IWBNI there were a project organized by third-party developers and Finale users to produce and publish a complete specification of the ETF (Enigma Transportable File) file format. As it is now, the ETF file format is documented in the file ETFSPEC.PDF that is included with the Finale 2000 PDK (Plug-in Development Kit). However, this documentation is incomplete.

The results of this project would be useful for creating the following entities:

ETF-Based Utilities: A new breed of utilities that process Finale scores by operating directly on ETF files to automate various editing tasks. With the existing Finale PDK upon which current plug-ins are based, it is not possible to access all data structures of a Finale document. An ETF-based utility could access all data, without limitation, and thus could provide more features than existing plug-ins.

Notation Conversion Programs: A set of utilities to convert notation files to and from the Finale format and the format used by other notation programs (e.g. SCORE, Sibelius, etc.) or the NIFF format.

New Notation File Formats: A music notation file format that is more powerful than the ETF file format or more suitable for web-based editing and publication.

This could be implemented by creating a web site called "The Finale Genome Project" where all known information regarding the ETF tags that are present in a given version of Finale would be published. Any individual from the user and developer community could submit information pertaining to a given tag to the editor of the site. A web page could be created for each tag where information could be published to describe the meaning of the data fields within a given tag. Tag fields could be classified as being known, partially known or unknown. An index page could be provided that would list all tags alphabetically and would link to the page on which the tag is described. A subject index page could be provided to organize tags into musical subject categories (e.g. Clefs, Time Signatures, etc.). A third index page could be provided where tags would be classified as being known, partially known or unknown.

The meaning of ETF tags could be determined experimentally by following these steps:

1. Save a simple Finale document as an ETF file (call it 1.etf).
2. Make a small change to the document using Finale.
3. Save the document again as an ETF file (call it 2.etf).
4. Compare the contents of the two ETF files.

For a related suggestion, see Suggestion 341: Provide Complete Documentation of the ETF File Format.

Created: June 26, 2000
Last Updated: June 26, 2000
Version: Finale 2000b