Finale Forum

Windows 7 Finale 26

For what it’s worth, I’m done.

A 20+ year advocate of this platform, I’ve now had enough. The 26 “upgrade” is a joke. I’ve only attempted one document on it since purchasing it in June. Spacing is a mess, with accidental collisions ride (see my earlier post). Yesterday, Support admitted after SIX WEEKS of useless emails that they have no solution and I would have to manually adjust measures and notes moving forward, a suggestion that’s almost incomprehensible. The playback system is a downgrade from earlier versions. 25 corrupted three documents for which MM never provided an explanation or solution.

As a decades long proponent of this program, It is sad to see what use to be the benchmark for the digital engraving industry reduced to hucksterism.

I’ll be back for help on 2014.5 and 2011, but anyone buying any future versions of this program is crazy.

End of rant. Good luck to the rest of you.

I hope Dorico is all that you expect it to be. Let us know how it all turns out.

Zuill

I looked at a couple of your recent threads, ewindels. Dorico may well do better on this one with all the flats colliding vertically:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18032

In the other thread, though,

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18098&

it looked to me like there was some manual spacing at play; I suggested you try clearing it--did you? Zuill was reminded of another problem he had seen involving hidden entries, and offered to take a look. We never heard back from you.

Alas, these days just because MakeMusic support can't solve a problem, that doesn't mean there's no solution.

At any rate, good luck. I, too, would be interested in hearing how things go.

I read your "Ghost Spacing" topic. Whatever is going on is untypical of Finale, any version. I'm guessing the problem is relatively simple to solve, but lies just beneath the surface so troubleshooting takes a lot of steps.

Was this file started on a clean, unused template? Or did you clean out a previously used file and use that? Cleaned out files sometimes leave nasty, hard to find things behind. Your new templates should be of a more recent vintage, say created on Finale 2014.5. Older templates can have "erroneous information" in them (Make Music's words, not mine).

Can you post that mis-spaced page for us to look at? You seem to be spending a lot of time with Make Music on these problems. Maybe you should count on this forum a little more, or try the Finale Powerusers Facebook page.

Finale Forum!

If they can't fix it, it ain't broke.

Crossgrade is $279.99. Have fun.

https://new.steinberg.net/dorico/?_sp=9 ... rico-pro-3

I bought it last year when the crossgrade was on sale. There are things I like about the look. There are things I dislike such as ... oh ... everything else. Evaluating 3 right now.

If Dorico's MusicXML handling wasn't so poor, I might use Finale for the heavy lifting and polish in Dorico but not yet. Just isn't ready, IMO. Dorico 4, perhaps? 5?

I am curious what Dorico would do with the problem in the first link above I posted, with the flats colliding vertically. It seems like Finale uses a rectangle around the accidentals instead of "kerning" them.

MikeHalloran wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2019 8:57 pm

Crossgrade is $279.99. Have fun.

https://new.steinberg.net/dorico/?_sp=9 ... rico-pro-3

I bought it last year when the crossgrade was on sale. There are things I like about the look. There are things I dislike such as ... oh ... everything else. Evaluating 3 right now.

If Dorico's MusicXML handling wasn't so poor, I might use Finale for the heavy lifting and polish in Dorico but not yet. Just isn't ready, IMO. Dorico 4, perhaps? 5?

Curious what you mean by Dorico's MusicXML handling. A month or so ago I was playing around with version 2 and it imported my Finale produced MusicXML almost flawlessly. Took only about 10 minutes to fix the headers.

The main reason why I haven't used Dorico for the engraving is that I can't quite get the look I'm looking for. Dorico's Bravura tries to emulate a more handwritten look, but I prefer the sharp edges of Finale's Maestro and Engraver fonts. With that said, it does collision avoidance almost flawlessly!

Nick Mazuk wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2019 10:31 pm

MikeHalloran wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2019 8:57 pm

Crossgrade is $279.99. Have fun.

https://new.steinberg.net/dorico/?_sp=9 ... rico-pro-3

I bought it last year when the crossgrade was on sale. There are things I like about the look. There are things I dislike such as ... oh ... everything else. Evaluating 3 right now.

If Dorico's MusicXML handling wasn't so poor, I might use Finale for the heavy lifting and polish in Dorico but not yet. Just isn't ready, IMO. Dorico 4, perhaps? 5?

Curious what you mean by Dorico's MusicXML handling. A month or so ago I was playing around with version 2 and it imported my Finale produced MusicXML almost flawlessly. Took only about 10 minutes to fix the headers.

The main reason why I haven't used Dorico for the engraving is that I can't quite get the look I'm looking for. Dorico's Bravura tries to emulate a more handwritten look, but I prefer the sharp edges of Finale's Maestro and Engraver fonts. With that said, it does collision avoidance almost flawlessly!

