This is a very “old-fashion” manners/politeness-based appeal, I realize, and one which may earn me few friends here, but I feel compelled: I appeal to everyone to avoid writing “should” (sometimes “SHOULD”) and “must” (“MUST”) when making feature requests.
Aside from the incredible knowledge and generosity in this forum, I deeply value its civility. “Should” and “must” designate an obligation on Steinberg/Dorico’s part to include a feature — a “#feature-demand,” which for good reason is not an available tag.
I understand that each of us — myself included — have things we’d love, perhaps desperately, to see included as Dorico evolves. I also realize that for everyone moving over from Finale the past six weeks, there are things “missing” that leave you frustrated (though they are often — but not always — available in analogous ways, as your own learning and the help offered here is no doubt revealing to you). But none of us (ahem) should, IMHO, give in to bad manners and demandingness in making our wishes known. It runs the risk of generating frustration and even, potentially, ill will that can only serve to degrade the fine atmosphere of this forum.
As many others have written here, please remember that the Dorico team members read this forum regularly (and respond, as you can see with the Steinberg volume-knob icon in the lower R of their pictures/avatars) and make notes of feature requests. Sometimes they jump on things for the next point release; sometimes it’s the next version; and sometimes we wait years through several versions (or even continue to wait). That’s the nature of the business — Dorico is the result of their efforts, and they have to set priorities for all sorts of reasons.
Finally, please do not interpret this as in any way suggesting that feature requests shouldn’t be made. Of course they should! Offering (polite) requests is one of our “jobs” here, since it helps the team have a valuable sense of what’s desired by users and make Dorico even better. But let’s please do so in a manner that respects the human beings on the Dorico team in the manner we’d like to be treated.
I have found this forum to be truly unique. Every time someone has an issue there are so many helpful responses including from the people actually developing the software. I feel like this is so valuable and unheard of. Many other forums become elitist etc. not so here.
As one of the new Finale refugees, I would like to apologize for any unintended frustration we may be causing with long time Dorico users. Although I can only speak for myself, it’s been almost indescribably stressful trying to learn a completely new way of notating scores; especially since I’ve been using Finale since version 3 (yeah, I’m that old).
As for myself, if any questions I post imply irritation of frustration with this community, Dorico, or Steinberg it is completely unintended. For example, it took me an hour today to figure out how to get Dorico to subdivide a basic 6/4 bar into 2+4 while still displaying 6/4. I see now how easy it is, but it took literally a full hour to find the exact place to find the answer. As you might be able to imagine, that’s a lot of work for a simple problem that I used to know how to do in Finale in seconds.
I choose to believe we’ll all get up to speed with this new methodology and I’ve already seen some of the ways that Dorico offers some superior solutions to Finale, but the pace of learning is so slow because just about everything is completely different from what we’ve become accustomed to.
Thank you to everyone who is being patient and compassionate with us.
Agree 100%. I’ve also used Finale since version 3.2 and certainly have been keeping an open mind about Dorico alone that I’ve stopped using finale and gone over to Dorico 100%. Yes there are some things I’d love to see enhanced now that the pedal has hit the metal for me and I’m encountering some challenges here and there. But same thing was true for Finale over the years and I really don’t want this community to become annoyed with us Finale expats. For the record, we have had many people in our unofficial and official finale forums who are helpful and courteous but also a very small number who are just going to be unhelpful (and one or two who are never going to be happy except with Finale since to them, it was perfect. I beg to differ.)
I totally understand on multiple levels, @Matthew_Armstrong! (I was a 32-year Finale user before switching two years ago, and am still learning my way around some of Dorico’s more powerful intricacies.) And I appreciate your kind words.
First I’ll quote myself from five weeks ago:
Since then my admiration of so many here in the forum has only grown! I know I’m not alone in understanding how tough this has been for recent Dorico adopters as a “migration under duress.” And please don’t take my words to mean that we’re not happy to listen to and hear those frustrations and try to be encouraging and helpful in response as best we can!
I simply wanted to address the very special case of the spirit in which feature requests are posted (and believe me, it’s not just recent Finale folks who can veer into that unfortunate behavior).
I would also suggest that politeness to new users, especially those in the category of “Finale expats” might be appropriate as well. While the majority of responses that I have received were supportive and kind, there have been a few that come across, well, rude and narcissistic. If you want the new user group to be supportive and non-demanding, then leading by example is probably the better way of doing things. Enough said, from me, on this topic…
PS. @judddanby, you have been a perfect gentleman so my comments are not about you.