I thought I’d try exporting as an XML something I’d notated from scratch in Dorico and then import it into Finale to see what survived the journey. I was dismayed to notice that none of the accidental alterations was recognised and the piece was transformed into a diatonic version devoid of alterations, so basically useless. I tried this with a couple of files and this remained the case each time. Interestingly, Sibelius didn’t have this problem, so there’s apparently a way Dorico encodes its XMLs which is only understood by Steinberg products. So, a warning to Finale users: exporting from Dorico into Finale doesn’t work. Fortunately, importing an XML from Finale into Dorico does work.
May I suggest that Sibelius and Steinberg have no connection ? (Except, of course, that Dorico’s team is former Sibelius’ team…)
Yes, of course. Sorry about that!
The problem is that Dorico doesn’t yet export explicit accidentals, though it does export all of the pitches correctly. However, Finale’s import reasonably assumes that if no accidentals are declared in the MusicXML file, it shouldn’t show any accidentals, so again, the pitches should be imported correctly, but all of the accidentals will be hidden. I don’t know whether Finale provides an easy way to reset the visibility settings of all accidentals (in Dorico, it would be to select all the notes and do Edit > Reset Appearance), but if so, try that.
I have already been in touch with Michael Good at MakeMusic about this, and he suggests that in lieu of us actually exporting accidentals explicitly, we should include a element in the MusicXML file that would allow Finale to do the right thing. Hopefully we will be able to address this problem – either by exporting accidentals properly or by adding the element to let Finale know explicitly that we don’t export them – soon, though not, I’m afraid, in the imminent 1.0.10 update.
In Finale select the whole score, open the plugin Canonic Utilities (Plug-ins>Scoring and Arranging,) select “Clear Frozen Accidentals” in the 3rd dropdown menu on the left, Apply and close.
That’s very useful information and good to know. A workaround like that isn’t much of an inconvenience until Dorico’s export gets fixed. Thanks to both of you!