manipulation into HTML, PDF, etc.

marccromme · by **marccromme** » 2024-08-28 5:42 p.m.

For those who want a comparision between Finale and Lilypond, see here http://www.musicbyandrew.ca/finale-lilypond-1.html

There is also Rosegarden and Frescobaldi, a GUI for Lilypond

AtomicClock · by **AtomicClock** » 2024-08-28 5:48 p.m.

Lilypond feels like a C compiler; you write your code in a text editor, and the compiler generates PDF (or whatever). There are some unaffiliated editors that improve the workflow, but not by much. LilyBin seems to be an unaffiliated tool that moves the compilation step to a web server.

I believe there are also bbs plugins, and I considered suggesting one for here. But I think no one would use it.

JLivi · by **JLivi** » 2024-08-28 6:05 p.m.

[quote="bitbckt"]After Avid off-shored development of Sibelius and canned nearly every working engineer with domain knowledge of music engraving, Yamaha-Steinberg picked up the pieces and Dorico was born. Choosing to newly adopt Sibelius at this point seems unwise.[/quote]
I came here to say something similar.

mgladdish · by **mgladdish** » 2024-08-29 1:59 a.m.

[quote="Matt K"]

[...]

I’ve thought about coding a browser based engraving tool since it seems like virtually all of the problems people run into are either 1) licensing issues or 2) os problems. Making it browser based would basically solve all of those problems and enable a lot of cloud based advantages like automatically pushing changes to receiving devices.

[...]
[/quote]

Oh you sweet summer child ;)

If anything, solving cross-browser issues is even more annoying than cross-OS. The limitations and clinkiness of css and js make this sort of app a nightmare. Take a look at the engineering behind, say, Miro to see what they needed to do to have complete control over a UI.

All those cloud-based advantages could still be had from a native OS application.

mgladdish · by **mgladdish** » 2024-08-29 2:05 a.m.

[quote="Matt K"]<QUOTE>And, really, people are going to put there trust in Open Source software and trust it to remain useful?[/quote]

Absolutely. Bear in mind that this site is founded exclusively on open source software. Sure there are some things that I'd do differently, but phpBB, MySQL, Ubuntu, Apache, and at least dozens of components are all open source. I work at a company that uses almost exclusively open source software, as have the last several that I worked at. It's absolutely possible for open source software to be sustainable.

That doesn't mean one shouldn't use Dorico or Sibelius, but I wouldn't use any software solely because it isn't open source.
</QUOTE>

This. All companies rely on open source software to run their critical services, even the billion dollar megacorps.

I'd be interested to hear Finale's reason for *not* open-sourcing it. Presumably it uses some libs whose license forbids it, but it would be nice to hear that confirmed rather than it being solely down to management's bloody mindedness.

Digidog · 2024-08-29 4:56 a.m.

[quote="Matt K"]I’ve thought about coding a browser based engraving tool since it seems like virtually all of the problems people run into are either 1) licensing issues or 2) os problems. Making it browser based would basically solve all of those problems and enable a lot of cloud based advantages like automatically pushing changes to receiving devices.[/quote]

The issue I have with using browser based programs for creative work, is that there - potentially - could arise serious questions about the rights to - and protection of - the work. It is very easy to have a duplicating software working in the background, copying everything the user does, and then the software provider has an entire body of work someone else had produced, and it is by no means certain that the creator has the rights to what's been produced.

Adobe is currently trying to make their users signing off on the rights to everything they produce on Adobe's subscribed products, for Adobe to dispose at will. Everything. What's scary about this, is that Adobe is not alone. Microsoft has clauses that make the user agree on giving up some - or partial - rights to what they produce on their subscribed software, Google has, Apple tried but backed after serious and heavy critique, but the trend is clear. Software producers are more and more trying to get possession of the immaterial work their users produce; by agreements for using the software, by coercion from only providing subscribed products and then locking users up by proprietary formats and encryptions or by simply forcing users to agree on the company duplicating everything they do in real time.

I don't trust the goodwill of any such subscription software. The invention of those deals is only a mean to tie up, leech and exploit, and coerce and deceit the users of the rights to their work.

So I will never sign up for a subscription software service, nor use an online ditto. Not until there are forceful legal restrictions on how the user agreements can be written and used (but I'd be sceptical even then....).

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-29 8:53 a.m.

I've been following this thread with some interest because the situation illustrates a problem that a number of older (sometimes "venerated"?) software applications have. And I confess that I have a similar attitude towards "subscription software" although I'm coming around towards not seeing it as so burdensome and evil -- depending on exactly how it's implemented and provided.

In truth, subscription software itself has been around for a very long time (and could be argued to lie at the very heart of some of the largest companies even in the old mainframe world -- such as IBM). It actually addresses several significant problems (particularly for business/government/corporate users), including updating, support, and sales projections and planning on the side of the vendor, and cost, funding, and budgeting on the side of the customer/user. And I've seen that from both sides. For a decade I worked (both development and department-level management) for a company (still privately held) with subscription-only products which had its hooks very firmly into both industry and (particularly) government markets.

The more recent trend of attempting to acquire rights to "work product" is something different and is really independent of the subscription model. While I know that a semi-sophisticated argument could be provided about my having rights (to some degree) for products you produce using my product, there's at least a slippery slope here that ends in your owning part of my house because I used the circular saw I got from you to make improvements to it. In the end, I think there's no compelling argument for that -- which is precisely why some software vendors are now trying to lock in such rights through contractual agreements in which the user "voluntarily" gives up such rights in return for his/her right to use the software -- a seemingly straightforward quid pro quo. It may be interesting to see how that finally gets thrashed out in the courts.

The other aspect of this particular example involving Finale I find interesting is the complete flushing of the product in favor of creating an entirely new one that will "supercede" it. A lot of people (not themselves involved in software development) simply can't imagine why something like this should be "necessary," and instead suspect that it's simply a trick of the marketeers to squeeze more revenue out of an existing user base. I don't put that past the marketeers, but there are more fundamental issues driving such change. The technology used in implementing the original product is now so "old" that (with truly substantial changes in software and hardware technology since its original design and implementation) it simply isn't possible to keep "updating" the original product any longer: too complicated, too error-prone and destabilizing, and way too expensive. That route would kill the company producing it. Replacement is the only reasonable course: something that provides the same capabilities but on the basis of very different and contemporary technology. This is the way. Companies/organizations that don't follow this path will perish.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-08-29 9:22 a.m.

