Here’s a couple of things that I’d like to see, (assuming they’re not already there), which would speed up my workflow:
When assigning Fingering, or Text, or similar, to one note, it would be great to have a key to move the overlay box to the next note, so you can keep entering successive finger numbers or texts. (As with lyrics.) So, to enter a bunch of fingering, I could just press Shift-F, 1, tab, 2, tab, 3, tab, 4, tab - where Tab is the hypothetical suggested key.
Inclusion of Above/Below in Text formatting bar, so you don’t have to go to Engrave mode. (Also, perhaps the bar should remember your last-used settings?)
An “Apply” button in the Paragraph Styles dialog, so you can see the changes and adjust as necessary; or perform a succession of font changes without leaving and returning.
Regardless of these footling quibbles, I am thoroughly enjoying Dorico and the quick, beautiful results.
Your fingering suggestion has been made before. It’s a difficult one to achieve because you have to have a note selected before you can add a fingering, so we would need to provide some way of reliably moving between notes and chords without you needing to actually make a suggestion. Obviously if you have a monophonic melodic line it’s a bit easier to handle, but of course fingering is often used in keyboard music where there are chords, and where indeed not every note in a given chord may even require a fingering. This is something quite a few people have requested since Dorico 1.2 introduced fingering, but I’m not sure when or how we will actually be able to address this.
Adding the above/below property to the text formatting bar is also a bit tricky, since everything else in the formatting bar affects the textual content of the item, while the placement property affects the whole item, but maybe there could be a way of achieving this in future.
An Apply button in the paragraph styles dialog would indeed be useful and I hope we will be able to add that in future too.
Could any technique for moving the fingering tool to the next note(group) default to the top (or some other note) of a chord so that the position provides a predictable starting point even if the user must subsequently alter it (the way one skips from verse to verse in lyrics within the popover?) before adding a fingering?
In guitar notation the fingering appears directly in the staff in front of the note, not above or below.
At least in all the guitar literature that I own. I would welcome a fingering algorithm that recognizes the instrument to which it is bound to be applied to so the fingering appears immediately at the right place.
In analogy to this, the fingering for the right hand is often divided into thumb (p) and fingers (i, m, a): Quite often the p appears below the staff, while the fingering for the fingers appear above it. If the up-coming 2019 Dorico Pro 3 had an option to choose where to place the fingering automatically that implies putting the p below, that would be another time saver. I admit I do not always need it, but sometimes it is more convenient to have the fingering as close as possible to the note to which it applies.
Why is the Selection Filter greyed out in Engrave mode? Currently, I can select in Engrave mode, switch to Write mode, apply the filter, and then switch back to Engrave mode.
Is there any way to know which page or spread I’m on?
Eddo, Dorico doesn’t yet support guitar fingering: we handle keyboard, brass, and string fingering, but not guitar fingering. Doing guitar fingering properly remains on our backlog.
Ben, the selection model in Write mode and Engrave mode is different, and filters can’t work in the same way in Engrave mode, so they’re disabled. We don’t have any current plans to change this, though some rework in the area of how selections are transformed when you switch between modes is planned that could end up having an impact on this. There’s no current display of the page numbers beyond the page numbers in the layout itself. What would you like to see?
Perhaps a little number in the bottom right, by the Zoom settings? (InDesign and Finale have a similar thing at bottom left, where you can even enter a number to jump to that page; though a simple indicator would be fine.)
The page number is not always visible if zoomed in sufficiently (or if there are none, say when designing material whose page numbers will be added in another program).
Yes, I know it’s not available – that’s why I readily pointed to Dorico 3 / 2019.
I just wanted to add this to my wishlist. Altogether with those wishes referring to string- / tuning- / fret range editors in other threads to which you already have replied to in a way that creates lots of hope and anticipation…
That would be fantastic. It would also be nice if the Font Styles window (and similar windows with so many pull-down menu options) would remember the last selected pane and default to that pane when reopening the window.
Many of the dialogs do exactly that, but some of them also initialise their state based on what you have selected in the music. For example, Engrave > Paragraph Styles will use the ‘Default text’ style (which is often what you want to edit) unless you have a text item using a different paragraph style, in which case it will select the paragraph style used by the first paragraph in that text item.