Adventures in Hymnal Design (glitch reports)

All hymns I do use shared stems when possible in the format described above.

I enter everything into voice 1, including shared stems when applicable. Then I return to the beginning, switch to voice 2, and enter only the downstem notes. Ctrl-right arrow jumps to the next downbeat.

Then select all, Edit—Remove Rests.

I can’t imagine it being much faster than this.

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I was driving home and thinking of this thread, and I have another feature request:

It would be lovely if, when entering notes onto both staves of a choral reduction at once, dorico ignored the split point whenever there were four notes entered at a time, always preferring to put the top two notes on the upper stave and the lower two notes on the bottom stave. This would be helpful if tenors have to take an E, for instance, and the split point is middle C.

Such logic could be extended too:
Two voices, could be top and bottom stave (again, regardless of split point). Three, or 5 or more would probably have to revert to split point, unless additional options were provided, but that would get quite a bit more complicated.

Wouldn’t post-entry filtering handle many of these situations, or something like entering two flutes simultaneously?

Yes, but the point is that if we could just have it parse out automagically, that extra work wouldn’t be necessary. Considering the nature of satb condensed vocal scores, an auto 2x2 split would make a lot of sense and be a nice “smart” feature.

And filtering for lowest/single voice is very flawed, as things stand now (at least when there is more than one voice in a stave). Doing the filtering still takes a lot of deliberate additions and subtractions, even if it gets you half way there.

True, until SA, AT, or TB have a unison; then automagically would indeed be the word.

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Or there’s any voice crossing. (Not so common nowadays, but plenty of it in Bach chorales)

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. But it would be far easier to select a few rare spots and swap voices, than have to constantly filter when you (frequently) end up with three voices on one or the other stave.