Finale ceases development

[mducharme]

THey just made a new announcement: But as a result of our community’s feedback, Finale authorization will remain active for the foreseeable future

[NeeraWM]

No need to worry anymore. They made it possible to activate the software on new machines indefinitely.
I wonder why they didn't do it in the first place ... oh wait, I got it! It costs to keep a server up! Geniuses...

This demonstrates only one thing: in this social media age, you get a double-edged sword. Do one thing wrong and you are doomed or, the other way around, just shout loud enough and companies will have to change things to avoid backslashes in the Stockmarket.

[benwiggy]

indefinitely.

I would be very surprised if "indefinitely" meant "more than 5 years".

[NeeraWM]

I would be very surprised if "indefinitely" meant "more than 5 years".

Well... they also said that OS versions may prevent you from launching it in the future.
That's basically in the surroundings of 5 years.

[MichelRE]

I think the underlying thing is, all of these Finale users will still, in the end, have to consider making the change to another engraving/composing platform.
Remaining with Finale will, in the end, only be dragging out the painful and difficult truth of Finale's demise.

[OCTO]

Does that mean you cant use custom text fonts either?

You can use any text font.  As said, you can use any musical font as well, but you need to compile MS by yourself from the source code.  I don't know how to do it though.

If the platform is so important, and if there isn’t an automatic font substitution, they could force the use of the standard fonts if one wants their music published on the platform.

I second Ben’s question: are text fonts restricted as well?

How professional engravers and publishers can cope with such limitation?

Actually, using a custom music fonts creates more problem than just a custom text font, because it creates a different spacing, thus different layout results, and so on.
As said to benwiggy above, you can use any text font in the score, and you can compile from the source your MuseScore with any music fonts.

For the last question: I don't think that fonts are the main reason of a nice looking score.  There has been a hype for a while that having a certain font, that nobody has, will make it look beautiful.  Yes, it can look differently, but if the copyist/editor is sluggish, no fonts can help.  On the contrary, I have seen scores done in plain Maestro, and plain Engraver, with such a jaw-dropping perfection.
Here is my example of MuseScore (done in version 2!).  Read more: viewtopic.php?t=341

[hautbois baryton]

It's not the music font, it's the artistry of the engraver's choices that make a written page beautiful.

[Harpsichordmaker]

For the last question: I don't think that fonts are the main reason of a nice looking score.

It's not the music font, it's the artistry of the engraver's choices that make a written page beautiful.

Sure enough, but we aren’t talking about what’s needed to get a beautiful page. That is true for text typographers as well, since the great typographers of the past only used one text type and still they would produce beautiful pages. And of course the fantastic copper-engravers of music did a fantastic job, usually better than the average today, all with one type.
So, I know and agree you don’t need any specific music font and can do with only one. But again, we are not talking of this.

Instead, we are talking about the limitation in the font choice set by Musescore, its reasons and its logic. The stated reasons are illogic, or insufficient, as proved by many music engraving softwares both commercial and free and open-code which easily allow for choosing the music font.
If there is any problem preventing Musescore’s customers to choose any fonts, it’s a problem created by Musescore itself, the other softwares do work flawlessly.

As for the “compile yourself”, ah!
First of all, did you ever try and compile an open code software? Errors everytime.
Second, when you find what’s needed to successfully compile (good luck), you still have not achieved anything. You still need to update the code to accept the new font. Again, good luck. There isn’t a single font list in the cose where you just add your new font and voilà: there are many places here and there along the code, with “specific optimizations” (Musescore’s words) for any font. So you will have to do the same if you want it to work. You are going to spend weeks to succeed, if you succeed.
I have looked at the source code of Musescore and found it nearly impossible to find and understand the logic. Not beacuse it is a badly-written code, far from it, but for the mere number of code lines and different files. I am an ex non-professional programmer, I have probably forgotten everything programming, but am not an absolute newcomer.

Third: why should the user do that? It’s a programmer’s task, a musician could well have no specific skill in programming. Or, if they have, they could well not be willing to waste their time they could be better spending by doing their work (composing, engraving, publishing, preparing parts for concerts etc.).

And fourth: start again at every small or big upgrade of the program.
Sorry but I still find the “compile yourself” an offensive arrogant statement on the part of Musescore (not on OCTO part, of course.

Of course I am aware that Musescore is a completely free program and doesn’t need to offer any of the features we usually take for granted in any other software (in fact, even commercial programs don’t need to: the customers will decide whether it is for them or not).

[OCTO]

I agree with you @Harpsichordmaker .  I haven't compiled any software and I don't have time to learn how to do it.  This idea is by one of the MS developers when I asked.  I was frustrated equally much at the beginning.

But why not to try it, and see how it works?