On 5 Apr 2006 at 7:50, Phil Daley wrote:
> At 4/5/2006 07:39 AM, Jan Angermüller wrote:
>
> >Has anybody got any experience with sharing Finale for Windows
> >on a Citrix application server ("Citrix Presentation Server 4.0") ?
> >Is it possible ? Any problems, e.g. with MIDI playback / input ?
>
> I have run other programs on Citrix.
>
> I would be surprised if there were no MIDI problems, since the program
> is actually running on a remote server not the desktop.
I've never used Citrix, but have used Windows Terminal Server
extensively (which is what Citrix is based on, but since Win2K, also
uses technology licensed from Citrix). There are several issues:
1. licensing -- some applications prohibit running on a Terminal
Server unless you buy special licenses. I doubt, though, that
MakeMusic has engineered Finale to check for licenses.
2. local vs. remote devices -- the simplest to understand is
printing. When you're running a program on Windows Terminal Server,
it's actually running on a computer in another office. The printers
that are local to that Terminal Server are probably not the ones you
want to print to. In Windows 2000, this was fairly problematic, and
not easily solved without the Citrix add-on extensions. In Win2K3
Server, this has been quite nicely resolved (though the server has to
have a printer driver installed on it that is compatible with your
local printer), and you get transparent automatic local printing with
it.
Sound output is local, too, but I don't know at which level. I just
tested playing a MIDI file on a Win2K Terminal Server and on a Win2K3
Terminal Server, and both failed because neither server had audio
hardware installed.
The Remote Desktop client has options for redirecting audio to your
local computer, and the default is to do so. But my guess is that
hardware and drivers have to be installed on the terminal server
itself for there to be any redirection (if it can't be processed on
the terminal server, it can't be redirected to your local machine).
All of the redirection, either printers or audio, happens at a level
that the applications don't need to know anything about, so I would
expect that if the terminal server in question has the hardware
installed (i.e., it can play sound locally), then the redirection to
your local machine will work properly.
3. Finale registration -- fortuitously, we learned something today
about how Finale's registration works in the thread about running as
admin or user. It is tied to the machine, and because of that, the
registration process has to be run as an administrator. However, it
apparently has to run only once on a machine, since the person having
the problem reported that once he'd registered under the
administrative logon, Finale ran properly logged on as a regular
user. This means that if Finale is not detecting that it is running
under Terminal Server that you should be able to install one
registered copy of Finale and have many users use it. My expectation
is that this is something MakeMusic would have accounted for already,
as it would be an easy way to circumvent their licensing/registration
requirements. So I strongly suspect it won't actually work.
For those who run computer labs, can you say if you have to
individually register each copy of Finale, or if you buy a license
pack and there is software that monitors usage, or if you buy a
special version of Finale that doesn't have the
licensing/registration restrictions as the single copies?
Of course, all that said, one could just try it and see if it works!
--
David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
