Well the “late Fall” deadline is only ten days ahead, now. Let’s hope it won’t be delayed! 😉

I don’t actually care what it costs if
1) it doesn’t crash all the time and
2) it exports existing Encore files as Music XML properly

A dream is a dream until it becomes reality.
As “Musiker” already said: As long as Encore 5 runs on Windows computers, Windows users can still dream.
It will probably be more difficult for Mac users. Hang in there guys!
Personally, I’ve gotten so used to Encore that it will be difficult to switch.
I have Finale’s little brother, but I don’t get on at all with the lyrics input. The input is a real pain. It may be that you can learn it, but if you don’t use the software every day, you forget a lot of things.
Musescore is just as user-unfriendly. I still haven’t managed to create a simple guitar tab with Musescore.
The only alternative for me is Encore 6, if it remains as user-friendly as Encore 5.

I hope Don Williams is in the best of health and manages to make the impossible come true: Encore 6!

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by Mario2.

I was surprised to receive notification that Finale was packing it in. I had upgraded to v27 when I got a new PC awhile back, thinking I would force myself to plow through all of the arbitrary counterintuitive convolutions and get good enough at it to have producing my scores be an expedient and, if not painless, a relatively tolerable procedure. But I kept returning to my venerable Encore 4.5.5 to produce my lead sheets, with all its little quirks/bugs (including some new ones when running it on windows 11), as it was overall reliable, mostly logical and very speedy (compared to Finale). As many of you know, Finale is pushing its users to switch over to Dorico – of which I know nothing. I’m just thinking how great it would be if the gentleman who has been working on the new version of Encore would choose this moment to announce that the release of a reborn Encore was truly impending. And an excellent business decision for him too. What better time than when Finale is casting many of us aside? Anyone out there using Dorico and loving it?

Songwriter was last offered in 2012, correct? A friend of mine still uses it over Windows 10. Since I have PrintMusic and Finale 2014.5, I can run them on my Mojave Mac, the same one I use for Encore 5. Although Finale 27 also runs on that MacBook, why 2014.5? The 32bit versions of Finale have the Band-in-a-Box plug-in, a huge timesaver for infomercial scores on a deadline back when those were a thing. I may have to run it again someday.

I have Dorico Pro 5, Finale 27 and a bunch of other apps. Finale does all my heavy lifting, something that Encore could never do.

Having had it since v.2 in 2018, I’ll be exploring Dorico to see if I get used to it. It tries to force you into Elain Gould’s rules as laid out in her 702 page book, Behind Bars…. By version 5, it’s fairly elegant once you get used to the workflow. You can change everything in Layout Mode.

I still want Encore 6, dammit. Nothing is as fast or easy for my church and lead sheet work. If the printed output didn’t look so bad, I would still be happy with Encore 5, frankly. Ties look good on the screen but slurs don’t and both suuuuuuuuuck!!!! when printed in a way that is absolutely unacceptable. I’m even ok with the MusicXML 1.3 output though xml 3.0 is much, much, Much better.

A long, long time ago… Finale could open MT and Encore files—I go back to those days. Otherwise, I converted my MusicTime files to Encore decades ago. Last I checked, Encore on the Mac still opens them—I think but won’t swear to it.

Being a Print Music owner, you can take advantage if the $149 crossgrade offer to Dorico. This includes a license to Finale 27 with MusicXML 4.0 and a year of tech support. 27 will open your Print Music files and save copies as .musx, the Finale format introduced in PM/Finale 2014.