Talk:Finale (scorewriter)

Fair use rationale for Image:Finale2006logo.gif
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BetacommandBot (talk) 19:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Purpose
I think you have lost the main purpose of this article, I think that is 'what version should I get' to be able to make up my mind I would need to know for each version: what system support it, the size of the file main disadvantages, etc (I see you already have a discusion about the bugs of some versions, but you have turn this into a battle finale vs sibelious).

Paranoidhuman (talk) 02:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

You believe the purpose of this page is to help you decide which version to get? Seriously? I'm sorry, but… No! This is to describe the software, its history, features and other pertinent information about it. BTW, except under very rare and unusual circumstances one always gets the latest version of any software which is compatible with their OS. AuralArch (talk) 03:33, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Version 2011b.r1 for Mac is broken
The mdimporter crashes constantly – you find dozends of recovered files and a long list in the logs. And it does not find its font “maestro” if used by an non-administrative (maybe by an user who did not install it – you know admin-surfers?) user. It is Windows-Software “painted in Mac”, still ugly. The only technical plus I see is: it does not break on HFS+ with respect for upper- und lowercase letters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.145.81.34 (talk) 20:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Visual Aspects: Descriptions missing
Basic underlying information on how the screen, file and printout elements are configured is missing here. Is it raster or vector based? What if any structures exist to make it possible to move from one format to another? What resolutions are available/possible/optimal? I don't know enough to even start to work on this, but that's what I've been looking for all over the place, and can't find. 173.48.171.20 (talk) 15:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

"Prominent Users" should be deleted
In my opinion the section "Prominent Users" should be deleted. It reads like an advertisement. There is no such section for other programs (e.g. celebrities writing their letters and books with Microsoft Word). If at all, it might be mentioned somewhere in the article, that the producer claims Finale to be useful for large projects. The section "Prominent Users", however, should be deleted in my opinion. I just do not want to remove it by myself because I am an anonymous user. --92.224.216.251 (talk) 00:56, 29 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I disagree, although perhaps it could be rewritten or the information incorporated in some other way. But unless someone wants to take that on, it is just fine as it is.  While Finale is categorized here as score writing software, that is a poor choice of words that is not used in the music industry.  Typically, Finale and similar programs are referred to as music notation software.  This is somewhat of a niche software category, and Finale has also been regularly referred to as "music engraving software" an even more specialized type of music notation software which has been an industry leader in terms of being able to accommodate for the most demanding and specialized notation features producing the most accurate, detailed and professional sheet music and scores from a desktop computer for quite some time without any real competition in the demanding high-end market.  The "prominent users" illustrates that aspect of Finale quite effectively.


 * Music engraving is a far more complex and specialized task, it is not appropriate to compare it to MS Word. It is more on the level of Adobe Illustrator, or Photoshop, or Fontlab's font creation software in that it is a highly refined and specialized tool used by industry professionals.   And while Finale may not be the industry leader in terms of sales/number of customers, it is still considered to be the most flexible and feature rich software of its kind which produces the most professional looking scores; and listing its users/customers/partnerships is the best way to demonstrate this.


 * And by the way, the Wiki page for Sibelius also includes a list of its prominent users.


 * AuralArch (talk) 04:37, 15 July 2020 (UTC)


 * It might be justified to have such a section, but almost all the prominent users are either: 1. not third-party refs, 2. dead links, or 3. unreferenced. If they can't be reliably ref'd, they should be removed. I also note the the Sibelius page no longer has a "Prominent users". peterl (talk) 08:54, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Finale Distribution
Would it be helpful for the article to include the following line? "MakeMusic's Finale and Garritan products are exclusively distributed through Alfred Music in North America, India, Australia and New Zealand and are available through music resellers worldwide." Beth Varela (talk) 18:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Functionality
The section reads, in part, "Finale's tools are organized into multiple hierarchically organized palettes, and the corresponding tool must be selected to add or edit any particular class of score element, (e.g., the Smart Shape tool to generate and edit trill lines and dynamics "hairpins" (so-named because the symbols resemble a person's hair pins)..." Aside from the overuse of parentheses, describing the etymology of "hairpins" seems beyond the scope of the article and distracting to boot.  Anyone who knows musical notation will know what a hairpin is, and those who don't will find out from the link to the "dynamics" article. NewkirkPlaza (talk) 19:05, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Version History
The second paragraph is quite misleading, or certainly very vague/poorly written. This makes it seem as though the first version of Finale for Mac was released in 2004; that is absolutely untrue—I began using Finale for Mac in 1990. The actual information meant to be conveyed is that a version on Finale for Apple's new BSD/Unix-based OS (Mac OS X — which replaced the classic Mac operating system version 9) was not released until 2004; whereas Apple introduced its completely rewritten OS in 2001 (a server version was released in 1999) leaving Mac users stuck without updates for about 4 years. This needs to be rewritten to clarify this important point. There is other language that re-emphasizes this fallacy referring to features being missing from the Mac version. While I can neither confirm nor deny this because I was not using Finale during that time, I do find it highly questionable and dubious because Finale has always had a very large Mac user-base. I think the original author of this section should have to opportunity to make the changes, and should be expected to correct their poor writing. AuralArch (talk) 04:07, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

“[Notation] software” vs. “scorewriter”
I'm not fond of the geeky-sounding (and German-compound-noun-looking) “scorewriter”; it's always been “notation software” to me. However, I was reprimanded for suggesting WP's main notation-software article (oops—I mean scorewriter article, LOL) be called Music notation software, as apparently “scorewriter” has seen wide adoption. Therefore, I suggest this article be retitled Finale (scorewriter), for consistency with WP's other (sigh} scorewriter articles, and with the Scorewriter page itself, which links here. I'm sorry I haven't time to monitor this section; please do what you think best. – AndyFielding (talk) 00:03, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Excessive Details
Do we really need sentences that describe a feature that specifically? For example, In this passge from the article: "Nearly all score elements can be positioned or adjusted, either by dragging (with the appropriate tool selected) or by using dialog boxes with measurements in inches, centimeters or picas." can be rewritten to be less like an advert with this revision: "Finale has the ability to move elements in the score". - Roostery123 (talk) 01:30, 18 April 2022 (UTC)