NOTATIO

To some degree it looks like it's necessitated by the flat, but I agree that it is exceptionally difficult to read at first glance. All of those notes should be more evenly spaced out.

In my view, Finale is only good for those interested in the kind of endless tweaking we do, as the default output is borderline unusable. MuseScore is almost as customizable, provides much better default output, and is free, so why would a part-time engraver not interested in minutiae ever want to p...

I've seen the vertical bracket in piano music for large chords, which is often impossible to follow on precisely those chords because of hand size. I wonder if the same issue might crop up in harp music. Could John or another keyboardist/harpist with more experience chime in on why this symbol is so...

Ironically looks better than their Finale output, though still nothing to write home about.

You could give this a shot, but I'm not sure if it would fit the style of your scores: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/glc/1820-modern
This one is also fairly close: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/urw/seizieme-pro

Don't have score examples on hand but that's what I've seen in the past in all such cases.

John, playing devil's advocate: do you believe that the theory advocated here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sgkls8XEt8), that these metronome markings were used radically differently in Beethoven's time, holds any weight when it comes to the Hammerklavier at least?

John, could you post an example of the specific font you're looking for?

I much prefer the earlier size, even if it overlaps the lines slightly.

I don't know if you use Finale or InDesign for the footnotes, John. I don't use Finale and can't comment on its tools, but both InDesign and Affinity Publisher have options to enable "lining" figures in EB Garamond, which are more what you need for the footnotes. Here's a comparison between the two ...