[MuseScore] Anyone use it?

[OCTO]

Hello.
Does anyone use MuseScore?
I have just tested their version 2, and it looks very promising. Selecting any item on the "page" it is easy to manipulate it by settings provided in the inspector, similar to Sibelius.
I have no idea about how good is music spacing, font handling, customization and overall stability.
Many tools are available with key shortcuts, which are unknown for me, so it takes time to grasp it.

It seems that all settings are in SPaces, engraving spaces - which makes sense.

[tisimst]

I have not tested their MusicXML import feature much of MS (just the examples you can download from the MusicXML site with mixed results), but I'd say that would be a good way to get a feel for what its spacing algorithms are capable of. I used to use MS (pre-2.X) and it was perfect for the simple things I did way back when. The recent jump from 1.3 to 2.X has resulted in some nice improvements in spacing, accidental stacking, collision resolution, etc. I know a lot of people really like it. You might as well give it a go. There's nothing to lose, really. The forums are active and expert users troll the topics almost 24/7 it seems (https://www.musescore.org/en/forum) so you should get answers back quickly to questions you have.

[OCTO]

It seems that I will give it a try. Probably by making one score in it.
Sometimes I have quite tricky notation (many tweaks in Finale, similar tweaks in Sibelius), and wonder how it could be accomplished in MuseScore.

[tisimst]

I wouldn't count on anything working for very graphical notation, but then I guess I haven't really exercised the program enough to know what its limitations are. As with Fin/Sib, you can always do any necessary post-processing on the PDF after the fact.

[wess-music]

Most of the application perform almost the same things — notes, rest, tuplest articulation, dynamics and text.
However, the options to compose and precisely to import vector graphics are the milestone IMO.
From MAC-WIN programs only Finale does this and unfortunately with lots of compromises.
Sibelius on its side imports better and maintains better the imbedded vector objects but could not generate such complicated shapes itself.
There is no "full" happiness in this field.
From other hand our friends in this forum that work with LolyPond (some one possible could share his knowledgement in Score) demonstrate uncompromised results.
Finally anything else involving dense textures propels to Illustrator, iDraw or Inkscape.
I visit all 11 demo videos for MuseScore. Looks similar as an input (speedy entry) compared to Finale or Sibelius.

[OCTO]

I will definitely give it a try.
The problem is that many professional music engravers work in either F or S, and on the other side many amateurs work with MuseScore, thus building impression that it is not so capable software.

The only problem I can see is use of different fonts.

[tisimst]

MuseScore's font situation is an interesting one. MS 2 supports three built-in SMuFL music fonts: their version of Emmentaler, Gootville (i.e., Gonville), and Bravura. The developers thought it would be more important that anyone be able to open anyone else's scores, so they hard-coded the music fonts into the program so that users always have the needed music fonts. The "downside" to this is that if a user wants to be able to use a different 3rd-party music font (like November 2.0), they need to get the MS source code, add the necessary references to the source code, then compile MS on their own machine. It's do-able, and I've done it to test some things, but certainly not very practical for most users. At least there are a few choices without needing to do that.

Is MS good enough for professional work? I think for most scores it should be, and being supportive of MusicXML, there's the ability of interchange to/from other commercial programs available. I think that you brought up the key hurdle, though, which is that it is viewed as a program mostly used by "amateurs" and therefore not fit enough for industrial use. That's sad to me, true or not.

[OCTO]

I know that limitations of fonts. I believe they want to create a stable software with the high interchange safety. I understand that also.
But it is a limitation for house-styling.

Regarding amateurism VS professionalism: do anyone remember score sharing on MakeMusic's homepage, for Finale files? That one was just terrible example.

[odod]

i use musescore in my class .. for Primary 6 composition's
they love it .. and its free also

[DatOrganistTho]

I use it as well, mainly for hard pressing situations where I can't (for some reason) come up with a solution in LilyPond in time. 2.X is a fabulous improvement (indeed, when I purchased my own version of Sibelius 6, I was already trying to make the leap to LilyPond, and MuseScore 1.X was my curiousity step).

I think the stigma that applies to most open-source tools is what applies to the credibility of MuseScore. If an unassuming user were to blind-test Sibelius, Finale, and MuseScore side-by-side, I think MuseScore would win hands down. Revealing the nature of MuseScore's development is always the difficult part for people to accept.

Actually, what astonishes me ethically and logically is that people put their preference into programs that they must pay for. They feel that because there is an obvious "paid" staff with developers "full-time" and revenue generated that "supplies" the demand, they feel it is a more legitimate cause than the "open-source" community. For a while, though, I think it made lots of sense that open-source communities were largely established by folks who didn't want to have to invest in programs that could otherwise be free in their applications.

But now open-source is so much more than that -- It is a thriving community, the largest developer pool in the world. If you can get developers behind a project that is open-source, the sky is the limit, and often their passion and perseverance for a project carries the project beyond their proprietary counterparts.

In fact, I noticed when a newly-developing scoring program was commenting on other programs' abilities and pointed out a limitation with MuseScore, one of the core developers (who is fairly new to MuseScore's development) implemented and fixed those limitations within 48 hours (and was consequently in a micro-update published not long after). You would never see that in a proprietary software (at least not that quickly of a turn-around).

I was "given" a copy of Finale 2014, and in it's first version tons of people were complaining about how buggy it was, and it took months for an honest update.

Needless to say, being a former super-user of Finale and Sibelius, I can't imagine going back now.