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HI All,

 

I know that everyone has been waiting to hear more about what we have been doing lately with Finale and the time is here! Please check out the blog article, released earlier today, for more information.

 

Coming Soon: Sneak Previews of Finale Version 26

 

 

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Will the changes be radical in the sense that there will be a (steep) learning curve for long time users? Thanks

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Generally speaking, improvements will focus on streamlining your workflow and will begin with the time it takes to install and get up and running with the new version. You’ll enjoy smarter default engraving, performance enhancements, new features, bug fixes, and refinements to included resources such as templates and libraries. Again, our goal in all of this is to make your creative process more efficient while retaining Finale’s legendary flexibility.

 

Sorry, but that doesn't tell me much. These are the kind of features one would expect in any new version of Finale. Am I to believe that current developmental versions of Finale contain no new features that have been sufficiently fleshed out so that a few can't be announced right now? You folks need to stir up a little excitement!

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For me, I care not if new features are introduced.  I'd love to see the program more stable, bug free and snappier.

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I have to agree with Bruce, in that you’ve told us nothing. Other than it will cost us.

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Although useable, there are some serious new bugs when running Finale Version 25 in macOS 10.14 Beta 5.

  1. Document Setup Wizard – second page – entries seem to be assigned to wrong parameters.
  2. Document Options – most tabs have views misplaced, crashes upon display or entering text.

If anyone at MakeMusic is interested in additional reports, please tell me.  Otherwise, I'll assume that you've got plenty of engineers already testing and fixing for macOS 10.14, and that Finale Version 26 is going to work perfectly in macOS 10.14 :)

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Basically, a teaser to the teaser. But I am excited, nonetheless.

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Methinks that if they haven’t addressed the 5K/4K Monitors issue, they need not bother.

 

I’m not paying attention to the PC world but much of what Apple has been doing in Mojave has been to get Metal Graphics (introduced with OS 10.8.2) finally working properly. There is hope.

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Interesting, Mike. Personally, since I have a mid-2011 iMac, the 5K/4K issue means nothing to me. I guess we all have out pet wants.

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Mine is a 2010. I’m thinking of all the treads on that issue. 

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Yes, I never heard of the 5K/4K Monitors issue either.  Finale is such a huge old app with so many different use cases.  Unfortunately, the Marketing Department always wants shiny new features instead of fixing bugs in old features.  Looking at Apple as a prime example of this, you can make a lot of money that way!

 

But just in case anyone at MakeMusic wants wants me to purchase the upgrade immediately, please read this.

 

MOST ANNOYING BUGS IN FINALE VERSION 25

 

*  In the Playback Controls window, the triple text field in which you can type in the indexes of the measure, beat, etc. where you want playback to start before you hit the Play button.  It works some of the time.  Most times, it replaces what you just spent 10 seconds typing with "1|0|0" and starts playing at the beginning.  It will never jump to a non-visible measure (Why not?).  However, even if the desired starting measure is visible, it still usually jumps to "1|0|0".  This is very frustrating.

*  In the macOS version, when I use Graphics > Export Pages, the "dirty document" dot in the red "close" button on the left side of the window title bar appears.  This is wrong because exporting pages should certainly not change any document content.  But when I see the dirty dot, I worry that it has!

*  The procedure for getting elision slurs in Spanish lyrics (enter them with marker characters such as a tilde, then use Text Search and Replace to replace all tildes in Lyrics with uppercase I and specify "Engraver Font Set") is completely crazy.

*  The procedure for changing lyric baselines is ridiculously laborious.  In a tight layout, when I transpose a song down, to maintain space between the lyrics and the bottom ledger lines, I may need to, for example, move the baselines of 4 verses and 1 chorus of lyrics down by, say, 0.15.  First I need to get a drink of water to cool down.  Then I bring up Adjust Baselines dialog.  Then I need bullet Verse, type in 1, then do the math in my head to figure out the new offset, type it in.  Then I wipe off the sweat, because I must repeat this for the other 3 verses and again for the chorus.  And nothing shows in the view until I click Apply, so I don't know if I made a mistake, such as forgetting a stupid minus (-) sign or decimal point, until the end.  Please, there should be a command to Adjust all lyric baselines by ___.  In addition, all lyric baselines should be shown in a table, viewable and editable all at once.

*  Simple Entry Rests and Simple Entry Notes are two separate panels.  Why?  Almost all music has both notes and rests.  A rest is just a note which has no pitch.  When using Simple Entry, I usually want to enter some of both.  These panels only use a tiny amount of screen area, so it's not like we need to preserve screen area.  Needing to open and move around *two* panels is very annoying.

