NOTATIO

As a hardcore Finale user, I am really impressed by some things in MuseScore2.

Finale and Sibelius users: it is really worth to try.

Personally, I am not so dependent of the sound library, I need it just for engraving, so MS2 is fine for that purpose.
The greatest thing I discovered in MS2 is that you can change position of any object, size of any object, spacing of any object, color and transparency of any object.
Any change of an object's position will fix that position, nothing will move until you ask for it. This is, as a Finale user, the most crucial thing I experienced with MS2.
Perhaps there are things that I wouldn't like if I need to engrave an entire piece from scratch, but I will definitely try (for non-deadline scores!).

Just some thoughts.

Best, O

I totally agree, OCTO. I enjoyed working with MuseScore a few months ago. My impression was that the program is going in the right direction and would be more than sufficient for many users. Who knows what its capabilities might be be in the future? As a Finale user, I thought MuseScore had a some of the feel of Sibelius.

The only negatives I found were: 1. the lack of well-organized documentation with a good index (the present help documents are not bad but feel incoherent, at least to this new user) 2. the limitation to three music fonts only (one of which is Bravura, fortunately) and 3. the use of a specialized terminology that is not quite what a musician might expect. For example, in the Inspector, a "chord" can be a single note, and a "note" is a note head, which had me going in circles for a while. What makes it even more confusing is that "chord" is not defined this way in the glossary!

MuseScore is absolutely fantastic and most suited for a High School student or undergraduate music student of small means.
And the best part overall is that it is free.

A good manual to use with it is by Marc Sabatella "Mastering MuseScore."

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-MuseSco ... 1508621683

Ralph, did you find this manual to be more helpful than the online help? Most of the many reviews of the book at Amazon were very positive, but a few less positive ones made me hesitant to buy this.

It lacks a good index (VERY poor in fact) but the main sections are organized a lot like Johnson's "TrailBlazer Guide" for Finale. It's worth the money in my opinion.

Thanks for your help, Ralph. I was afraid of that, considering the lack of an index at the online help. But I may get it anyway.

MuseScore is in continual development with an active community of contributors. See: https://musescore.org/en/node/107871