I love the new lyric pasting function, but I frequently need to paste the same text passage several times. Currently, I either have to use some other app (like BBEdit, TextEdit, Word, etc) as an intermediary; or use a pasteboard manager.
Just wondering if it might be feasible to ‘save’ a selection and then ‘re-load’ it, within Dorico somehow? And if not, could it be?
Yes, one of our beta testers asked about this as well. I’m not opposed to the idea in principle but I have some questions about how it would work. Would Dorico automatically restore the full clipboard contents after you paste the last word or syllable? Would you have to trigger the command again?
I don’t think it would hurt if Dorico replenished the clipboard automatically. Why add another command in between?
Dorico could always keep the clipboard data the same, and keep an internal reference counter to which word was copied last, and just copy the word after that on each consecutive paste action. When the end of the string is reached, the reference can be reset to the start of the string. For that to work, Dorico must also keep a copy of the clipboard to detect clipboard changes and reset the counter if the clipboard contents changed. You can even keep track of which line the last word was pasted into, or what was the last word that was pasted into the current line (so that it always pastes the right next word, even when switching lines halfway and switching back). Another advantage of this approach is that users may expect cmd+v to be a non-destructive operation.
This makes perfect sense unless you have repeated lyrics, which is kinda standard in choral repertoire:
The idea also works for repeated lyrics, right?
Yeah, but if you look at the example from the Mozart Requiem above, you’ve got
1 = Requiem
2 = aeternam
3 = dona
4 = eis
5 = Domine!
The Sopranos sing 12345 12345
The Altos sing 12345 345 345
The Tenors sing 12345 45
The Basses (from the top of this excerpt) sing 2 2 345 345 12345
I’m not suggesting that Dorico handles this - it doesn’t - but your suggestion doesn’t seem to either. Your counter system seems to assume that when you get to the end (5) you’re then going to go back to the beginning (1), yet on the very first score I thought to look at, on the very first page, that simply isn’t the case.
But you could do all the 12345s, then copy the 345 and paste those, and then do the remainder.
I think auto-reloading of the phrase would be a useful time saver for many instances, but of course not for all.
I have to say that although I am not crazy about the way Finale puts duplicate lyrics into odd spots of their edit box when one copies a phrase on music with lyrics, I think Finale’s implementation of lyrics assignment and editing has a number of good aspects to it that let users re-use lyrics that repeat.
I’d like a more general solution for lyrics. They usually exist before their use in a score and might be used elsewhere simultaneously (perhaps in the prelims/front matter) and subsequently. I think the original form should be preserved and stored within a flow.
Essentially, I’d like to be able to import the text in its original form, select some text and select a note, enter a command with mouse or keyboard, and have the selected text placed into the score. Dorico should handle the syllabification. The text would then exist in a second, marked-up form, and it should be possible to edit this on the page or for more advanced use, in a dedicated editor (the changes would be synchronized).
Looking at the arguments in this thread, it should surely be possible to mark words or phrases (within the editor that I’ve proposed) with some identifier (like a number) and they could then be entered at any point in the score with a command.
The editor might also allow the text to marked up typographically.
I’d like it to be possible to see the original and marked-up text side by side.
In a text editor, pasting does not destroy the content of the clipboard: you can paste paste paste paste paste paste paste the same text repeatedly. While I can see that Dorico alters the clipboard after each syllable, restoring the contents after use would mean, for instance, that the text can be pasted into some other app after Dorico’s turn.
I was hesitating to bring Finale’s Click Assignment into this. As ever, while it may be powerful, it’s not the best interface in the world, and does have many problems.