Robert Patterson wrote:
David W. Fenton wrote:
Or just that the structural changes internal to Finale files made to
support linked parts were so great that they could no longer support
ETF without completely modifying the ETF standard?
I think this is probably the explanation. Jari attempted to justify what
to my mind is not justifiable. In fact, MM could have modified the ETF
standard to accommodate linked parts but presumably chose not to for the
usual reasons (time and money). The original reason for the ETF was to
facilitate porting between Mac and Win, but that purpose was made
obsolete 15 years ago.
Nevertheless, one community particularly hard-hit by this decision is
the 3rd party plugin developers. The ETF format is what made 3rd party
plugins possible. I doubt you'll see much more innovation from that
quarter now that MM has removed it.
My guess is that MM didn't like Sibelius' continued boasting of the
ability to import Finale files, which they used to coax frustrated
Finale users who had large libraries of files already created.
Not supporting ETF any more, and likely not releasing the specs for this
new data structure, will mean that from this point forward, anybody
wishing to move from Finale to Sibelius (or vice-versa, as has always
been the case) will need to spend money on the full Dolet plug-ins and
use MusicXML (which does keep improving and is very close to perfection
in being the lingua-franca we've all longed for in the computer-notation
world).
And since there is no internal need for ETF any more, as Robert pointed
out since cross-platform compatibility has been built into a single data
file structure for both Mac and PC platforms, MakeMusic can justify this
action on their part.
But I will say that Jari's review does give me great hope that much has
been improved in this version, rather than having a lot of bells and
whistles simply tacked onto a half-hearted upgrade. I'm actually
considering buying this upgrade now.
I'll wait a few days, though, to get the early reactions of the folks
who should be installing their upgrades right now.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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