News

Today MakeMusic released Finale 25.5 and an updated Dolet 7.1 for Finale plug-in.  These updates improve Finale’s MusicXML 3.1 support to match the latest MusicXML 3.1 version from the W3C Music Notation Community Group.

There are 20 improvements in our MusicXML 3.1 support from the previous Finale 25.4 and Dolet 7.0 for Finale releases. You can see all of them in the Dolet for Finale version history, plus 6 more improvements that are unrelated to the new features in MusicXML 3.1. The most important changes include:

• Measure number text is now exported for multi-movement pieces where measure numbers are reused, as well as other situations involving more complex use of measure number regions.
• Buzz rolls and unmeasured tremolos are now supported.
• Line lengths are now supported for doit, falloff, scoop, and plop elements.
• Finale expressions with a mix of text and musical symbols from any Finale built-in font (not just Maestro) are now supported.
• Grace cue notes are now supported.
• Image height and width attributes are now supported, for better transfer of scaled bitmap graphics.
• More percussion pictograms and other music symbols are now supported.
• Files without any measure number regions now correctly export that measure numbers are not displayed.

Finale 25.5 also has several improvements for translating folders of Finale or MusicXML files. First are improvements in the performance and reliability of these translations, especially for folders with large numbers of files.

Next are the new “Include subfolders” options for export and import. These let you export or import files from not just a single folder, but all the subfolders within that folder. So if you have files in the My Scores, My Scores/Bach, and My Scores/Bach/CPE folders, you can translate a single My Scores folder and get all the files converted at once.

We have also added work in progress dialogs that appear when translating a folder of Finale or MusicXML files. This dialog displays which file is currently being exported or import, and lets you cancel out of the folder translation once the current file is finished.

With this version of the Dolet for Finale plug-in, we have removed support for Windows XP. Windows Vista or later are now required to run the Windows version of the Dolet 7.1 for Finale plug-in. Stay with the Dolet 7.0 for Finale plug-in if you are still using an older version of Finale on Windows XP.

The Dolet for Finale plug-in is 32-bit only. Finale v25.5 includes all the added features that used to be part of the Dolet plug-in, plus some MusicXML features that only work in 64-bit Finale. With our 64-bit Finale v25, all the MusicXML functionality you need is available directly in the File menu.

We hope that you find the improved MusicXML 3.1 and folder translation support will make moving your music files between applications even faster and more accurate than before. If you have issues using the MusicXML in Finale v25.5 or in using the Dolet plug-in, please let us know in theFinale portion of our Help Center. If you are a music notation software developer and find a problem with MusicXML 3.1 in your development work, please post an issue at the MusicXML GitHub repository.