I agree... sometimes, the developer(s)/owners, etc., don't want to maintain something anymore, and it takes extra effort to do anything other than quit. Given their glowing endorsement of Dorico, I suspect they likely had some arrangement, which is also acceptable; I get it. I'm somewhat disappointed, but my disappointment is irrelevant to their decision-making. And I'd rather Finale do what they did than Sibelius when it changed hands years ago... I loved Sibelius, but it's been plagued by licensing problems since Avid acquired it and fired the developers.

An open model with an open file standard would be much better for doing a "hand-off" since the open standard could be used by alternatives that crop up. MusicXML kind of does that but it lacks a lot of features. It's not the same as what, for example, even Microsoft has done for their document files which are actually surprisingly easy to open outside of Microsoft software - I just wrote an Excel interpreter for my job yesterday, actually, using all open source code and tools, no license paid to Microsoft.

The issue I have with using browser based programs for creative work, is that there - potentially - could arise serious questions about the rights to - and protection of - the work. It is very easy to have a duplicating software working in the background, copying everything the user does, and then the software provider has an entire body of work someone else had produced, and it is by no means certain that the creator has the rights to what's been produced.

Virtually all of the software you use has such telemetry baked into it, though you may have it disabled, including Dorico, Finale, Sibelius, and even MuseScore. Fundamentally, if you install something on your machine, it can exfiltrate data faster than you can even know it happened. As you indicated, license agreements can likewise be crafted on software that runs on your "desktop," which takes away your rights just as fast as something that runs on another machine, as Adobe is currently doing.

For what it's worth, assuming you trust your browser vendor (which you should if you have it installed on your machine because it has the ability to exfiltrate every shred of information you have on your computer), server software can be substantially more secure. Take this site, for example. If phpBB went away tomorrow, this site would still continue to function. So would all of the sites that use some kind of IaaS offering to offer subscriptions to people who pay for that provider to host phpBB. People could still install phpBB, copy posts, images, assets, etc. No functionality would be lost.

Beyond that, a whole machine can be dedicated to this one particular function. The user that runs the software can be granted the specific privileges that it needs, and the OS or the host OS (if virtualizing) can block ports, network traffic, etc. It is trivial to block outbound traffic, so all of the exfiltration you are worried about would be much, much easier to guarantee does not happen, provided that whoever is hosting the software (which could be you, someone you trust, or some organization you trust).

You can also isolate the application to only exist behind a VPN, so unlike this site which is open to everyone on the internet, you'd have to bypass another layer of security before you could even see the server. If it's setup properly (and this is indeed how I would set it up) you can run a whole web-based application on your computer using docker containers, which isolate the environment, so it only has access to resources on your machine.

Software that follows this design paradigm is actually pretty common now. For example, there is an application called BitWarden that I use for password backups. They are all open source, so what a lot of people (like myself) do is subscribe to BitWarden and then host a copy of the software on their internal network and have it periodically synchronize all of the passwords. This way, if Bitwarden ever decides to pull a Finale, all of those passwords are not permanently lost, and a migration.

Oh you sweet summer child ;)

If anything, solving cross-browser issues is even more annoying than cross-OS. The limitations and clinkiness of css and js make this sort of app a nightmare. Take a look at the engineering behind, say, Miro to see what they needed to do to have complete control over a UI.

All those cloud-based advantages could still be had from a native OS application.

I build dev tools for teams internally, I know how much of a PITA it can be. I'm very fortunate that I'm only backend and some other poor fella has to deal with the front-end components :lol:

A native OS application could be interesting. I've been meaning to investigate something like flutter. A lot of those native apps just end up being a thin wrapper around the site, but I'm unlikely to have the time to do anything of this magnitude anytime soon as much as I'd like to.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-29 9:57 a.m.

[quote="Matt K"]An open model with an open file standard would be much better for doing a "hand-off" since the open standard could be used by alternatives that crop up.[/quote]
Yes, but then it would be way too easy for an alternative vendor to develop a competing product and sweep away your customer base. :(

The aforementioned company I used to work for (let's call it 'S') corralled its customer base with a proprietary data file format and then got government agencies (including the FDA) to require that data be in that format for various purposes. Even with loosening up this requirement a bit in recent decades, this gave the S application a huge advantage in the market.

In the mid-late '80s that application (though it's so huge that "application" hardly captures it, and for a brief period there was serious thought of producing an "S machine" that would optimally run S, basically as its OS) was rewritten from the original Fortran into C. Another transition occurred more recently (in the 2000s) when the application was moved slowly to more of a web/cloud interaction model. With the ownership of the company aging out at this point, and with the design and code base having "evolved" in this manner, I am very curious to see what the future holds for both the company and the product -- and the employees. Every couple of years there is talk about an IPO or a sale (the most recent projection is a delayed 2025 event of some sort), but it's never happened, and I can't imagine a model under which it will. I can't imagine a buyer for it because ... exactly what would you be "taking over," and how much value would that have in the current market and in the context of current technology and alternative approaches that have cropped up? So I look at what Finale is doing (though on a much smaller scale) as a wise -- even necessary -- move, before it's too late.

Dennis · by **Dennis** » 2024-08-29 10:25 a.m.

[quote="Matt K"]Last time I used it, Lilypond was more like a markdown editor. I think this is still true though it's a little hard to tell from the docs. You can write music on one pane as the source and it renders the music. That's kind of the opposite of what something like Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, or MuseScore do, which is you have a GUI which then gets translated into something that stores the file. Digging around the source code, it isn't obvious to me exactly why they call it a web based utility as I don't see anything that would make it usable inside a browser. I only looked for a minute so I may have missed something. Seems to be a C++ application for rendering and Python for manipulation into HTML, PDF, etc.[/quote]

In my working life, I spent 30 years as a professor of Statistics. That meant doing and publishing mathematics. The gold standard for publishing math is Don Knuth's TeX (pronounced, "tech" and the "e" ought to be a subscript, but I digress). TeX and Lilypond have very similar goals: to create beautiful, legible output (mathematics in the case of TeX and music in the case of Lilypond) similar to what a really good engraver or copyist might produce. I've used both TeX and Lilypond very extensively.

Creating beautiful output in the context of a WYSIWYG editor is hard--it may be impossible.

And so what you get is a markup language: you describe what you want to produce, and a compiler breaks that down to primitive elements and then assembles the final output.

Lilypond is not a compositional tool--I know that the developers try to present it that way, but it just isn't. And it can't be. Look at any urtext or composer's notebook. They worry about getting ideas onto paper and assembling them in a coherent fashion. They don't worry about making it easy to read. Even 'fair copies' sent to copyists are pretty messy. Once you have a score (or a part) Lilypond is great.

Just as when I wrote my dissertation: for 30 years I hauled notebooks around with me with all the dead ends that didn't make it into my dissertation as well as all the useful stuff that did. It was the useful stuff that got typed up in TeX and compiled into my dissertation. Back in those precambrian days there were a couple of pages of full color graphics that required special handling, too. But I could not have used TeX to run up and down all those dead ends--I would never have finished.

