Finale Forum

N Grossingink wrote:Nick, it appears you are using Dorico and seem to be enthusiastic about its present output and its potential to become a top music engraving application.

Do you know whether Steinberg offers samples of Dorico's output as regards "real world" music engraving? I'd like to see, let's say, several score pages of a Brahms symphony and a few pages of a 1st Violin part. Or, any other music of comparable density and style of notation. Thus far, I have found it difficult to find examples that truly show the software's capabilities.

N.

Sorry I don't. Maybe you can find some samples on the Dorico Forum. I'm in the process of re-engraving my own compositions at the moment (not ready to post yet). But I can tell you that i'm very impressed with the results so far. I find i'm saving loads of time formatting and adjusting, Dorico just seems to be doing it right. I'm excited about Dorico because if the current (infant) version is any indication of what Dorico will be when its full grown, then I think Dorico will be awsome.

Does Dorico let you enter some music then get playback of what you've entered easily?
Is it only an engraving tool, or does it also have potential as a tool for composers?

Michel R E wrote:Does Dorico let you enter some music then get playback of what you've entered easily?
Is it only an engraving tool, or does it also have potential as a tool for composers?

Yes. It's in the "Write" tab. all you do is click the note and hit "P". It plays from that point. Hit "P" again it stops. Hit "P" again and it starts from the point you initially selected the note. I'm a composer and I love that feature.

I love Finale's ability to do just about anything, including adjusting any symbol and making one's own symbols in the Shape Designer. I wish it had better defaults and fewer collisions and so less manual tweaking, but until Dorico has Finale's complete customizability I'm not interested.

There must be an updated version because the demo I d/l did not allow editing of parts. I, too, am not willing at this point to invest the time and $600 to a new platform. But I do like to see what the competition is doing. Sib and the almost clone Dorico doesn't interest me so I am hopeful silence is golden at MM. And Jari is working on or with MM to do great things.

I've purchased and worked a bit in Dorico, and I can vouch for it's great functionality in many respects. Dorico still lacks many important features and is no match for Finale in terms of flexibility at this point. It does, however, already blow Finale away in certain areas, which might be decisive for some users.

Dorico's current usefulness would really depend on the work you do, and the amount of customization you can live without. In time, though, I'm fairly optimistic that it will reach a good balance between automation and flexibility, as well as many unique features which will be very hard for Finale to replicate.

Perhaps above all, witnessing the efficiency and openness of the Dorico team and, in most cases, their thoughtfulness in feature implementation, should be the envy of any long time Finale user.

As for parts, it is a concept foreign to Dorico. It deals in layouts, for which you can setup as many different ones as you want for any number of players and each section of music. In many respects, Dorico's concept allows you much more freedom and flexibility with regard to editing parts independent of the score (or each other). It's just that, for many users, Dorico's unmatched settings and automation algorithms will mean that you won't have to do much editing at all.

Knut wrote:I've purchased and worked a bit in Dorico, and I can vouch for it's great functionality in many respects. Dorico still lacks many important features and is no match for Finale in terms of flexibility at this point. It does, however, already blow Finale away in certain areas, which might be decisive for some users.

Dorico's current usefulness would really depend on the work you do, and the amount of customization you can live without. In time, though, I'm fairly optimistic that it will reach a good balance between automation and flexibility, as well as many unique features which will be very hard for Finale to replicate.

Perhaps above all, witnessing the efficiency and openness of the Dorico team and, in most cases, their thoughtfulness in feature implementation, should be the envy of any long time Finale user.

As for parts, it is a concept foreign to Dorico. It deals in layouts, for which you can setup as many different ones as you want for any number of players and each section of music. In many respects, Dorico's concept allows you much more freedom and flexibility with regard to editing parts independent of the score (or each other). It's just that, for many users, Dorico's unmatched settings and automation algorithms will mean that you won't have to do much editing at all.

Hello Knut,

I too have found and agree with this.

I am a long-term Finale user presently with finale 25.2 but decided to look at Dorico. I was quite taken back by what I found; it truly is a beautiful notation editor presently on its third release. It is so intuitive and user-friendly to use.

Now, when I turn on my computer each day I'm finding that it's Dorico I work with. Having used and supported Finale for so long I didn't expect I'd be writing this. I have no doubt that when more of its intended features are added in Dorico is going to be the leading notation editor. This is going to be big!

Here's MM's statement on Jari and the state of plug-ins

http://www.finalemusic.com/blog/wheres- ... -plug-ins/

The Finale blog post explains and reassures.

I think we have to be patient and in the meantime either use F 2014.5, or if practical work in F 25 then open the files in 2014.5 to apply the JW plug-ins.

I've come to the conclusion that the time spent writing furious posts on the internet about it could be better spent typing a series of repetitive keystrokes to perform some operation manually.

BuonTempi wrote:I've come to the conclusion that the time spent writing furious posts on the internet about it could be better spent typing a series of repetitive keystrokes to perform some operation manually.

I sometimes feel that the time I've managed to save via JW Change might almost be enough to type the entire internet

"...Two critical groups of the Peaksware organization, Alfred Music Publishing and our SmartMusic Repertoire Development, rely on these and other third-party plug-ins to develop content. …"

If it's that important (and we already know that it is), any excuses for not bringing this stuff in-house years ago and assigning a team to it are lame.

