A few niggling things - 2nd edition

[claude_g_lapalme]

Here is my second collection of niggling things. Respectfully submitted of course.

1. Instruments which come in different transposing flavours do not display their transposition on staff labels in the full score when in C. This is strange default behaviour as C and Bb trumpets are used equally as often, and C clarinets are used so rarely that omitting the transposition in staff labels is bound to cause confusion. Of course one can alter the name, but then it appears in parts with the transposition listed twice. At any rate, conductors do expect to see a C transposition clearly labelled at least at the beginning of a score for trumpet, horn and clarinet. This is particularly critical for scores with no key signatures.

2. There are still occasions when note spacing is squished by default. Though it is very rare, it does happen from time to time and seems independent of formatting. Here’s one example. Of course, a simple system break took care of the matter, but it seemed unusual to me for such an intelligent program.
   

   

3. I have experienced the odd moment when switching to Engrave mode created display issues, most notably, a galley view display. Changing layouts back and forth would fix the issue. I have not really seen it in .20, but it is a very new update.

4. Why is there no collating checkbox in print mode? It does collate if I make sure my printer driver has it checked, but it seems strange not to see it in Dorico.

5. Caesuras are very close to the following notes, and while engraving options work fine for spacing breath marks, they seem to have no effect whatsoever on caesuras at the moment.
   

   

6. Progressive tempo marks covering more than one bar eliminate multirests. This is not standard as we can see in this timpani part from Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. Fortunately, one can simply use a progressive tempo mark without a line, and limit it to the note where it is attached locally, but still, I thought I would bring it to your attention.
   

   

7. When a player plays two instruments at the same time, let’s say alternating two notes a bar on glockenspiel and xylophone, the staff label lists the two instruments together, centred between the staves. It would be great for both the conductor and the player to know which staff is which without referring to instrument order.

8. Speaking of percussion assignments, it would be great to have to possibility of percussionist sharing , let’s say, a glockenspiel, without having “Glockenspiel 1” and “Glockenspiel 2” in the score. I realise that is pretty minor, but I really love the concept of “Players holding instruments” in Dorico, and these last two points somewhat spoil it.

Keep up the great work. I’m using Dorico almost exclusively now.

[dspreadbury]

Sorry not to have responded to this sooner.

@Claude Lapalme

1. Instruments which come in different transposing flavours do not display their transposition on staff labels in the full score when in C. This is strange default behaviour as C and Bb trumpets are used equally as often, and C clarinets are used so rarely that omitting the transposition in staff labels is bound to cause confusion. Of course one can alter the name, but then it appears in parts with the transposition listed twice. At any rate, conductors do expect to see a C transposition clearly labelled at least at the beginning of a score for trumpet, horn and clarinet. This is particularly critical for scores with no key signatures.

Instrument types have a property (currently inaccessible to you to edit) for whether or not they should show their transposition. Some are set to show their transposition always (e.g. clarinet in C), while some are set to never show their transposition (e.g. alto saxophone), and most are set to show their transposition according to the option in Layout Options. In lieu of allowing you to edit all of the properties of instrument types, which we plan to allow at some stage, we will see about exposing this option in the Edit Instrument Names dialog, so you can change it in there.

@Claude Lapalme

2. There are still occasions when note spacing is squished by default. Though it is very rare, it does happen from time to time and seems independent of formatting. Here’s one example. Of course, a simple system break took care of the matter, but it seemed unusual to me for such an intelligent program.

I will check with Andrew, who is the programmer who has done all of the work to date on spacing, but I believe the basic problem here is that Dorico will not break a multi-bar rest at the end of a system, so when it collects 11 bars into the multi-bar rest at the end of the system, that puts pressure on the bars earlier in the system, since Dorico has its own idea about how wide a 10-bar multi-bar rest should be, so it tries to achieve that, currently at the expense of the music earlier in the system, because it’s having to squeeze more music in than it thinks fit. We may be able to change the justification algorithm such that when negative justification is required, it can squeeze multi-bar rests more than it squeezes the music. We’ll see.

@Claude Lapalme

3. I have experienced the odd moment when switching to Engrave mode created display issues, most notably, a galley view display. Changing layouts back and forth would fix the issue. I have not really seen it in .20, but it is a very new update.

I’ve not seen this, and nor have we had other reports of it.

@Claude Lapalme

4. Why is there no collating checkbox in print mode? It does collate if I make sure my printer driver has it checked, but it seems strange not to see it in Dorico.

I’ve added this, and it will be included in Dorico 1.0.30, coming soon.

@Claude Lapalme

5. Caesuras are very close to the following notes, and while engraving options work fine for spacing breath marks, they seem to have no effect whatsoever on caesuras at the moment.

It does appear that the ‘Gap to right of caesura’ option in Engraving Options doesn’t currently have any effect. I’ll ask András about this.

@Claude Lapalme

6. Progressive tempo marks covering more than one bar eliminate multirests. This is not standard as we can see in this timpani part from Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. Fortunately, one can simply use a progressive tempo mark without a line, and limit it to the note where it is attached locally, but still, I thought I would bring it to your attention.

I agree this isn’t right. We’ll see what we can do about it in the near future.

@Claude Lapalme

7. When a player plays two instruments at the same time, let’s say alternating two notes a bar on glockenspiel and xylophone, the staff label lists the two instruments together, centred between the staves. It would be great for both the conductor and the player to know which staff is which without referring to instrument order.

Could you attach a picture of this situation for clarity?

@Claude Lapalme

8. Speaking of percussion assignments, it would be great to have to possibility of percussionist sharing , let’s say, a glockenspiel, without having “Glockenspiel 1” and “Glockenspiel 2” in the score. I realise that is pretty minor, but I really love the concept of “Players holding instruments” in Dorico, and these last two points somewhat spoil it.

We did think about this when we were first designing the model, and we decided against it. It complicates matters a great deal to consider the same instrument as being shared between two players, for no real benefit, provided you can of course suppress the numbering of the two (or more) instruments in Dorico that correspond to a single instrument on the stage.

[claude_g_lapalme]

Thanks Daniel!

As far as No. 3 is concerned, it has not happened since .20.

As for No. 7, here a pic of a musician playing tubular bell and glockenspiel at the same time, which is not possible I know, but it was a quick way for me to demonstrate that when a player plays two instruments at the same time, there is no quick way to see which staff belongs to which instrument.

[dspreadbury]

Right, I’m with you, thanks for clarifying. I’ll make a note of this.