When I started playing tenor trombone in a contesting brass band, I didn't read Bb treble clef well enough to go to contest. So I took my part and used Lilypond to create a concert pitch part. I usually used tenor clef, but I did feel free to use bass clef if it made sense. I mean who really wants to read D1 written in tenor clef? I don't. I counted it as practice time, because it's certain that I learned the part a lot better by doing that. Like doing math in TeX from a fair copy in a notebook, it isn't work that requires a lot of brainpower.

So yeah--Lilypond is a markup language, like Markdown or TeX (or HTML or XML, for that matter). Maybe Frescobaldi (a WYSIWYG front-end for Lilypond) is a compositional tool. I'm not sure, because Lilypond doesn't run on the Mac OS Catalina and I haven't upgraded my hardware yet.

Dennis · by **Dennis** » 2024-08-29 10:32 a.m.

[quote="ghmerrill"]<QUOTE author="Matt K" post_id="251923" time="1724937751" user_id="48">
An open model with an open file standard would be much better for doing a "hand-off" since the open standard could be used by alternatives that crop up.[/quote]
The aforementioned company I used to work for (let's call it 'S') corralled its customer base with a proprietary data file format and then got government agencies (including the FDA) to require that data be in that format for various purposes. Even with loosening up this requirement a bit in recent decades, this gave the S application a huge advantage in the market.

In the mid-late '80s that application (though it's so huge that "application" hardly captures it, and for a brief period there was serious thought of producing an "S machine" that would optimally run S, basically as its OS) was rewritten from the original Fortran into C. Another transition occurred more recently (in the 2000s) when the application was moved slowly to more of a web/cloud interaction model. With the ownership of the company aging out at this point, and with the design and code base having "evolved" in this manner, I am very curious to see what the future holds for both the company and the product -- and the employees. Every couple of years there is talk about an IPO or a sale (the most recent projection is a delayed 2025 event of some sort), but it's never happened, and I can't imagine a model under which it will. I can't imagine a buyer for it because ... exactly what would you be "taking over," and how much value would that have in the current market and in the context of current technology and alternative approaches that have cropped up? So I look at what Finale is doing (though on a much smaller scale) as a wise -- even necessary -- move, before it's too late.
</QUOTE>

Actually, wasn't S(AS) originally written in PL/I and OS/360 Assembler, with a few routines in FORTRAN IV? For sure, for sure, for sure its syntax is nearly pure PL/I.

S(AS) is under serious threat from the open-source R language in the Pharma sector. The biggest problem R has library validation, and that seems to have been pretty well solved with Github and the like.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-29 11:42 a.m.

[quote="Dennis"]Actually, wasn't S(AS) originally written in PL/I and OS/360 Assembler, with a few routines in FORTRAN IV? For sure, for sure, for sure its syntax is nearly pure PL/I.[/quote]
I can't really say for sure since I never spent any time with SAS code (I was in the C/C++ commpiler development department). But my understanding was that it was predominantly in Fortran -- at least for the statistical processing stuff. But just think of a legacy system in PL/1, Fortran, and C on a mainframe evolving into the current technology. :shock:

S(AS) is under serious threat from the open-source R language in the Pharma sector. The biggest problem R has library validation, and that seems to have been pretty well solved with Github and the like.

Well, R is widely used by statisticians in the science side of Pharma. But for issues involving safety, trials and compliance, I don't think it meets regulatory needs. Again, however, I've been away from that since 2009 and things may have changed. I'll check with one of the guys who used to work for me and who is now in Drug Safety. I suspect that Github may not exactly thrill the FDA. We used all kinds (S, R, Python, XML, C#, Cyc, LISP, etc.) of things in implementing/testing/demoing new methodology for drug discovery and safety, but anything having to pass regulatory requirements is a different game.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-29 11:43 a.m.

[quote="Dennis"]Actually, wasn't S(AS) originally written in PL/I and OS/360 Assembler, with a few routines in FORTRAN IV? For sure, for sure, for sure its syntax is nearly pure PL/I.[/quote]
I can't really say for sure since I never spent any time with SAS code (I was in the C/C++ commpiler development department). But my understanding was that it was predominantly in Fortran -- at least for the statistical processing stuff. But just think of a legacy system in PL/1, Fortran, and C on a mainframe evolving into the current technology. :shock:

S(AS) is under serious threat from the open-source R language in the Pharma sector. The biggest problem R has library validation, and that seems to have been pretty well solved with Github and the like.

Well, R is widely used by statisticians in the science side of Pharma. But for issues involving safety, trials and compliance, I don't think it meets regulatory needs. Again, however, I've been away from that since 2009 and things may have changed. I'll check with one of the guys who used to work for me and who is now in Drug Safety. I suspect that Github may not exactly thrill the FDA. We used all kinds (S, R, Python, XML, C#, Cyc, LISP, etc.) of things in implementing/testing/demoing new methodology for drug discovery and safety, but anything having to pass regulatory requirements is a different game.

Dennis · by **Dennis** » 2024-08-29 12:04 p.m.

[quote="ghmerrill"]<QUOTE author="Dennis" post_id="251931" time="1724941950" user_id="17">
S(AS) is under serious threat from the open-source R language in the Pharma sector. The biggest problem R has library validation, and that seems to have been pretty well solved with Github and the like.[/quote]
Well, R is widely used by statisticians in the science side of Pharma. But for issues involving safety, trials and compliance, I don't think it meets regulatory needs. Again, however, I've been away from that since 2009 and things may have changed. I'll check with one of the guys who used to work for me and who is now in Drug Safety. I suspect that Github may not exactly thrill the FDA. We used all kinds (S, R, Python, XML, C#, Cyc, LISP, etc.) of things in implementing/testing/demoing new methodology for drug discovery and safety, but anything having to pass regulatory requirements is a different game.
</QUOTE>

I'm on the trials planning, safety, and analysis side of Pharma.

90+% of what we do right now is SAS, but there is a lot of pressure (internally) to move to R. Qualified SAS programmers are getting harder and harder to find. We can hire someone with an MS in Statistics and they'll kinda, sorta know R. I've done some R package development in another life, so I'm dubious about it being quicker to teach someone who knows kindergarten R in the TidyVerse how to do package dev being faster than teaching them to code in SAS. But I'm a statistician, not an HR person.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-29 12:18 p.m.