We're looking for different things. For what I need, Dorico is terrible and 3 is no better than 2.2. I'm going to leave it at that.

For one composer I work with, Notion 6 imports his Sibelius files perfectly via .xml — much better than Finale. I don't know why nor do I care. The crossgrade to Notion is le$$ than I charge by the hour.

"Spacing is a mess, with accidental collisions ride (see my earlier post)."

Not so fast there! You just might give Perfect Layout a try. I have been discussing and cussing it for a couple weeks now and my basic conclusion is, it is a buy. Send them your file and see what it will do. https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/

When it works it makes Finale what MM should have done a long time ago. It can't hurt to see what PL will do for you.

ebiggs1 wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 18, 2019 3:25 pm

You just might give Perfect Layout a try. When it works it makes Finale what MM should have done a long time ago.

Jan is to be commended for the extraordinary effort and achievement of his Perfect Layout plug-in. But you are right: this is what Finale should be doing already (and as with Patterson Beams: automatically by default, rather than only when you run a plug-in).

However, the additional costs for Perfect Layout, TG Tools Pro, and all the other tools that automate the tedious drudgery of Finale certainly mitigate the expense of a cross-grade to any competing product. Thank the Lord that JW doesn't charge for his plug-ins!

"...all the other tools that automate the tedious drudgery of Finale..."

Your point is well made about those plug-ins but not so much applies to PL. How many people would buy MS Word if it put words or letters all over the page an or top of one another? I also don't understand why MM resists efforts to fix that. Perhaps they could possibly include Perfect Layout? Sibelius has their magic magnet or some such. PL far exceeds that!

motet wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2019 8:59 pm

I am curious what Dorico would do with the problem in the first link above I posted, with the flats colliding vertically. It seems like Finale uses a rectangle around the accidentals instead of "kerning" them.

Here's the passage in Dorico, with no manual adjustments. I'm not crazy about the final slur, but you can see the flats are nicely spaced.

Here is a short video demo of making Ed's original Finale score more comparable with Dan's Dorico screenshot in just 100 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTM4imFCXso
It seems like Dan used more horizontal space. That's why it still looks a bit squeezed.

I used Aruvarb (Finale's Bravura font), Times New Roman and Perfect Layout v1.5 to get this result:

ebiggs1 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 23, 2019 2:34 pm

Your point is well made about those plug-ins but not so much applies to PL. How many people would buy MS Word if it put words or letters all over the page an or top of one another?

I'd say it exactly applies to PL: How many people would buy MS Word if you had to buy Perfect Text™ to stop the letters bumping into each other?

PL is pretty much essential to any serious use of Finale: it is therefore an essential cost of using Finale. Or to put it another way, Finale without Perfect Layout and TG Tools and JW plug-ins is inadequate. It's a 'Lite' version in which you keep running into limitations and obstacles.

ebiggs1 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 23, 2019 2:34 pm

I also don't understand why MM resists efforts to fix that.

Because they have to make sure that old documents still open the same. Or still can open the same. That's why you'll never see Patterson Beams folded into the core of Finale, so that the settings are applied as you go along entering notes.

Also, I'm trying to think of a single significant feature since the Selection Tool in 2008 that has received anything more than damp praise or mild opprobrium from the userbase.

Expression Categories? Outrage!
Lyric revamp? Meh, new bugs for old.
Staff Spacing/Grouping/Hiding? Possibly the most successful, though there were grumbles about some tasks being more difficult or impossible.
Percussion? Madness!
Artic Collision? Incompatibility Danger!

Because they have to make sure that old documents still open the same. Or still can open the same.

I don't buy that at all. It would be simple matter of fact to ask a person before the older file is opened. Or, perhaps a different extension to tell Finale if it is a new file or an old one. My conclusion and the only one that makes any sense is MM simply doesn't have the programmers, coders, to do it. They likely have one or two folks that understand the code which must be millions of lines. The fact is that coders are in high demand. Tech job hiring is up and software developers are still the most difficult talent to recruit. Music notation isn't like the highest paid positions. My guess, maybe I'm wrong but, I suspect MM uses programmers or coders, on a jobber status.

BuonTempi wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:04 pm

Expression Categories? Outrage!

Gee, to me that's one of the biggest improvements since I've been using Finale.

motet wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 22, 2019 5:10 pm

BuonTempi wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:04 pm

Expression Categories? Outrage!

Gee, to me that's one of the biggest improvements since I've been using Finale.

Me too, but at the time, there was significant forum fury about how this was going to upset existing workflows, and that 4 Staff Sets wasn't nearly enough (MM relented and increased them to 8 ).