*  Upon applying Simple Entry > Repitch to a note which has a tie line, the tie line disappears.  That is almost never what I want.  I get this same undesired side effect if I change a note's duration.

*  If you try to drag text attached to a pickup measure, instead of moving where you drag the mouse, it moves several times that distance in the opposite direction, and likes to fly off the left edge of the page.  The workaround is to never attach text to a pickup measure, attach it to the next measure.  Of course, this does not always behave properly, but at least you can fix it manually.

*  Pickup measures are not included in the displayed measure numbers, but they apparently are included internally, because for any song with a pickup measure, if for example in the Frame Attributes of a Text element you specify attachment to measure N, it will be attached to the measure which is displayed as (N-1).  Lately, I've decided that, for this reason, I *never* use Pickup measures.  Instead, I change the time signature.  Which reminds me…

*  In the Time Signature dialog, you cannot make a non-contiguous selection of measures.   This is very annoying, for example, when a score needs multiple verses or sections that all need to begin or end with a partial (less beats than normal) measure.  You need to do five things in the Time Signature dialog to make such a measure: Indicate the target measure number, set the numerator of the time signature, click "More options", switch on checkbox "Use a different time signature for display", then click "OK".  How nice it would be if these five clicks could fix all similar measures in the score!  An alternative would be to include Time Signature in the filtered copy-and-paste, but I imagine that could have unforeseen bad side effects.

*  In the Edit System Margins dialog, you cannot make a non-contiguous selection of measures.  This is very annoying, for example, when a score needs four verses or sections that all need to begin or end with systems that have more Top, for example, to show the section title text or maybe Repeat brackets.

NEW BUGS IN macOS 10.14 MOJAVE ONLY

*  Document Setup Wizard – second page – entries seem to be assigned to wrong parameters.

*  Document Options – most tabs have views misplaced, crashes upon display or entering text.

*  Score Manager > Instrument List > Color Noteheads, clicking the "Settings" button should show a dialog but nothing happens.

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FYI, a previous communication from Makemusic (July 11 ?) :

"While we’re not quite at a point where we can share all the details of what this new release will contain or how it might be delivered, there are some key priorities guiding our work. You may have seen me mention some of these priorities in other threads, including collision avoidance issues, Mac performance and hi-resolution monitor work. Even though the details are a bit limited for now, there definitely will be more to come."

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Finale bug lists (what fun...) - Here's an interesting bug in F25, MacOS High Sierra:

Open a document - then open two additional "new windows" in that same document - on the same monitor or multiple monitors...

Window 1 = score
Window 2 = flute 1 part
Window 3 = flute 2 part

When three or more windows are open - some of the tools stop working.  Try to open the speedy editor on any measure of any window or use simple note entry - nothing happens... the clicked measure just becomes highlighted.

You can enter expressions though...

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Is it just me, or am I right in my observation that most of the bugs in the last of of years have been more MAC then PC related? Wondering

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Many of those “annoying bugs” are not.

 

I will only address elision slurs. I do them differently by typing directly—I can only assume you use the Lyric Tool. Most apps don’t have that and those have to b entered manually. 

 

No two notation apps do this the same way and there’s a good reason for this: There is no key combination that enters this mark in text—most fonts don’t have the character.. Notation apps have to create a way to make it happen. 

 

So, if you have a better way, drop it into the suggestion box. While you’re at it, figure out a reason for the rest of us to want to adopt it.

MuseScore has a fun way: 

https://musescore.org/en/handbook/lyrics.  (No thanks). Overture’s is not bad...

 

It’s not a bug.

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Hi! I purchased Final v.25 on 07/04/2018, the update to version 26 will be paid for those who bought it recently and therefore has never downloaded updates? Is it possible to know the price of the update?

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Use the Submit a request link at the top o the page to ask MakeMusic directly.

 

Marketing departments take a number of things into account on matters such as this including the announce and release dates, neither of which have happened. All we've gotten is 'we're working on something and someday, we'll tell you about it'.

 

It may be possible for MM to be more vague but I certainly don't know how.

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Well, for the record, Dorico doesn't give specific dates for coming updates (or promise features) until just before they are due either. It seems standard business practice and saves companies from releasing updates before they are ready, which I doubt anyone wants.

 

As anxious as we all are to know what the new version will be like and when it will be available, we will likely just have to wait--although MM did indicate that updates on new features will be forthcoming bit by bit.

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And will no doubt publish a cutoff date at that time.

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