Thanks for reporting that, BounTempi. They say, "We would like to thank Michael, Tobias, Robert, and Jari" for developing plug-ins. Who is Michael? Michael Good?

motet wrote:Thanks for reporting that, BounTempi. They say, "We would like to thank Michael, Tobias, Robert, and Jari" for developing plug-ins. Who is Michael? Michael Good?

Could be, Dolet 6.9 works with 25 even though it's still 32bit.
http://www.musicxml.com/finale-v25-2-musicxml-updates/

Technically, he's a VP and not an outside developer—unless one counts the fact that he doesn't live on Colorado.

I was an outside developer when I started working on the Dolet MusicXML plug-in at Recordare in 2000. I didn't join MakeMusic until November 2011.

Michael Good
VP of MusicXML Technologies
MakeMusic, Inc.

Well thank you for the plug-ins!

Bill Reed wrote:
Michael Johnson's last response on the feature request page was on 2/9. Not exactly forever...


To me, that seems like a long time, discouraging rather than encouraging.

This isn't exactly true. Please check the facts.

In my e-mail I've got this message:

You are receiving this notification because you are watching the topic,
"Has anybody heard?" at "Finale Forum". This topic has received a reply
since your last visit. You can use the following link to view the replies
made, no more notifications will be sent until you visit the topic.

When I go to the forum I can't see any newer posts at all than the one from 'my last visit'. Why is this?

Michaelb wrote:

Knut wrote:I've purchased and worked a bit in Dorico, and I can vouch for it's great functionality in many respects. Dorico still lacks many important features and is no match for Finale in terms of flexibility at this point. It does, however, already blow Finale away in certain areas, which might be decisive for some users.

Dorico's current usefulness would really depend on the work you do, and the amount of customization you can live without. In time, though, I'm fairly optimistic that it will reach a good balance between automation and flexibility, as well as many unique features which will be very hard for Finale to replicate.

Perhaps above all, witnessing the efficiency and openness of the Dorico team and, in most cases, their thoughtfulness in feature implementation, should be the envy of any long time Finale user.

As for parts, it is a concept foreign to Dorico. It deals in layouts, for which you can setup as many different ones as you want for any number of players and each section of music. In many respects, Dorico's concept allows you much more freedom and flexibility with regard to editing parts independent of the score (or each other). It's just that, for many users, Dorico's unmatched settings and automation algorithms will mean that you won't have to do much editing at all.

Hello Knut,

I too have found and agree with this.

I am a long-term Finale user presently with finale 25.2 but decided to look at Dorico. I was quite taken back by what I found; it truly is a beautiful notation editor presently on its third release. It is so intuitive and user-friendly to use.

Now, when I turn on my computer each day I'm finding that it's Dorico I work with. Having used and supported Finale for so long I didn't expect I'd be writing this. I have no doubt that when more of its intended features are added in Dorico is going to be the leading notation editor. This is going to be big!

Hello, Michael.

I know the Dorico team will be happy to hear that.

To clarify, while I'm certainly enthusiastic about it in many ways and certainly believe in it's success in the long term, I'm personally not able to use Dorico for serious engraving in it's present state. This has less to do with the major features not yet available, and more to do with the lack of flexibility which I eluded to above. That is not to say that I'm concerned with having any flexibility for flexibilities sake, but currently there simply are too many variables, even quite a few relatively commonly found in literature, which are simply impossible to recreate in Dorico.

I do think that Dorico's automation features are wonderful, and it does address a number of more minute aspects of quality engraving which Finale does not. However, truth be told, I do worry a bit about to what degree Dorico will succeed in allowing for enough variables to be a viable alternative for a lot of professional engraving.

Dorico's primary challenge, which stems from it wanting to solve as many tasks as possible in a semantically sensible if not entirely automatic way, is that it needs to allow for each notational possibility within a relatively stringent structure. Finale, on the other hand, is a much less advanced application than Dorico, which require a lot more input from the user in terms of manual adjustment to be able to deliver professional results. As a consequence, however, Finale is much more open-ended and can handle a lot more notational variables without needing to address each one specifically.

I do imagine that it's easier to gradually open up Dorico to an increasing number of variables than it is for Finale to successfully implement new aspects of automation within it's current code base, but even if this is a correct assumption, it will take time, even a lot of time, before Dorico will be able to match Finale's level of flexibility. Within that time, there's always the possibility for MakeMusic to modernize Finale's code enough to allow for the more advanced and detailed oriented features currently available in Dorico. At it's current speed of development, I find this unlikely, but it is nevertheless possible.

Time will tell whichever application, if any, will prevail in the market place, but I certainly wouldn't rule out Finale just yet.

A very precise assessment! (But Dorico is certainly fun to play with)

"(But Dorico is certainly fun to play with)"

If you like Sibelius!

ebiggs1 wrote:"(But Dorico is certainly fun to play with)"

If you like Sibelius!

Uh... yea...

Jari has just announced that, with the help of an MM engineer, he's fixed some of the major problems that were holding up the Mac plug-ins.

Thank you very much for letting us know.

Great news : a bunch of the JW plug-ins for Finale 25 Mac (64 bit) are now available. Thanks, Jari !
http://www.finaletips.nu/index.php/down ... c-plug-ins