Is there a version of XML that Dorico imports most successfully?
I have an XML file exported from Notion 6 that is predominately incoherent mess when imported into Dorico, but that is mostly clean imported into Finale (there it’s missing some clef changes and technique markings).
I exported that same file as XML v3 from Finale and imported it into Dorico, where it is at least not a mess (it dropped one clef change), but a whole chunk of music for one instrument is gone—the part has been closed up in the middle, and the empty bars show at the end of the piece.
I’m not sure what XML version Notion exports (there’s no options and I haven’t found the coded setting yet), but Finale supports 3 and some earlier versions. Is there a particular one Dorico supports best?
Unfortunately it’s not as simple as there being a single version of MusicXML that Dorico supports better than any other. We have focused our testing on MusicXML files produced by the most popular pro scoring tools, i.e. Sibelius and Finale, which also have probably the most fully-developed MusicXML export features. Notion is not so widely used and therefore we have not tested comprehensively with the MusicXML files it produces, but certainly my anecdotal experience over the years with files exported from Notion is that they tend to be a bit idiosyncratic.
Finale’s MusicXML import has been developed over many years to be as tolerant as possible of malformed or idiosyncratic MusicXML files in order to import as much data as possible. While this is undoubtedly very helpful for users of Finale, probably overall it doesn’t help developers of other applications ensure that they are exporting good MusicXML, as Finale will go ahead and guess at what it should contain anyway, even if there are problems with the data in the file.
The long and the short of it is that if you have access to Finale and it can import your Notion-exported MusicXML files and do a better job of importing them than Dorico can, then I would recommend that you bring your files into Dorico by way of Finale.