At some point, generative (or hybrid) AI is going to change all this -- in a way analogous to how higher level programming languages changed software development from the days of coding in assembly language. You'll be able to provide a problem specification together with available data, etc. to an AI which will then decide how to perform the analysis and render the answer to you. It's not that far away. The regulatory agencies (in any industry) will be dragged by the power of the technology. It's not that far away, in part because it's a highly competitive environment, and speed and success will rule. Focus will turn to validation of AIs.

Bach5G · by **Bach5G** » 2024-08-29 1:08 p.m.

[quote="Dennis"]<QUOTE author="ghmerrill" post_id="251951" time="1724946161" user_id="2941">

Well, R is widely used by statisticians in the science side of Pharma. But for issues involving safety, trials and compliance, I don't think it meets regulatory needs. Again, however, I've been away from that since 2009 and things may have changed. I'll check with one of the guys who used to work for me and who is now in Drug Safety. I suspect that Github may not exactly thrill the FDA. We used all kinds (S, R, Python, XML, C#, Cyc, LISP, etc.) of things in implementing/testing/demoing new methodology for drug discovery and safety, but anything having to pass regulatory requirements is a different game.[/quote]

I'm on the trials planning, safety, and analysis side of Pharma.

90+% of what we do right now is SAS, but there is a lot of pressure (internally) to move to R. Qualified SAS programmers are getting harder and harder to find. We can hire someone with an MS in Statistics and they'll kinda, sorta know R. I've done some R package development in another life, so I'm dubious about it being quicker to teach someone who knows kindergarten R in the TidyVerse how to do package dev being faster than teaching them to code in SAS. But I'm a statistician, not an HR person.
</QUOTE>

I have to admit I understood exactly 0% of this.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-29 1:26 p.m.

[quote="Bach5G"]I have to admit I understood exactly 0% of this.[/quote]
That's okay, it's just about stuff that's in the brave new world of everyday reality. It will affect you, but you don't have to understand it or to care. :)

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2024-08-29 1:38 p.m.

There have been changes in music software all along the way. I used to use something called Encore (by Passport Software) back in its heyday. Encore is about as current as Fortran (another language I know) and Cobol. Things you learn about in the History classes. Encore was OK in its day, but Finale and Sibelius put it to shame.

There is a point where trying to patch an old system to keep it running is more pain than gain. Windows 95 and NT supplanted the old MS-DOS/Windows combination in the mid 1990s because trying to keep updating the old system became unsupportable. Finale has been through a lot of upgrades and I suspect it's getting harder and harder to figure out what is going on what with the patches and alterations. A clean start is needed.

Digidog · by **Digidog** » 2024-08-29 3:13 p.m.

[quote="ghmerrill"]At some point, generative (or hybrid) AI is going to change all this -- in a way analogous to how higher level programming languages changed software development from the days of coding in assembly language. You'll be able to provide a problem specification together with available data, etc. to an AI which will then decide how to perform the analysis and render the answer to you. It's not that far away. The regulatory agencies (in any industry) will be dragged by the power of the technology. It's not that far away, in part because it's a highly competitive environment, and speed and success will rule. Focus will turn to validation of AIs.[/quote]

For detecting plain coding errors, AI is superior to anything I've used, but for programming logic and optimization, it still has a long way to go.

Some of the tests a friend and I made, ended up in the AI compounding structural logic errors and optimization steps, to the result that though everything worked, it produced and consumed a lot of most likely unnecessary data, and did unwieldy operations that we - actually - couldn't detect what they were doing and what they were responding to, or consequences of. One example was twelwe subroutines that probably could have been optimized into half that number, that produced so much operations and allocations that we could never disclose exactly what they were for. We could only monitor the hysterical amount of data used through the program's various cycles when running.

This was for satellite programming, and though I don't work with that, we sat down one saturday afternoon and tried to see if AI could do something my friend - who is the real space-ace programmer - hadn't done, or thought of. I don't remember what program monitor he uses, nor what the agency's - where he works - AI assistant is, but I can check it up because it was fun to get back into the strategic thinking and scheming of programming again.

Dennis · by **Dennis** » 2024-08-29 3:32 p.m.

[quote="Bach5G"]

I have to admit I understood exactly 0% of this.[/quote]

Just a couple of guys who both work/worked in different aspects of the same general space (Gary was a programmer/manager for the software publisher that I've spent about 80% of my professional life using in one way or another) and both happen to play trombone chatting.

Other than how it pertains to software obsolesence/senescense it isn't relevant to anyone else.

Regarding AI--having seen numerous examples of how large-language models can hallucinate, and having seen "coding assistants" write some really, really bad code (dates and time lapses are hard) that fail at basic logic checking (for example, the date someone stops taking a drug has to come after the date they started, and yeah, you need to check that somewhere), I don't see an AI replacing me for as long as I'm willing to work.

The biggest lesson we ought to learn (but probably won't) from large-language models is that how you ask the question is really important. The AI is going to freely incorporate your hidden assumptions into its answers.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-29 4:48 p.m.

[quote="Dennis"]The biggest lesson we ought to learn (but probably won't) from large-language models is that how you ask the question is really important. The AI is going to freely incorporate your hidden assumptions into its answers.[/quote]
And what you train the model on is even more important. It will incorporate the assumptions (beliefs, prejudices, interpretations, attitudes, whatever) of the corpus (from the people who determined what should be in the corpus). So AIs are as susceptible to bias as humans are -- although maybe we might be able to train them not to be (if we want to).

The last thing that Doug Lenat wrote prior to his death (https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04445) addresses some of those concerns about AI and proposes a "hybrid" (a kind of checks and balances) approach to AI technology that combines LLMs with knowledge-based systems. In one straightforward sense this would build a kind of "truth checker" into your (potentially biased) generative AI system. But what would prevent the KBS from being biased as well (by its creators and curators)? I think there is no perfect solution. But some sort of checks and balances seems to be called for. Already we've seen some genuinely weird/hilarious/scary examples of "knowledge" generated by a Google AI. And I've had another AI outright lie to me about the history of some of my own publications even though I can't imagine why it would do that (though I think it was just sloppy design and implementation in that case). It at least admitted its "mistake", and apologized, when I called it on that. :lol:

Cmillar · by **Cmillar** » 2024-08-29 9:44 p.m.

Great article on AI 'teaching itself':

"When AI's Output Is a Threat to Itself"

<LINK_TEXT text="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... Position=1">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/26/upshot/ai-synthetic-data.html?searchResultPosition=1</LINK_TEXT>

Cmillar · by **Cmillar** » 2024-08-29 9:46 p.m.

"When A.I.'s Output Is a Threat to Itself"

NY Time, August 26

<LINK_TEXT text="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... Position=1">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/26/upshot/ai-synthetic-data.html?searchResultPosition=1</LINK_TEXT>

andym · by **andym** » 2024-08-29 10:13 p.m.

