Hello - I’d really appreciate help with using accidentals in text. This is for an explanatory note in the front matter of a score. 2 related questions…
How can I input the (microtonal) accidentals or indeed any symbol into text? If I copy-paste from this link, nothing seems to be input.
Some time ago, Daniel helpfully made a document with the standard accidentals that could be copied. Would it be possible to have something similar for the whole Bravura font? (I may be missing something very obvious here!)
How can I use custom glyphs (i.e. ones I have customised in Dorico’s accidentals editor) in text? Right now the only way I can see would be to take a screenshot and insert it as a graphic - is this really the case?
I think the playing technique editor is the best way to do this at the moment. You can read about it in the Version history document, or in the most recent scoringnotes.com review.
For Shift-X text you’re better off using “Bravura Text” than “Bravura” - the Text font gives better spacing (particularly above and below the glyphs). You can also achieve this by selecting the text and selecting “Music Text” from the drop down.
Thank you. I’m still unclear about how I would access my (already-existing) custom accidentals from the playing techniques editor though. I could just build them again, I guess, using the same values I used in the accidentals editor (which would be time-consuming). And then is it simple to add playing techniques in a text box?
Sorry, if you need them in text boxes, I don’t think my solution won’t help you much, and yes - you would have to recreate them. Can you provide an sample of what you’re trying to achieve?
Gladly… this screenshot shows a couple of the custom accidentals in context:
Screen Shot 2018-07-24 at 20.57.57.png
and here’s closeup:
Screen Shot 2018-07-24 at 21.02.53.png
What I want is to reproduce these and others in the front matter, with their explanations. Since this is standard practice in contemporary music I’m hoping there’s a way for Dorico to do this. Simply an ‘export as graphics file’ option in the Edit accidental window would do the trick - even if it can’t yet be treated as a true glyph.
Unfortunately at the moment there’s no way to do this. In due course it will be something we can support, but there’s no magic solution available at the moment.
One approach you could take that would work with the way Dorico works right now would be to design your custom accidentals externally to Dorico, e.g. in a font editor or in a graphics program, so you can use the same font character or graphic in text items or graphics frames as in the accidental editor – of the two approaches, using custom font characters is preferable, but you’ll have to get to grips with font editing software, which is not necessarily super-straightforward.
create accidentals in Dorico
input them on arbitrary notes, then hide noteheads etc with opacity
export as svg
import into Inkscape, deleting the extra bits (staves etc), export as svg
re-import into Dorico as graphics box
Not the most elegant solution, but the best I found. If only the output of the accidental editor (and the playing techniques editor for that matter) could be exported as a svg!