[CM] ETF or MusicXML output for CM?

[Niklas Kambeitz]

Rick Taube wrote:
> There are two main reason that I haven't tackled  this already (besides 
> never having enough time to do even half of what i need to do). First, 
> the xml->Finale bridge is not really free, I believe that it is sold by 
> a company (Recordi or something like that). At one point they did have a 
> free "Lite" verson but I'm not sure how useful that is or if it even 
> exists anymore, or if it runs on anything other than windows xp.  Anyway 
> it would take someone's time to investigate this before implementing 
> anything.

Currently, the free version of the XML plug-in for Finale ("Dolet 
Light") is only available for Windows. Non-free versions are available 
for Finale (Windows and OSX) and Sibelius (Windows and OSX).

There is experimental XML support for some Linux notation software; the 
list is at: http://www.recordare.com/software.html

I can't attest to the quality of the results using MusicXML; however, 
from trying their sample xml files, it seems to go far beyond my basic 
needs of representing pitch and rhythm accurately.

The sample files are at:
http://www.recordare.com/xml/samples.html

Anyway, I still don't know whether it would be better to pursue xml or 
enigma, but either way would make life a lot easier for me (and a lot of 
other composers, I suspect) and I can't think of a more useful new CM 
feature.

As for Score, I've never used it and it seems expensive at $750. Your 
hatred of Finale is shared by many, but they got a lot of things right, 
and until a better (and hopefully open source) notation program comes 
along, we're kind of stuck with it.