I just want to take the opportunity to say this on trombonechat: I love R. There said it. Never thought that it would come up on this forum.

Thanks for this thread. I don’t have a current license for Finale annd would have missed this news. I will have to dig up the files I have and see if my brother-in-law can convert them to xml for me. He’s a music publisher and I wonder what he will do.

SteveM · by **SteveM** » 2024-08-30 2:46 a.m.

[quote="BGuttman"]There have been changes in music software all along the way. I used to use something called Encore (by Passport Software) back in its heyday. Encore is about as current as Fortran (another language I know) and Cobol. Things you learn about in the History classes. Encore was OK in its day, but Finale and Sibelius put it to shame.

There is a point where trying to patch an old system to keep it running is more pain than gain. Windows 95 and NT supplanted the old MS-DOS/Windows combination in the mid 1990s because trying to keep updating the old system became unsupportable. Finale has been through a lot of upgrades and I suspect it's getting harder and harder to figure out what is going on what with the patches and alterations. A clean start is needed.[/quote]

I worked for Passport Designs during its last year or so, before it sold all its products to another company. The story was that, once they had established market leadership in music notation software with Encore, they turned all their attention to developing a multimedia authoring product. During the time they stopped paying attention to Encore, Finale caught up and surpassed it, and Sibelius was right around the corner.

All Passport wanted to do at that point, and the reason I was there, was to develop a 16-bit Windows version in order to make their product line more attractive to a potential buyer. It was a fun job while it lasted. I wrote some pretty fair music in the process of testing Encore.

So farewell Encore and Finale. We will soon say farewell to Sibelius, and who knows how long their successors will last. Don't get too dependent on any of them.

mgladdish · by **mgladdish** » 2024-08-30 2:47 a.m.

The sort of programs AI will replace are all the ancilliary IT stuff that every company builds up over time. All those spreadsheets created by people to help keep track of their own jobs, that give IT departments sleepless nights because nobody knows how they work, have no automated tests and are likely hiding nasty corner case bugs left right and centre, will instead be created by AI. The fun is they'll continue to keep IT awake at night for all the same reasons, but there'll likely be even more of them with a lower bar to entry. That one person in the department who's revered for knowing how to do pivot tables will instead be revered for their AI prompts.

This talk of "all you need to give it is a complete spec" will never happen. Our industry has tried again and again for decades to "just write a complete spec" and transform it into a working program and it's failed every time. I've lost count of the different forms specs have taken with this explicit aim, and they've all failed. Outside a few extreme niches where a handful of programs are specified in formal mathematical logic and then programatically converted into running code (and I really do mean a few - it must be fewer than 10 programs written like this on the planet), it just won't happen. I think of it like the recurring attempts to "just write programs in plain english". It seems every generation needs to learn this lesson for themselves - that natural language just isn't precise enough to describe how complex processes work in every scenario without becoming even harder to read and more verbose than a programming language.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-08-30 8:49 a.m.

[quote="mgladdish"]The sort of programs AI will replace are all the ancilliary IT stuff that every company builds up over time. ...

This talk of "all you need to give it is a complete spec" will never happen. Our industry has tried again and again for decades to "just write a complete spec" and transform it into a working program and it's failed every time. I've lost count of the different forms specs have taken with this explicit aim, and they've all failed.[/quote]
Well, I do understand this perspective, and the history on which it's based. But I think you're behind the times in terms of the current state of AI, the significant change in methodology in natural language understanding (since the 1990s), what I'm inclined to think of as advances in intelligent "inferential" and "modelling" technology, and the degree to which "AI systems" are being deployed in various industries at this time -- including, for example, medical contexts for diagnosis, reading and interpretation of radiology tests, etc., and business applications (where it acts as an informed and interactive "consultant" in real time -- my daughter, working at one of the world's largest risk analysis companies, uses this on a daily basis) This really isn't at all about having AI "write programs" from some higher level program spec you provide to it.

But time will tell. :|

Wilktone · by **Wilktone** » 2024-09-05 10:34 a.m.

I'm curious to hear how other Finale uses are planning on transitioning now.

I've been using Finale since 1989 (I believe it was Finale 2.0). Over the years I've gotten pretty good at using it and know exactly how to get things entered and looking the way out want pretty quickly. The most frustrating thing for me won't be transferring my Finale files over to other software, it will be the learning curve on the new software.

For the most part, I already have my Finale music printed out as PDFs already and most of that stuff I'm unlikely to change because it's already completed. I plan to get most of it imported over anyway, but I'll probably take the opportunity to just get rid of some files that I'll likely never need again.

I went ahead and bought Dorico. I've only used it once so far, just to go through some of the tutorials. I think that the major differences won't be such a big deal once I learn how to do things, it's the little things that will mess me up. For example, on Finale pressing 5 indicated a quarter note. On Dorico a quarter note is 6. Entering notes using Speedy Entry on Finale I don't really need to think so much about what keys to press for what rhythms, so having to adjust that is going to take me some time.

Yesterday I needed to take a standard tune (Mercy, Mercy, Mercy) and put together a transposed part for a student who doesn't have the necessary fake book. I thought about doing it on Dorico, but chickened out because I knew I could crank it out in Finale very quickly. At some point I will need to bite the bullet and stop using Finale.

Dave

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-09-05 10:46 a.m.

[quote="Wilktone"]For example, on Finale pressing 5 indicated a quarter note. On Dorico a quarter note is 6.[/quote]

I know nothing about any of this software, but isn't this configurable in Dorico? I'd like to say that I'd be astonished if it isn't, but too often the UI "designers" of applications like this seem to leave out a bunch of fairly obvious UI design. In fact -- even as just encouragement for Finale users to convert over -- I'd expect them to provide a simple export/import mechanism to make such a transition as painless as possible. Do they really not have anything like that?

Wilktone · by **Wilktone** » 2024-09-05 11:05 a.m.

I dunno yet, I've only started to scratch the surface of Dorico.

Finale had "metatools" or whatever they ended up calling it, so that I could set certain keys to certain articulations or dynamics and such. I don't believe that Finale allowed you to change the Speedy Note Entry keys, but to be honest I never looked for that.

mgladdish · by **mgladdish** » 2024-09-05 11:20 a.m.

My 2 cents as a software dev who has to hop between all sorts of different tools and software all the time:

Bite the bullet and learn the new tool as-is. Even if Dorico does allow you to change all the key mappings to the same as Finale, you'll still be swimming against the tide. All the online help will be in terms of the default mappings and there'll still inevitably be some mismatch somewhere. It takes a lot less time than you think for new keyboard shortcuts to become ingrained. So it's better to just stick with the defaults.

