I just wanted to see what the responses were to the old topic, which was something like: “hide cautinary keys and time signatures”. It was one of the three most important forum posts in the old forum. And unfortunately that hasn’t been migrated now. I hope this is not intentional. Because this wish is still important for me and many other users. Although we are sometimes accused of not understanding the concept of flows. I am still enthusiastic about the Dorico concept and especially about the flows, but I keep coming across situations in which it would be incredibly helpful to quickly hide advisory time or key signatures and not to create new, musically unsuitable flows or even to have to use the coda workaround. These don’t work especially when I want to make audio mockups.
I totaly agree with you…i asked for this a few days ago (Time / Key signature precautions) but i found the use of flows quite heavy in this case.
Why not a “hide cautionary” switch next to the “hide time signature” one !
It’s a shame that that thread didn’t migrate, as new users can’t see that the topic has been discussed over and over again.
@J_Woodtli, it looks as though attacca is on the cards for the future, which would hopefully handle the situations you’re referring to: Merge instruments from different flow - #5 by dspreadbury
We’re aware there are certain threads that failed to migrate. Discourse are on the case.
Thank you, Ben I am glad to hear that this was not intentional, because it really is a topic where opinions differ and where the Dorico team - especially Daniel - has a very clear opinion.
Just out of curiosity what are situations where you need to hide a cautionary but shouldn’t make a flow?
I was perhaps mistakenly assuming that your issue with using multiple continuous flows was that the audio mockups aren’t appropriately continuous. @dspreadbury has mentioned that attacca is on the development team’s todo list. I am perhaps again mistakenly assuming that if attacca is on the cards, that functionality will include proper attacca playback and exported audio, thus solving your problem.
Teachers who want to create worksheets and wish to avoid being overwhelmed by flows have sought to have this ability to change key signatures for new exercises without a courtesy KS on the line before.
Not arguing - to each his own - but I created a Rule of the Octave practice sheet where each consisted of one line each. About 50 flows total, the world didn’t end. It worked out rather nicely actually having them seperated like that, and I found a use for it where I could treat the two no accidentals (C and a) specially.
Nice thing too was it broke me of the mindset I had that “Flows kind of equal a movement, or some other logical structure”. Now I have tons of flows. I compose game music and use them for fragments, zingers and the like. It’s all better frankly working this way for me.
No argument from me over your approach, which could well be my own. There are those here wiling to wrestle with fifty flows to get what they want and those who seem to want complicated, esoteric functions boiled down to a single click or shortcut. Hiding a courtesy key signature seems common enough that I can understand how a teacher would find a solution in the Properties panel a great time-saver, and I suspect a lot of Dorico users are teachers (who may lead students to adopt the software in their own right).
I shouldn’t start on this one again, but once it becomes a single click to hide a key signature, another single click to hide a time signature, a few clicks to set a System Break, a couple of clicks to hide (or worse, reset) a bar number, it might just be quicker to set a Layout Option not to show flow headers, once, and to jump into Setup mode and type Shift-F… Or type Cmd/Ctrl-I and click the button at the bottom.
Where worksheets are concerned, it seems to me that the issue of multiple flows is more a mental block than anything else. They take almost no time to set up.
Ah ok, now I understand it better. But that was just one example among others and not necessarily my most important point. Nevertheless, thank you very much for your detailed answer and for your “quality”-time for this forum.
I just always need an incredible amount of time when I want to bypass cautionary keys and cautionary time signatures. Then I ask myself every time why Dorico denies me any freedom here and why I can’t do it the way I do it with cautionary accidentals (click and hide).
Besides this attack feature sounds good, I’m looking forward to it …
@DanMcL
All those situations were described in detail in that missing thread, actually …
And I do have also projects with over 100 flows in it no problem there, I love this flow-concept, but ….
My question was to get to nuts and bolts - I get your point that some people want it, no need to re-iterate that, but what would be a useful conversation at this point would be to discuss use cases where that is true.
Just to point out you say “wrestle with 50 flow”, but I actually did it and found that in no way is it wrestling. I just speed clicked the duplicate and changed some names. Otherwise the number of flows disappeared and was irrelevant when writing. And when I needed to make a mass setting changed I shift-selected them all in the Layout dialog.
In fact you know in retrospect it was easier than when I did it by copying a line! There, I had to do all the system track business to select all the notes, and move the cursor to the end, then paste, and meanwhile I’d get a lag as Dorico processed it. This busienss was time consuming and a bit of a PITA! But now that I think about it the Flow approach was trivially easier. lol … sorry but the discussion just showed me how much better the flow approach is.
Anyhow, just a thought but you might give it a chance, you might find you like it.
Wow, sorry folks I did start this old discussion again, but let’s wait and see if the thread of the old forum will reappear, because there almost everything was said and there were also really good examples for the hiding functionality.
Please do not imply that I have no experience with multi-flow projects. I am quite comfortable using flows when I find them the best solution, and I am not beyond extra work to get the results that I want.
Creating flows is not a problem. Managing 100 flows is a little more cumbersome. If Daniel and the Team do not want to allow a way to quash courtesy key signatures at the Properties or Engraving Options level, I am fine with it. But for a project like a recent user’s desire to create one-measure flash cards, which could use a casting-off and margin options to make each line one measure long. It would be easier to quash courtesy key (and time) signatures than to create a new flow for each line. I have to say I have a certain sympathy for such users dealing with such projects. I know how much time dedicated teachers can spend preparing custom materials for classes.
The request may not come to pass, but it is not something that should be dismissed out of hand.
Derrek …I couldn’t have said it better !!
Thank you !
I suspect that the Dorico team would prefer, instead, to make the creation, management and layout of flows easier. This was probably part of the plan from inception.
It seems to me that, if it were just as quick and easy to split a flow as to adjust a property, then most cases I’ve seen described here would be satisfied with splitting flows.
Having to manage flows and frames is an added burden for users who are used to different music engraving software, or none. But if the outcome of familiarity with Dorico is a work rate that is as fast or faster, then objections will fall away.
In the meantime, continue to request away! I could easily be wrong, maybe they will change their (oft-expressed) view on this.
cheers
J
The latest conspiracy theory. On the Dorico forum, no less.