Jeez, ok, all caps then. I didn’t realize a suggestion would be so upsetting.
What if the add menu had a button at the bottom which said “create empty player”? Or an option literally called “empty player”? Would that be now too many clicks on your end?
How’s this for a compromise (I know, another upsetting idea, but hear me out) - What if there was a pop-up menu to create a new player of any kind - but it gave you the option to toggle the choice should you change your mind, from a solo player, to an ensemble player, to the build menu - not unlike how Cubase offers:
But instead of different tracks, it would be different player types, INCLUDING “empty player” - and if one escapes or clicks the [ x ] button it would close out of the process. So anyone could have whatever they want. And if you change your mind, you can change it right within that dialogue.
What if this was an additional menu too, so Dorico can keep the individual buttons as they are, but have a universal “add” menu button for such a pop-up? So it’s not like it would totally change how you prefer to do it. I feel like this would be very clear to all mindsets and tick everyone’s boxes. Perhaps that’s a crazy idea. Of course I’m sure it is.
That ‘popup’ is already given to you as a choice. To create a new (empty or otherwise) player you must choose: a solo player; a section player; or you want to build an ensemble?
You have already made that decision by the time the instrument dialog appears.
To make things easier for the folks who create a Player they don’t want, you seem to be placing increasing clicks/burdens on those who just choose a Player to add a new instrument, which I think is the vast majority of folks in the vast majority of cases. I question whether you yourself choose a Player more often to cancel it than to add a new instrument. (Of course I could be wrong.)
In addition, adding this seems to be asking the Development Team to do a lot of extra work for what ought to be the rare case of folks adding a Player they do not want. I don’t think that’s a fair request.
But if the Development Team decides this is worth doing, I’m sure they will come up with a more brilliant solution that we can imagine, and I will not object to that.
This is interesting as this is the first I’ve heard of Dorico being a he and it strikes me as a new open question. I’m not sure Sibelius is a he, although the he who is Sibelius, is a he, and I wonder if Avid had any position on that, although like a lot of things, Avid would probably not admit their position, if they had one, unless it was related to a mandatory upgrade with subscription price hike.
That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m actually saying not only to keep the current buttons as they are, but to simply add buttons on the existing pop-ups which give you the option to toggle over to the other ones - and also to have the option to create a new empty player. So if you open the section player menu, and decide you’d rather have it be a solo player, the button is right there to toggle over. Also a button to create just an empty player, and an [ x ] button which would allow a user to cancel. (or a button literally labelled cancel!) This suggestion wouldn’t change the current pop-up menu whatsoever, but add and consolidate it. I am no programmer but I don’t think this would require a massive overhaul of code.
Here’s a quick and dirty mockup of what I was visualizing:
Create empty player button is next to add, and also you could alternatively type ‘empty’ and just like an instrument, that would be an available option too, however you like to do it. At the top there would be buttons which simply switch the player type, highlighted clearly by which one is selected, and a button to cancel the menu should life take you in a different direction. And hell, maybe not clicking X, but clicking away, will still create an empty player as you guys are used to. I really don’t think this suggestion is all that nuts as you guys are making me sound.
This is an interesting discussion, so thank you everyone for sharing your viewpoints and experiences – despite some more strongly-worded posts (which I would generally expect more regular posters to refrain from, as they should by now be well-familiar with the forum guidelines that specifically outline the importance of maintaining a polite & friendly atmosphere).
One nuance going on here is that “adding the player” and “selecting an instrument in the instrument picker” are two separate operations, although Dorico does automatically do the second as a result of you doing the first.
Pressing Escape to close the instrument picker (whether it’s opened for the first instrument a player would hold, or the 9th) closes the picker without selecting an instrument: essentially nullifying the “add instrument” operation, as most people would typically expect.
However, the “add player” operation is separate from adding instruments, due to the philosophical and technical approach Dorico has taken to how instruments etc are handled.
Adding buttons to switch between player types could easily become complicated, not only because it would then be a player-operation in an “instrument zone”, but also because of the immediate possible issue of if the player already holds 2+ instruments (as section players can only hold 1 instrument).
It’s perhaps something we could review at some point in the future, although as per usual, no guarantees on when or any specific outcome.
The current behavior doesn’t bother me all that much but it is a nuisance to have to delete the empty player. As to the ability to create an empty player, if the team wanted to change the UI behavior (and I’m not really advocating for it), then a simple checkbox at the top of the instrument picker (None or Empty) would suffice.
Escape really should mean cancelling the Add Player operation.
FWIW, I have no problem with the current behaviour. The intermediate stage of an empty-handed player can be quite useful, as Leo pointed out.
And the instrument picker not opening automatically after creating a player would be quite a nuisance. Imagine the fury it would cause here…
When inputting staff-attached text, for example, Escape key works to exit the input mode and not to cancel the input itself, so any input that’s been made is preserved.
It’s identical to how Escape key is used in Setup - the operation (i.e. adding a player) is confirmed and the input routine is canceled or exited.
