6 Feature Requests after 6 months of use

Dorico
#1

Hi, I’ve been using Dorico over the past 6 months and have come to really enjoy using it so thanks to the team for making it such a great program. I’ve always scored music within DAW’s in the past and after owning Dorico I can’t get believe it took me this long to purchase a dedicated scoring program! Over that time I’ve drawn up a list of some of the features that I would personally like to see implemented.

  1. Dorico on Multiple Machines
    This has been discussed many times I am sure. I’m also aware of Steinberg’s dongle option. This is my number one request, having the option to work with Dorico on multiple machines without a USB dongle even if it is just limited to one home computer and one laptop.

  2. Fit Score to Window
    The ability to click a button or hit a key and have a single page of the score or spread page fit to the window.

  3. Flow Navigator / Tabs
    I’m currently working on a project with 20 flows in. Each piece of music is on a double-page spread. It would be great if I can have tabs for each sperate flow so I can just click to view that piece without having to scroll all the way through.

  4. Written Notes
    A notes box to input random bits of text, ideas or reminders. Similar to what is in Logic Pro.

  5. con Ped. Symbols
    Dorico has plenty of great pedalling symbols, I’d like to see this marking added to the list.

  6. Figured Bass Input
    I’m sure this will probably come along at some point, whenever that is I’ll be glad when it does.

I understand some of these may have already been requested or even some may already be implemented. If any are then please let me know.
Thanks

#2

  1. Already exists! Since Z and X are Zoom In and Zoom Out, I’ve mapped Alt-Z to Page Width and Alt-X to Page Height. You can find these under key commands. There’s also an option for Two Pages, which I assume is a spread.

  2. You can use Shift-X for text, and you can add a box around it using the Properties Panel.

  3. You can do this yourself fairly easily. In Engrave Mode, open the Music Symbols editor. You can edit the Ped mark to include “con.”

  4. Until native support arrives, you can use Figurato for figured bass. It works beautifully. Search the forum and you’ll find it.

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#3

  1. Try Cmd/Ctrl+G.

  2. What’s wrong with text? Or if you want the symbol, edit the Symbol so that it has “con” before it, then set the following Engraving Option:

That gives you this, automatically:

#4

#3 You can already do this. Click the “show tabs” icon on the top panel, then right click in the list of tabs and select “new tab.”

Warning: when you edit the project, Dorico will check all the open tabs to see if they need reformatting, which may slow down the response. In general, it helps to only have tabs open for layout that you actually need to look at. But for a smallish project with 2-page spreads, this might not be an issue.

#4 Staff text and system text can be multiple lines (but not automatically word wrapped into a box). Personally I define a new character style called something like TODO which is formatted to display in red. That way it’s easy to spot any temporary notes left over at the end of the project!

#5 You can define your own playing technique for this if you want, and even make it play back - but you would have to add some way of marking “Invisible” pedal changes for playback to be useful.

#6 Search the forum for the “Figurato” font, which fakes figured bass using lyrics in Dorico. This is a workround, but it has been endorsed by the Steinberg team and mentioned in their videos, etc.

I’ll add an answer to “question #0” as well: Download the PDF version of the documentation, and search and browse it. A PDF reader search tool and/or the index often work better than the online search box, and for me Google tends to find the Dorico 1 web help for some reason, not Dorico 2.

#5

Welcome to the forum, Alex. I’m glad you’re enjoying using Dorico. Regarding #1 on your list, we are well aware that the restriction to using Dorico on a single computer with the Soft-eLicenser is far from ideal, and this is definitely something we will address when we retire the eLicenser technology in favour of something that will be based on your MySteinberg account. We are working on this, but it is a huge project and it will take time.

#6

Thanks all for the replies! I shall take a look at some of these as they are new to me.

Re point number 4. I was thinking more in terms of a kind of “sticky notes” section down one of the layout columns or within the flow layouts or something. The reason being is often I will input all the music and dynamics etc, and then as I go through I will make notes as to what may need changing, sorting visually in engrave mode or other possible alterations when I work on getting them finalised. So I might make a note saying - Flow 4, Bar 55, check note grouping or Flow 13, Bar 15, Swing Tempo Marking. It may just be the way I work, I’m not sure how helpful others would find something like this, they probably have more pressing issues! Thanks

#7

Flow 4, Bar 55, check note grouping or Flow 13, Bar 15, Swing Tempo Marking.

Something like a “comment” feature, which doesn’t affect layout, could be useful, and I think it’s been requested before. For situations like this I use different colors (from the color picker in the bottom Properties panel).

#8

There’s an even easier way. You can create a custom paragraph style with a predetermined color, and set a key command to automatically use that custom style.

#9

That’s exactly what I do with coloured text. This just happens to be what is on the screen right now…

When the question is resolved, I just delete the red text. When there is no more red text, job done! :slight_smile:

todo notes.png
todo notes.png920×576 55.5 KB

#10

I have a follow up suggestion to #3! Even though you can have multiple copies of a project open in different tabs each at a different flow, this is not ideal for me. I scroll left and right constantly and end up zooming past the end of the flow I’m working on onto a different flow, and have to scroll back and forth to find the beginning/end or the spot near the beginning/end that I’m looking for. What I would really like is an option to have flows actually be separated into different tabs, so that you CAN’T just scroll from one onto the next by accident.
Cheers!

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#11

It’s a round-about way of doing it, but why not create a layout with just one flow in it, and open it in a separate tab? (in setup, create full score layout on the right hand panel, then with it selected, deselect the flows you don’t want in it)

Also handy if you want to print off separate flows without all the baggage of formatting from other flows.

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#12

Awesome, that accomplishes pretty much what I was going for! Didn’t know it was possible. Thanks so much!

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#13

Woohoo I helped! No problem :slight_smile:

Btw - creating multiple layouts is possibly one of the most powerful things Dorico does - so handy for so many things!

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#14

Good to know!
Now I have a related question… is there any way to play from start of flow without selecting the first note? I use the play from start of project shortcut a lot but I can’t find anything similar for flows.
Thanks!

#15

Shift-Alt-Space should do it.

Edit: no, sorry. That’s from the beginning. I bet you could assign a key command to it, but now I’m poking at my phone, just guessing. :roll_eyes:

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#16

Thanks for trying! It certainly seems like there should be a way, but I don’t see anything promising in the key command preferences.

#17

Can you see Play > Start or Stop Playback > Start of Flow in the Key Commands page of Preferences? (I can’t remember whether that appears in 3.5 or is only available in our development builds.)

#18

Only Start of Project it seems.

Jesper

#19

Right, then it’s something that will be available in the next (major) version.

#20

For the record, the online manual isn’t clear about this. It says something like “the start of the flow,” where it would be better to say “the start of the first flow.”