In general we can’t look at the source code of open source applications, for complex legal reasons concerning open source software licensing, so it’s not an option for us to look at the code of e.g. MuseScore. Even if we did, with no disrespect to the developers of MuseScore, Dorico and MuseScore are such different applications that it’s almost certainly the case that looking at MuseScore’s MusicXML import code would have no bearing whatsoever on what we would need to do in Dorico.
Pity. MuseScore did by far the best job importing my “worst” file. Export was useless in this case, though, as with Finale. Ironically, in my case, with fine tuning Sib6+Dolet6.6 exported better than Sib2018.
I still have to try the many combinations of Dorico’s Import preferences.
Edit: Both Sibelius 6.2 and 2018 import the output from MuseScore and Finale with no problems.
Musescore and Finale make a mess of each other’s outputs. (Still on my “worst” Sib6 file.)
Does Dorico’s documentation give guidelines on preparing either the original music or the xml output for import to Dorico? E.g. ensuring that extra voices on one staff are complete throughout the composition rather than only bar by bar, and unhiding all hidden rests. Such advice could be automated in an import algorithm when time permits…
Or is there already an external programme for tidying Musicxml files?
I’m afraid there are no general guidelines for tidying up MusicXML files for import into Dorico. MusicXML is sufficiently loosely specified and there is sufficient divergence between different implementations that any guidelines would of necessity be very general. There are no specific tools to tidy MusicXML files: the team at neoScores were working on something like this before the company sadly folded, but I don’t think they got very far.
Do you expect the situation to become better or worse now that XML Music is going open source?
MusicXML 3.1 being delivered as a Community Report by the W3C Music Notation community group doesn’t change this at all, I’m afraid: there are hundreds of existing implementations of MusicXML export and import in hundreds of different applications, and very few if any of those vendors will be making significant changes to their products’ support for the format.
Examining all my xml exports, I notice that Sibelius 6.2 + Dolet 6.6, and also Sibelius 2018, export musicXML v.3.0, while MuseScore2 and Finale25 export v.3.1. It seems to me that Dorico makes better sense of v.3.0 for the moment?
Not really, no: the changes in MusicXML 3.1 don’t materially affect the musical structure of the music. If you look at the Community Report you’ll see that on the whole the changes in MusicXML 3.1 are about increasing the richness of the symbols you can use, e.g. via referencing SMuFL characters, but don’t change things like tuplet representation and the like.
Thanks for your patience, Daniel!
And I had noticed that even though Finale offers export right back to v.1, the import to Dorico was still as bad.
I also confess that I didn’t clean up the irrational 2nd measure in Finale before exporting.
Anyway, no need for Sibelius 2018 for it’s slight improvements: I can buy an educational crossgrade to Dorico in September.