That’s much better than my analogy of course, Jonathan!
[I have decided to leave replying more here until Sharon returns, otherwise it might be too overwhelming for her (“her”?) to read all the replies, the references, videos and links… and we cannot be sure she has not returned to Finale to get on with work (or now learning Sibelius) or needs time to make a better start and consolidate, then return with specific questions.]
I admit posting the following on FB last November:
"(Disclaimer: no Hungarians were harmed during the making of this post). On the whole, the transition from Finale to Dorico is going OK in the sense that there seems to be a fairly high adoption rate if we consider the number of new members in FB pages, the User Forum etc … For some, it will never be the right software – and that’s fair; but a large swath of new users are already quite enthusiastic. There has been a lot of constructive conversations on the various forums, which culminated in Dorico adding a new note input method which was warmly welcomed by the Finale-Refugee community. But of course, there have also been moments when seasoned Dorico users got condescending (boooo!), and also some rather negative posts from people who have completely abandoned the whole concept of “learning something new”. One even threatened a class-action suit! I have to say (putting my own Dorico-condescension hat) that, to me, those posts sound exactly like the following:
“This newfangled Hungarian language is a rip-off. I tried to speak it and no one, I mean NO ONE understood me. You cannot hope to have the simplest of conversation in Hungarian. I tried to compose a phrase to ask where the Budapest Opera House was, something that takes me seconds to do in English, and it took me a WHOLE HOUR to put it together in Hungarian!!
Whose bright idea was it to create this thing called “agglutinative” grammar??!? You say it makes things more concise but it took me forever to find a single word ending. Do you really expect me to learn all of this. What on God’s green earth is a circumfix??!? Why waste development time on case declensions? Who talks like this? What the h**l is wrong with word order??? Even FRENCH uses word order!! I guess I should have taken advantage of the French offer instead of this SCAM that is Hungarian.
I can’t believe that Hungarian was ever recommended. It’s obviously conceived by people who have never spoken a language in their lives. You should be crucified for creating this mess. I’m not spending another minute trying to learn it. I’m going back to English, but expect to hear from my lawyers!!”"
(haha) I have a friend who is Hungarian, I speak to her in English, and reading your post, will continue to do so. She uses Sibelius; me, Dorico so there is that …
Hungarian is quite easy! My 3 years old grand daughter copes with it easily, what should be wrong with it:)))))))
On the opposite, when I moved to London 14 years ago, and asked someone at Victoria station which is the right platform to get to Wandsworth Common, I needet to repeat my simple question about 10 times till he pretended to understand. And he sent me to a platform to Croydon finally:)
I’ll wait until I’m three then! shouldn’t be long. Thanks Gergely … Waiting … waiting …
Dear friends,
A little account of what I was busy with on Sunday: for the specific needs of a friend who owns Finale 2012, I had to rework in Finale 27 (taking every precaution, of course, to ensure that the recipient could read my file).
Well… it was a nightmare (6 hours for a lied by Karl Loewe), and I got very angry, sometimes close to an apoplectic fit (despite swallowing a litre of coffee).
Even though I used Finale very little in the past, my gradual learning of Dorico over the last five months has now totally short-circuited my old reflexes, and I’ve tripped myself up several times by using Dorico shortcuts in Finale, which was obviously a disaster.
So, as Einstein said, everything is relative, and the way we approach software depends very much on the convolutions of our brain.
And it sometimes plays nasty tricks, making you forget all or part of what you once knew. Could I already be suffering from Alzheimer’s, or a new virus called acute Doriconitis?
Oh do I feel your pain! Similar story - many years of Finale (local company - a musician friend worked for them). Anyway, today my frustration is playback: I don’t understand how Dorico / Halion conceives of playback. I’d expect that you’d connect an instrument to a line of notation and it would play, but that’s not the case: there seem to be endless screens and files to load and god-knows-what-all and still I can’t get a single melody line to play. Maybe I’m not Germanic enough to intuit whatever their designers are dreaming. Sigh. A long road ahead . . .
To get any sympathy (or advice) you are going to have provide some evidence.
Have you tried the simple step of applying a Playback Template to your project?
Happy to provide evidence. What sort?
Try this (what @janus was referring to):
A project that does not work might be a start.
Some examples of the “endless screens and files to load…”
Some description of what you have tried and where it appears to fail.
And if you cannot get any sound at all upload your diagnostics (do Help>Create Diagnostics Report and upload the zip file that appears on your desktop)
Sigh. I just quit Logic and Dorico now will playback. Guess Logic and Dorico can’t run together. Need to change my transcription workflow.
Thanks. Enough frustration for this afternoon. Gotta go play some music!
I don’t have Logic, but Dorico runs quite happily alongside many DAWs.
This is a huge mistake. Bikini island huge.
I guess it depends on the person. Finale was my first notation program and I found it very hard to understand. I think you will like Dorico after the light bulb moment of understanding its overall design. I’m sorry you’re having a tough time but everyone here is great and will help.
I’ve used Finale for ten years. For my needs I found Dorico a lot easier to use. Seriously.
I use both and can confirm that they do can run together
It seems you have come a long way since your first interactions with Dorico and this forum… 
Good for you! 
B.
I’ve never had a bad experience with Dorico. So, not sure what you’re referring to.