I'd also not be so quick to slag off the teams that built any of these tools. What may be obvious UI design to one person can be an unusable nightmare to another. If you're interested in the reality of it all there's a brilliant pair of videos by a software designer looking in-depth at the UX of both Sibelius and Dorico. I'd strongly recommend a watch.

<YOUTUBE id="dKx1wnXClcI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI</YOUTUBE>

<YOUTUBE id="S-3wEC6Fj_8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8</YOUTUBE>

I'd also urge a bit of restraint when wailing about imports/exports between Sibelius, Finale and Dorico etc. Each tool has its own strengths and weaknesses so there will never be a complete 100% compatibility between them. Take Microsoft Word and Apple Pages for example - Apple have more money than god and still can't get MS Word docs to import and retain 100% of their formatting in all cases. And that's a usecase that has literally billions of pounds payoff if they could get it right. So it's not realistic to expect a relatively tiny industry like music notation to succeed where the unimaginable megabucks of Microsoft and Apple have failed. They're about where I'd expect them to be - imports mostly kinda work, but expect to do a bunch of tidying up around the edges. And it's definitely better than starting again from scratch even with printed parts as reference.

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-09-05 11:49 a.m.

[quote="mgladdish"]Bite the bullet and learn the new tool as-is. Even if Dorico does allow you to change all the key mappings to the same as Finale, you'll still be swimming against the tide. All the online help will be in terms of the default mappings and there'll still inevitably be some mismatch somewhere. It takes a lot less time than you think for new keyboard shortcuts to become ingrained. So it's better to just stick with the defaults.[/quote]
In general I agree with this -- if for no other reason than often a new product simply does things better and with higher usability than an older one. Just differently. I think this is called "improvement" or "progress". Nonetheless, various users will take time to adapt to it, and that will require some work.

I once created an enterprise-wide "file comparator" product for graphically displaying differences in text files (specifically to be used for C/C++ code files for developers, but not restricted to that). The old version had been clumsily done and did its comparison based on an algorithm of detecting when it saw a difference and then using "look ahead" to determine when to "resync" the matching lines in the file. I replaced it with a much better/faster/more accurate approach (a well-known comparator algorithm) that produced a maximal match and made comparison and editing much more obvious -- plus a much better graphical UI. After it was deployed, a sub-group of users would call me and tell me that it wasn't working because it was "getting out of sync" with the files and that it should be "re-syncing earlier" -- completely ignoring the final result which was in fact more accurate, much faster, less convoluted, and much easier to use. Being developers themselves, they had become wedded to the implementation rather than to goal-oriented performance. But people tend to like what they're used to -- I know I do. :roll: (When last I visited my old friends at that company, they said that they were still using that file comparator application I had written -- about 20 years earlier -- even though by that time there were much better tools and environments to supplant it.)

I do see quite a number of documents and YouTube Videos on moving from Finale to Dorico. And while it's annoying to "suddenly" have to spend your time learning a new approach (which does take time away from doing the work that the tool is meant to facilitate), it is almost always better to adopt/embrace the new (actually improved, one hopes) model rather than cling to the old. Hey, I just switched off MS Windows and onto a Chromebook!

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2024-09-05 2:45 p.m.

Dumb question. Can the current version of Finale continue to be used for old Finale files even if it doesn't get updated?

I understand that if you want to do latest and greatest new work you will have to migrate away from Finale, and your choice may be dictated by the choices of the publishers you work with, but will you have to go through with he heartache of migrating hundreds (perhaps) of files as well?

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-09-05 3:34 p.m.

[quote="BGuttman"]Dumb question. Can the current version of Finale continue to be used for old Finale files even if it doesn't get updated?

I understand that if you want to do latest and greatest new work you will have to migrate away from Finale, and your choice may be dictated by the choices of the publishers you work with, but will you have to go through with he heartache of migrating hundreds (perhaps) of files as well?[/quote]

On Windows, the answer is probably yes. Especially as they've agreed to keep the machine running for licensing. For Mac, the answer is less obvious. They've made some very bad breaking changes to the platform on an OS level and that has affected older versions of Sibelius as well as Finale. It's no guarantee that you'll be able to keep running Finale indefinitely unless you are running on an old version of Mac that no longer receives updates and then you'll of course be at the whims of the hardware not failing.

musicofnote · 2024-09-06 2:22 a.m.

An experimental posting:

I started late 1980's (and had my own engraving company until around 2011) with HB Music Engraver and lost everything a couple of years later, when HB Music Engraver folded and an OS upgrade prevented the program from even starting ever again.

When Finale was just trying to get professional recognition, SCORE was THE professional program. Finale was considered to be cute, but output quality wasn‘t worth the effort. This POV led by Henle and at the time, and what Henle said, counted. Well, when Leland Smith died in 2013, orphaning SCORE, guess where Henle moved to…not Encore, which also left a loyal following high and dry, no .. Henle bit the bullet and didn‘t move to upstart Dorico, it went to Finale. I wonder …

Meantime, I’ve always kept full PDFs of my work since mid-to-late 1990‘s - long story. I examined my records and, lo and behold, I‘d paid around $149 for the last couple of Finale updates. So I cleaned out a 2012 MacBook Pro (keeping that deep in reserve) and my beloved 2015 MacBook Air, paid my money and bought the Dorico cross grade to gain access to the last Finale version, DL’d Finale v27 and installed on the 2015 Air and an M2 15" MacBookAir ... as opposed to statements here, neither v.25 nor v.27 have problems running on the new Mx processors nor old Intel iron - see below. All went well until I went to authorise and while the sale with the new serial number was recorded in my MakeMusic account, the authorisation didn’t work. Same old non-response from MakeMusic, when in an act of desperation I erased the installations and did them again - and this time the authorization magically worked. And one wonders why Finale went belly up. I’ve also been reading about the difficulties installing Dorico and unresponsiveness of Steinberg - life goes on as normal. Now with the most current version of Finale installed on two good machines (along side v25, which still works fine), one of which that cannot be and won’t need to be upgraded Finale machine, I have breathing room to investigate viable alternatives or just plain play my bass trombone and play with my dog.

Each of the remaining big guns have camps of proponents and hordes of detractors, most spreading misinformation, downright lies and "half truths" about their favorite product and about the competitors'. Before I definitively go to another company (I've DL'ed versions of Sibelius for which I was a beta tester up through version 1.4, Dorico and MuseScore), I have some files that display what I need to do, I learned to do quickly and well in Finale, and will see how the programs handle them, respective communities, as well as how/if official tech support handles inquiries.

Wilktone · by **Wilktone** » 2024-09-06 9:39 a.m.