When inputting staff-attached text, for example, Escape key works to exit the input mode and not to cancel the input itself, so any input that’s been made is preserved.
This isn’t really the same as add player then assign instrument. If you didn’t type any text and hit escape, an empty text box isn’t created.
This is the crux:
Although I’m not all that bothered by the current behavior, separating Add Player and Assign Instrument into two actions, both of which can be cancelled is a logical solution.
Right you are. I suppose in my mind it’s logically the same even if it’s technically different.
In “Add text” mode, a user has to create some kind of content while in input mode in order to create a text object (and then exit the mode with an Escape key).
But in “Add a Player” operation Dorico creates that object for you on its own by literally creating a Player and then exiting via Escape if you don’t advance to picking an instrument. It’s the same with “Add a VST instrument” - Dorico automatically adds an endpoint on its own (there’s no use for Escape key here because no user input is even allowed).
Part of the confusion is that Dorico rarely asks a user to confirm an operation or selection, it just goes ahead and does it, and therefore there is no way obvious to cancel it, except for “Undo” or delete. That’s the case with the 3 examples above and that’s how I understood the point of the OP.
Perhaps this is also how the typical dual use of Escape or Enter keys can become a little disorienting in the beginning because Dorico removes a common step (confirm an operation with the Return key).
This is correct. In my scenario where the Panel disappears after returning back to Dorico and the Empty-Handed Player is there, then Undo will remove the Player, but the UI confusion lies in the fact that the helper Panel was there, then disappeared, when it is presumed that it would be there when returning back to Dorico. So using Undo would also assume the user knows that they had performed an action which requires undoing, and is Undo’ed immediately after having been accidentally Do’ed.
The exact UI Use Case is simply this:
Composer wants to add the next player via Setup. Click the Add Player. Helper Panel pops up.
Switch out of Dorico to Preview, to refer to the PDF of ensemble instrumentation list.
Switch back to Dorico, helper Panel is gone, Empty-Handed Player is unexpectedly there, confusion results.
Figure out much later what happened in UI, after juggling multiple other composer tasks and having five or six Empty-Handed Players being created and subsequently deleted in the project.
So one clicks the plus sign on the empty player just as one would to add an additional instrument to a populated Player Panel. Seems perfectly logical.
Of course you guys know better than me, and I can see that issue when opening the change instrument window after the fact of an already existing player of any kind. I suppose what I’m suggesting is a more universal “add player(s)” window at the initial adding stage, where the choices can be selected – the operation being that it would basically switch the already existing player pop-ups accordingly (single, section, build). Perhaps such a universal window is only available for brand new player operations, and not changing, to avoid this issue you described.
In addition, perhaps to the current pop-ups, a simple button could be added as an uncomplicated solution (which doesn’t necessarily solve OP’s original issue I will admit) - one which simply says “cancel” or “delete player” next to the add button. I am fully aware one can do this from the added empty player itself, but there is no harm in UI clarity and efficiency, since Dorico frequently does offer many ways to accomplish the same thing.
Thank you for your thoughtful response and consideration!
On that note, if Dorico were very much smarter, then I could paste a text list into Add Player and it would add the entire Ensemble for me, with 1 click: multiple instrument additions at the same time, and thus bypass a lot of this helper Panel business. I could have copy-pasted my PDF directly into Dorico to create my entire Setup.
This suggestion involves basic text recognition. (Example: Calendar will create appointments from generic text sentences from emails, such as, “let’s meet at 9am on Monday for an hour, my zoom link is urlblahblah”.)
Here is the more complex example of a Setup. This is quoted directly from a composer commissioning site. Dorico could recognize and parse this string and populate the instruments from it.
Go ahead and try the real shorthand example I provided, and see what happens, or, try pasting in a list; or, try the initial aspect of the original post: open the Ensemble Picker then cmd-tab away from Dorico and back to see that the Panel has disappeared.
I don’t have much more to add than what Lillie has already said, except to throw in here that when you switch back to Dorico and the instrument picker has disappeared, if your intent is still to add an instrument, you can type Shift+I to show the picker for the currently selected empty-handed player. If, on the other hand, you want to delete the player because you want to create a player of a different type, you can hit Delete followed by Return (or indeed you can undo).
I can’t really see us making any changes in this specific workflow. Adding a player and assigning instruments to it are separate actions, for good reasons. It’s important to be able to have empty-handed players because you may be about to move an instrument from another player to this player, for example. And it’s important to be able to add more than one instrument to a player, of course.
Players and instruments are distinct, and the operations for working with them are similarly distinct. In the normal run of things, the operations for creating a player and assigning an instrument to the player are chained together because that’s what you want to do 99% of the time, but there are plenty of other situations in which it’s important to be able to handle them separately.
But they’re not, actually … cmd+(option)+p …creates a player or section and opens the picker dialog. At this point, there is no canceling player creation, the player is implicitly created. So, although conceptually they are two operations, they are really one. What I think everyone is talking about is that there is no way to cancel player creation – whether they have been given an instrument or not.
