A few days ago both Dorico and Steinberg Download Assistant refused to launch. After several restarts and a total lack of reply to my query from Steinberg Support (thanks, Steinberg ), I decided to trash Dorico, Steinberg and everything that seemed related to them, before doing a complete, clean re-install.
Now that I have manually moved all the VST sound files from the Downloads folder to the correct location in Application Support (thanks again, Steinberg ), Dorico starts up, but there’s a problem: there are no keyboard shortcuts at all. In this state, Dorico is pretty much unusable.
Does anybody know how I can get all the key commands back?
I believe you are on macOS, correct?
If you trashed everything including the Steinberg folder in Application Support, then you also trashed the key commands file.
If you have not emptied the bin, it should still be there for 30 days after trashing. Otherwise, browse a Time Machine backup and restore the needed files.
Could you also describe the symptoms of “refused to launch”? Were the icons jumping in the Dock and then nothing happened? Or what else?
Just to be clear: doing a clean install, I was expecting to lose the custom key commands. But I have lost all the standard ones!
As you suggested, I restored a copy of keycommands_en.json from a Time Machine backup. Now the one custom key command I created works, but the standard ones are still missing. ⇧N, ⇧C and all the others do nothing. Even standard Mac ones, like ⌘S or ⌘N have no effect. They also don’t appear in the menus. The only commands that work are the ones in the Dorico menu, for quitting, hiding or showing preferences.
Regarding the symptoms of “refused to launch”, here’s what I got when I tried to launch Dorico:
Please try to check in Preferences > Key commands what the keyboard language is. If it switched to Default, possibly during the update to 5.1.70 as there are quite a few reports, try to change it back to what you had before.
I use the English shortcuts because the app is set to English language, but my keyboard language is set to Italian (which is just a mapping of the physical keys to something a 010101 machine can understand).
Regarding the launch problems, I am not sure of what may have happened.
Do you still have the Diagnostic Report whose creation was suggested handy? It may be worthy to post it here, or to send to one of the devs/testers.
I checked the Key Commands: they were set to Default. I changed them to English (presumably what I had before, since it’s the language I use for the operating system and for Dorico) but the problem persists, even after quitting and relaunching Dorico.
I think I have found a solution myself. It’s surely not how things are meant to be organised, but it works, at least for the moment.
In an older discussion, I found this:
I opened the application bundle, made a copy of the keycommands_en.json file that was there, and put it in Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5/
Well, now it works! I copied the couple of custom key commands I’d created into this file, and it seems that all is as before. I have no idea why Dorico was not using the file in the application bundle.
One possibility is that you have somehow ended up with a key commands file in your system-wide Library directory - that is, /Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5, not to be confused with /Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5. If so this can end up interfering with Dorico’s ability to load the default key commands, which are (as you say) in the Applications bundle itself.
I believe you hit the nail on the head Richard. I had attempted to copy the preferences from my machine where Dorico works perfectly to the two other installations (one desktop and a new laptop to ultimately replace the working one), and dropped them into the system wide directory as you guessed.
Deleting and reinstalling must not overwrite this file though. I did end up getting them working by selecting “English” keyboard rather than “Default” keyboard in the Dorico app itself.
Now I think I have the correct solution: I removed that file from the system library, then in my user library I replaced the file I had created (with both standard and custom key commands) with the old one that only has the custom commands. Now all works as expected.
1000 thanks!
This must have happened in the clean install, since I had trashed all things Steinberg, taking care to include system files, before re-installing everything. Also after the clean install, I was obliged to manually move all the VST sound files from the Downloads folder to /Users/Michael/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5
So why does a clean install not put the files in the right places?
I see that the folder in the system library, at /Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5 contains a load of stuff. What should actually be in it?
Normally this is what the Steinberg Download Assistant does when you install the samples - it first downloads the samples into the Downloads folder, and then it invokes the Steinberg Library Manager to copy those files into the right places. Using SLM is useful because it keeps a database of which files are where, in the event that you ever want to move them around (e.g. to put them on an external drive).
This varies but typically it will contain folders named DefaultLibraryAdditions, PluginPresetLibraries and PlaybackTemplateGenerators.
Hmm, re-reading your last post, I’m not sure you want the VST files to be stored in /Users/Michael/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5. Assuming you’re talking about the vstsound files (rather than the VSTs themselves), they would typically end up in various directories within /Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Content.
But that’s not where the installer put them, at least not most of them. In the Content folder you mention, there’s not even a GB of files, in three folders: Groove Agent, Halion, VST Sound. The rest stayed in the Downloads folder.
Since the installer left me with this mess, and I didn’t know where these files were meant to go, I put them in my user library.
I could certainly move them, but in fact I would prefer to get rid of most of them. I only need sound in order to hear the notes I’m playing, and to check the score aurally. A simple set of General MIDI sounds would suffice. Do you know which sound files I can remove without Dorico going into a huff and refusing to function?
), I decided to trash Dorico, Steinberg and everything that seemed related to them, before doing a complete, clean re-install.
