Given that she's a young person who wants to compose music on the computer, not just represent it, it might be important to know what instruments she plays. For example, a pianist might want a MIDI keyboard for composing with the ability to save the developing MIDI file on the computer. If that is the case, then any software should have the ability to create a score from a MIDI file.

If your friend's daughter is very computer savy, there is free software that will make beautiful looking scores and let you start with a MIDI file. The best of these is LilyPond but it also requires the most computer expertise to be used successfully.

As Joe and others pointed out, Finale is so difficult to learn and master that the only people who actually use it for very much are professionals. I have owned the full Finale product for many years but almost never use it anymore. Once you get so you can make it work, they update the software and change the interface to something you don't know how to use.

I think perhaps Sibelius is easier to use and has a much nicer Web publishing capability. Their free Sorch viewer can be used to view published scores and the scores are visible right on the Web page. To see this in operation, visit Doc Watson's Web site and view some of the scores with guitar tablature that are published there.

If your friend's daughter plays guitar and is more interested in popular music, perhaps a copy of the TablEdit Tablature Editor or perhaps the free Power Tab software would be suitable since they are often used for publishing "tabs" of popular music on the Internet.

The possibilities are manifold and it helps to have a really good idea of what she wants to do and how she wants to work. Whether the chosen software is expensive or free, the real investment is in the time needed to gain proficency with it.

      - Mark