[quote="ghmerrill"]<QUOTE author="Wilktone" post_id="252457" time="1725546850" user_id="220">
For example, on Finale pressing 5 indicated a quarter note. On Dorico a quarter note is 6.[/quote]

I know nothing about any of this software, but isn't this configurable in Dorico?
</QUOTE>

I've done a bit more research and it is customizable in Dorico.

[quote="mgladdish"]Bite the bullet and learn the new tool as-is. Even if Dorico does allow you to change all the key mappings to the same as Finale, you'll still be swimming against the tide. All the online help will be in terms of the default mappings and there'll still inevitably be some mismatch somewhere. It takes a lot less time than you think for new keyboard shortcuts to become ingrained. So it's better to just stick with the defaults.[/quote]

That is a good point, but I had already customized quite a bit using Finale and didn't really find it too difficult to work with online help when I needed it. But I think I'll work with Dorico for a bit as is before I start customizing key bindings and such. Once I get more comfortable then I'll start tweaking things.

I'm sure that I'll set up my own customizations soon. There are certain things about the way I work and certain things that I'll need to do more frequently than other users and setting up my own key bindings is an attractive idea.

Dave

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-09-06 9:41 a.m.

[quote="Wilktone"]

I'm sure that I'll set up my own customizations soon. There are certain things about the way I work and certain things that I'll need to do more frequently than other users and setting up my own key bindings is an attractive idea.[/quote]
That is, after all, why they have designed that feature into it; and you shouldn't be reluctant to use it. :good:

Wilktone · by **Wilktone** » 2024-09-06 9:42 a.m.

[quote="BGuttman"]Dumb question. Can the current version of Finale continue to be used for old Finale files even if it doesn't get updated?[/quote]

Not a dumb question.

Yes, it can. The main concern is an OS upgrade breaking the software. I'm on a Mac, and as Matt mentioned, upgrades to the Mac OS has broken Finale in the past.

For now, I'm keeping Finale installed as well in case I need to access it.

Dave

ghmerrill · by **ghmerrill** » 2024-09-06 11:48 a.m.

[quote="Wilktone"]The main concern is an OS upgrade breaking the software.[/quote]
I think this is the biggest problem with the software products we use nowadays (well, aside from crappy design, often being blind to genuine user needs, and general lack of testing prior to release). In the ancient days (mostly prior to the dominance of the web and client/server use for virtually all applications of any consequence), you could install an application and it would run as long as your machine and OS did. Any application updates would pass you by, but leave you happily using the outdated version. Applications were pretty self-contained. You can still write such an application (if you're careful), but it won't be able to take advantage of the capabilities that users want in their 21st century applications. Nobody really wants to be running a line-oriented DOS (or ksh or bash, or ...) shell any longer. :lol:

So now the problem isn't just what most people think of as an "OS upgrade", but the dependence on dynamically linked libraries that the OS or the app may use. The change that breaks backward compatibility may not even reside in any direct OS upgrade, but in some library that the OS makes use of for a purpose only indirectly related to the application that's affected. Such is the price of the progress we're seeing in computer and software use. :roll:

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2024-09-06 12:43 p.m.

This isn't anything new, the problem with Mac OS is they - particularly recently, but also historically - have done major breaking changes from OS version to OS version, which are released much more frequently than Windows major version updates. Windows 11 can still run ancient version of Finale and Sibelius (I've installed as early as Sibelius... 4(?) on Windows 11).

Savio · by **Savio** » 2024-09-06 6:01 p.m.

Its sad what seems to happen to all notation software these days. I use both Finale and Sibelius. Before I used Encore Passport. And in the end of 1980, maybe 1987? Atari Notator. I liked all of them. Today I have lots of old arrangements with these old software wich I cant reach anymore.

Maybe the survivor will be Musescore wich is free? There is no big company behind it. Anyway I get the Encore back soon on old diskets. Cant wait to see my old scores again.

Leif

Cmillar · by **Cmillar** » 2024-09-09 9:01 a.m.

[quote="Wilktone"]<QUOTE author="ghmerrill" post_id="252458" time="1725547564" user_id="2941">

I know nothing about any of this software, but isn't this configurable in Dorico?[/quote]

I've done a bit more research and it is customizable in Dorico.

[quote="mgladdish"]Bite the bullet and learn the new tool as-is. Even if Dorico does allow you to change all the key mappings to the same as Finale, you'll still be swimming against the tide. All the online help will be in terms of the default mappings and there'll still inevitably be some mismatch somewhere. It takes a lot less time than you think for new keyboard shortcuts to become ingrained. So it's better to just stick with the defaults.[/quote]

That is a good point, but I had already customized quite a bit using Finale and didn't really find it too difficult to work with online help when I needed it. But I think I'll work with Dorico for a bit as is before I start customizing key bindings and such. Once I get more comfortable then I'll start tweaking things.

I'm sure that I'll set up my own customizations soon. There are certain things about the way I work and certain things that I'll need to do more frequently than other users and setting up my own key bindings is an attractive idea.

Dave
</QUOTE>

Well, you would be a perfect candidate for buying a StreamDeck. It'll change your notation life!

I bought one several years ago, for Sibelius, and set it up with keystrokes, pages, input shortcuts, etc. etc..

Now that I've been using Dorico awhile, I kept most of the same shortcuts that I like, but Dorico offers so many more built-in shortcuts (things that were all 3rd party in Finale or Sibelius are built right into Dorico!)...that it's hard to imagine not owning a StreamDeck now.

For more information, check out Scoring Central and their Notation Central. They offer templates to get you started and much more, and then you can go crazy with your own customizations.

<LINK_TEXT text="https://www.scoringnotes.com/meta/notat ... -released/">https://www.scoringnotes.com/meta/notation-express-for-dorico-5-released/</LINK_TEXT>

<LINK_TEXT text="https://www.notationcentral.com/product ... ductivity/">https://www.notationcentral.com/product-category/productivity/</LINK_TEXT>

musicofnote · by **musicofnote** » 2024-11-14 2:20 a.m.

When it was announced, that Finale would no longer be sold or supported and the upcoming Sequoia OS version would not be certified as compatible to Finale (funny that choice of terminology, NOT that Finale would not be compatible with Sequoia....), I bought for $200 a pristine 15" 2015 top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with a new screen and new battery.

Alternating between it and my daily driver, a 15" M2 MacBook Air, I've done a series of 6-12 Sonata sets of cello/continuo pieces. I started out doing them in Finale v27 (which was new for me and it's different than the v25 I had been using), Dorico and MuseScore 4.4.x.

right off the bat, Dorico and I didn't get along. Confusing, confounding, stifling, and that was just the program - the on-line community was even worse - their standpoint "Dorico's way or the highway". I gave up the fight with Dorico after about 10 days and not being able to complete a single movement of a single sonata.

