NOTATIO

MuseScore 4.0 has been released today.

https://musescore.org/

Other than the price, there's no 'killer' feature; but it continues to raise the bar for what is (or should be) expected of notation software. The commercial apps can all still justify their price tag on top of what MS offers, but they'll need to work harder as time goes by.

Here's a detailed review at Scoring Notes:
https://www.scoringnotes.com/reviews/musescore-4-0/

Lots of the UI changes might seem a bit familiar to Dorico users, mind...

(Meanwhile, Don Williams is stretching the limits of 'Late Fall 2022" for the release of Encore. https://passportmusic.com)

It looks pretty nice! I have sort of been only halfway learning it (most of my students use it) but may actually need to break down and really figure it out. Mixer looks really nice too!

I updated an older Ross beaming comparison file with MS4. They've changed a bunch of default beam angle / stem length settings too apparently, continuing the trend towards more shallow beam angles and longer stems. MS4 corrects the most egregious beaming errors from MS3, but is actually less like Ross beaming overall. (If Ross beaming is still something to aspire to.) Anyway, here are the new MS4 beam angles if anyone is curious. (There definitely could be errors in here, as I didn't go back and double-check everything)

Looks like MS is going with the latest trend in beam angles, unfortunately.

I downloaded the new Muse Hub but seemed to be getting the beam results for MS3. Then the Muse Hub became unresponsive on my computer and will not appear again. When I try to reinstall, it can't because it says MS Hub is already active, even after I restart my computer. What a mess. I think I will stick to prime time. When I see Hub, I tend to run for the hills. Trouble is on the horizon.

I also had issues with MuseHub, and I found on their forums that one needed to give the app Full Disk Access in System Preferences (or Settings).
What is great about MS4 is the new note-spacing engine, which sadly makes it now better than Sibelius (which is much overdue an update in this respect).
Dorico is still better, and more flexible, but hey, this is free ...

A day after I installed MuseHub an announcement suddenly popped up that cleared up the issues and I was able to sample MuseScore 4. It is much improved, but...

I have just started a short project and it crashed without warning. Okay.

Right now: a single staff as Diskant or Bass is missing. You can only choose an instrument. However, I just need an empty, instrument-less diskant staff...

Edit: It crashes too often for any serious job. I can't even discover it, it just closes down.

I guess one must remember that with open-source software, the users are the testers. Sort of like with Finale, except that there are even more problems with the initial versions, but it's free and the designers are a lot more receptive to suggestions (hopefully).

I generally like very much the smoothness of MuseScore, the display, curves, output. Something is soft in it... Very feminine.

And it is good that there is an option to install ONLY the application without MuseHub. All "hubs", "clouds", "links" and so on, are very intrusive - in my opinion. Please, keep it available without the hub.