Like a lot of the posters in this thread, I've been with BIAB since the time there were version numbers rather than years, with PowerTracks as the complementary product. Over the years, I've created many arrangements of commerical and original music using BIAB/RB, and have been glad to see the new features available with each update.

However, like Dave, I've been "tolerating" the need to hand-modify leadsheets, and have been stymied attempting to quickly create PDFs of the final marked-up material, when something like a quick key change is requested by the vocalist. I agree that Finale and Sibellius are the professional tools of choice for such tasks, but without the ability for BIAB/RB to export the arrangements, lyrics, varied rhythms and tempos, etc., I feel that this "ignored" piece of BIAB/RB will remain that way forever.

Someone mentioned MusicXML, which from my perspective, provides the perfect import/export medium because it includes the performance info (complete Midi data), plus the layout and publication information that is not represented by Midi. What is needed is an export tool that can parse the BIAB/RB file formats and produce the corresponding MusicXML files. Because Finale and Sibellius can import MXML, this provides a solution for getting arrangements out of BIAB and into a music editing tool for publication.

I doubt that PG Music has time to write such an export tool, but since there are likely some technical users who could do so if they had documented BIAB/RB file formats, it shouldn't take too long to implement this approach. (There is always the possibility that PG Music is unwilling to cede any portion of their product's feature set development to outside sources, in which case we can never expect to see officially-supported export methods from PG until they feel like doing so internally.)

Having studied up a bit on the MGx file contents, one additional "improvement" in the BIAB/RB file formats would be that some of the layout and printing settings are not saved with each song file, but rather are kept in the "current default" settings. If PG MUsic could let the MGx files contain a bit more of this type info, it would help in more-completely porting arrangements to MusicXML.

Thus, this thread is something of a challenge to PG Music as to whether or not they will be forthcoming with enough details about file formats to allow export (and hopefully import) with BIAB/RB and public-domain formats like MusicXML. I think it's realistic to recognize that each BIAB/RB release will have possible changes to the file format, but as long as the changes are documented, it shouldn'g be a problem.

Anyone at PG Music care to comment?