MuseScore was different. Different in layout, different in "philosophy", different in logic, different is ease of learning. Just as complex as Finale, just as capable of custom configuration as Finale, maybe a little easier to do so. Some functions of MuseScore are simply better than Finale - like figured bass, which is a multiverse HORROR in Finale and a paradisal joy in MuseScore. But it does have its glitches.

Note input is at about 80% the speed in MuseScore that I can do in Finale, which is acceptable. And there are a couple of glitches here, like the input point for no apparent reason jumping an octave - there's a quick correction for this, so I got very quick and quickly recognising this aurally and correcting.

Then it came to me that I could take the strengths of both Finale and MuseScore and work out a workflow starting in one program and finishing in another. Using XML to communicate between the two. Easier said than done. It turns out, there are problems with XML in this regard. And in typical computer industry fashion, when dealing with the support gurus, it's always the fault of THE OTHER program. I don' wan' to lay blame, I want to now how the work-arounds work. There are none. You just have to know what breaks and how to fix it. For example:

1) Importing XML made in Finale - no matter which format - measure numbering, which is time consuming and fickle in Finale breaks when imported via XML into MuseScore. No big deal. Just go through each movement of a 12 sonata set - about 48 movements - and set a "section break" marker at the end of each movement, which automagically then starts the next measure on a new system with a new measure "1". If it's a pick-up, you have to tell MuseScore to ignore this pick-up measure in the measure numbering. You also have to check all mid-measure repeats and do the same for the 2nd half of the repeated measure.

2) Although all the note material survives the move via XML between Finale and MuseScore. Key signatures "act" wonky under certain circumstances after such an XML-trade. For example, if you want to transpose a movement down a step from C to B-flat, and either use the key-signature tool OR the transpose function, only the notes get transposed, the key signature stays the same. So you get a key signature of C and the notes in B-flat with "accidentals". Fix: Go through the entire collection, movement for moment as in point 1 above, and re-set all key signatures, even when they are showing correctly. So Even if C major is showing correctly, you have to re-apply the key-signature of C maj. THEN, after doing this throughout the entire set, if you transpose, it works correctly.

There's more, much more, but still, there is a work-flow that works for me. If a piece moves for the most part step-wise, Finale is the best choice for note input. I can also analyse it BEFORE adding editorial dynamics (font problems between the two programs) and do any transposing within Finale. THEN save as XML and open this file in MuseScore. Within MuseScore add editorial changes and do page formating. Page formating is "better" in MuseScore with few exceptions. If the piece includes large intervalic jumps and lots of them, using MuseScore octave-jump-beg as a feature, it can be actually easier and quicker to notate such a piece in MuseScore and skip Finale altogether.

Back to hardware: ignoring computer start-up times, both the "modern" M2 and the vintage "Pristine 2015 computers have no problems handling Finale or MuseScore. Or LibreOffice or YouTube for that matter. I used Open Core Legacy Patcher to upgrade gthe vintage 2015 boxes (two now) to the same OS version I've got on the M2 and it works just as well and just as stable. I will take the M2 to Sequoia after New Year, meaning after a couple of newer bug fixes. I will keep the "vintage" macs on Sonoma 14.7.1, because they work perfectly well, after fairly current in terms of security (and I don't travel in the wild with them, so they're always behind my secure firewall at home) and Apple isn't going to release anything new for them that will, when installed, break a running Finale system.

These sets of Sonatas and some other stuff before them, can be found here:

https://5d832781b3df5.site123.me/free-trombone-music

The new pieces done with Finale, MuseScore or a mixture of the two:

12 Cello Sonatas, 1-6, Pierre Hyacinthe Azaïs (1741 – 1796)

12 Cello Sonatas, 7-12, Pierre Hyacinthe Azaïs (1741 – 1796)

Azaïs_12 Cello Sonatas 7 - 12 - Bass Trombone, SCORE.pdf

6 Sonatas for Bassoon or Violoncello, John Ernest Galliard (1687 – 1749)

6 Sonatas for Violoncello, Giraud, François-Joseph (? – 1788)

6 Sonatas for a Violoncello, Op. 1, Willem de Fesch (1687 – 1761)

6 Sonatas for a Violoncello, Op. 8, Willem de Fesch (1687 – 1761)

6 Sonatas for a Violoncello, Op. 13, Willem de Fesch (1687 – 1761)

de Fesch, Six Sonatas for a Violoncello, Op. 8 - Bass Trombone,SCORE.pdf

5 Sonates suivies d'un concerto, Op.26 (ca. 1729), Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689 – 1755)

Six Solos for a Violoncello and a Bass, Op. 11 - Gian Battista Cirri (1724 - 11. Juni 1808)

musicofnote · by **musicofnote** » 2024-11-14 3:32 a.m.

Another "problem" with MuseScore/Finale is figured bass. Besides figured bass in Finale being a nightmare, it doesn't understand MuseScore's iteration of figured bass when a MuseScore file with figured bass is saved as XML and imported into Finale. No figured bass comes through. If youo take the same XML file, just exported from MuseScore and re-import it into MuseScore, the figured bass is there again. so MuseScore DOES actually understand figured bass when exporting XML. Finale simply doesn't understand MuseScore implementation in XML of it's own figured bass.

And a further "problem". I've yet to find a way to create dynamics using either the Finale native font or the MuseScore native font with a bracket around it, that signals, that this dynamic is editorial. Even if I do so in a font found on both programs for the brackets, they don't come over through the XML process in the other program. Not even when re-importing into the same program that just created it.

robcat2075 · by **robcat2075** » 2025-04-03 6:02 p.m.

[quote="musicofnote"]I've yet to find a way to create dynamics using either the Finale native font or the MuseScore native font with a bracket around it, that signals, that this dynamic is editorial.[/quote]

MuseScore has an appearance option to add parentheses around a notehead. You might ask that such an option be added for dynamic markings.

Even if I do so in a font found on both programs for the brackets, they don't come over through the XML process in the other program. Not even when re-importing into the same program that just created it.

I was able to add brackets of a sort around "hairpins" by using their "beginning" and "ending" text properties, however, upon export to XML and back they become unattached from their hairpin.

<ATTACHMENT filename="notationbrackets.png" index="0">~~[attachment=0]~~notationbrackets.png</ATTACHMENT>

Actual ff and pp style dynamics do not have such additional text properties. Although i could edit the letters as if they were text to add brackets, they lost their fore- and aft- placement after a trip to XML

I don't have another music scoring program so I don't know how much worse it all would be after a cross-program transfer.

I think your need for editorial brackets is a valid one and a well-explained feature request might be implemented.

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