Asking why the term "endpoint" was chosen in Dorico

This was happening to me in the beginning too. And along with “playback template” and “endpoint” vagueness, it was causing a great deal of frustration (and that’s putting it mildly). It was only after I started spending additional time looking for these small details that I realized:

  • playback techniques: the specific VST patches that are user-assigned to be triggered by this or that notation via expression maps. I think a far more intuitive and self-explanatory term would be “assigned playback patch” or something along those lines

  • playing techniques: are actually notated performance instructions in the score, which include both the actual techniques such as arco/pizz., as well as dynamics, ornaments, etc.

  • expression maps: has nothing to do with expression, it simply creates the link between the notated instruction and the VST patch. This is just an old marketing term from back when “Note Expression” technology was launched but I guess is a learned term by now.

Indeed! Imagine how many more users could become really proficient a lot faster if some of the terminology was a bit more self-explanatory and less confusing.

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It amuses me how often someone starts by complaining about something, but then, when challenged, switches to talking as if they have been standing up for the poor, helpless “new user.” How very selfless of one. :rofl:

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First, I’m not sure why you’re so passive-aggressive with your responses, so indirect and seemingly impersonal. But in any case - indeed, I complain about the terminology, I explain why and I offer an alternative.

What am I doing here that’s wrong?

And what exactly are you “challenging”, other than telling me to suck it up and deal with it?

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When you take on something new, you need to learn it. That includes the vocabulary, the jargon, if you wish.

I think it is highly unlikely that the Development Team will change what they call parts of the program; to do so would only cause more confusion among those who already use the program.

That’s true. But the time it took me to do that was needlessly long and genuinely frustrating - because the vocabulary is ambiguous, misleading and/or vague in a few cases. I think I’m not the only one who went through this and new users might also welcome more clarity and find their adoption experience easier. So it’s a little shocking, frankly, that pointing this out and offering a suggestion or two can generate hostility.

It’s also not clear to me how an existing, experienced user will get so hopelessly lost if endpoint configuration becomes rack configuration, or if playing technique becomes performance instruction or something like that - just to make two examples. I think even existing users will find rack configuration a better term.

But if renaming 3 or 4 unfortunate terms is not an option, there’s probably other ways to bring more clarity: tooltips, hover boxes and such that can be turned on/off by the user. If there’s a will, there’s a way.

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Y’all are complaining too much about this! The nomenclature used in Dorico is eminently well chosen, and not a big issue at all. Go spend some time in just about any other domain to see how awful it it. Such as, 3D art, where one of the most important texture map may be called diffuse or albedo. This map (why is it called a map? Its just an image) basically is just the color channel (another term)- whether a texel (can’t call it a pixel here and use a commonly known word, when it’s texture it’s a texel) and albedo scientifically means brightness, while diffuse means … spread out? But they’re used interchangeably for this and neither makes any sense. Or Ambient Occlusion (high frequency shadow obscuring - what does high frequency mean you ask?), or normal map, (mathematical term here) reflection (or specularity!), gloss (or roughness!) etc etc

And that just scratches the surface, I’m sure I’ve already bored you, but the terminology here is easy peasy, ‘Endpoint’ is a great choice :smiley:

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When you start using Dorico, you need an explanation for “endpoint configuration” - what it is and what it does. So you look for a video, read the manual or ask online…you’re basically wasting time.

Meanwhile, doesn’t this picture look like a rack of VST instruments stacked on top of each other? So then why not call it that? Then you know immediately what it is and what it does, you know immediately the benefit of saving the entire rack as a configuration. It takes literally only a second to understand…

It would take only one additional second to explain that a playback template is simply a collection of specific racks. That’s it. Simple and intuitive…

image

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Your personal opinion perhaps. Others seem to differ.

What has been lost in this thread is that Dorico is used by many for whom English is a foreign language - hence the OP question.
Neologisms like endpoint are inherently difficult to translate and similar terms (playing v playback) are all too easy to confuse.

That is just an acknowledgement the problem, namely that every specialty creates its own jargon.

I accept that the Dorico team will not change the nomenclature they have chosen. But the problem of comprehension remains.
The solution, I think, is to create many more alternative explanations through documentation, tutorials and examples (in diverse media). The current resources page is (IMO) an underdeveloped resource.

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Here it is: The word “nomenclature” looks less intuitive comparing to “lingualogical system”. This is a similar case to why “endpoint” looks less intuitive to new Dorico users.

Thanks to Daniel’s explanation about the term “endpoint”.

My initial intent is not to argue whether the English term “endpoint” is good or should be replaced, regardless its nature of “too geek to new users”. This nature doesn’t have to be regarded as a weakness, and Daniel already explained why they were cornered by the lingualogical facts (they are facing) to use this term in English.

// However, cases in other languages can be different, considering the differences among language systems. This is another big topic.

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Learning a new application for something as inherently difficult as engraving should be intuitively obvious at every step? There should be no need to study the documentation, try experiments, fail, try again, get kind help from experts? Having to do this is “wasting time”, really?

Otherwise you folks just keep making the same point as far as I can see, we get it.

tl/dr
It’s been an interesting time here on the forum for me. I’ve been programming for 30 years. In those circles - a mind crushingly difficult field, it’s like being a foot soldier. You’re so oppressed by what you’re trying to do you just soldier on and have a gallows humor about it all. My son is in college to be an engineer, fun to see him and his buddies have the same experience.

3D art isn’t as hard in that sense, once you learn the skills and develop them to a high degree. But as I mentioned it’s a very difficult mountain to climb to get there. And it’s a literal mountain of never ending work. But other artists all have a good attitude about it, like “well we’re pack horses, just keep on going and put up with the bugs, bad/old software, and difficulties.” Animation is similar. But anyhow, basically getting to do art at all is a privilege, why complain about the little troubles? I never see anybody bitch about their tools (and unlike here, you have to use a toolchain of a minimum of three very different tools to get the job done)

But here in notation circle, gratifyingly people are exceedingly nice and polite to each other, even when somebody takes potshots like I did above :grinning: But, it’s can also be the most exacting and unrelenting group of people I’ve come across in terms of “how it should be done”, at least how they think it should be done.

tl/dr, just shooting off my brain between practice sessions tonight, not worth commenting on …

Considering Daniel’s explanation of what “endpoint” represents, I made a proper Chinese term for it: “音源介面组态”. This literarily means “Sound Module Interface Configuration”.

Note 1: “音源” (literarily “sound source”) has totally different meanings between Japanese and Chinese. In Chinese, it indicates a sound module (whether hardware or vst). In Japanese, anything playable media (audio only) is an 音源.

Note 2: The word “介面” is not “GUI (Graphic User Interface)” in this context, hence that it shouldn’t be written as “界面”.

“Rack configuration” wouldn’t be an ideal replacement term for “endpoint configuration” because an endpoint configuration can be saved for an individual plug-in or device, or for the whole rack. Even if we were to adopt it, it does not replace the need for the word “endpoint” to gather together the device (plug-in/MIDI device), port, channel and sound used for a particular track.

I think “playing technique” is totally appropriate for the printed instruction that appears in the score, and it is more specific and less vague than “performance instruction”, which could be said to apply to many different types of markings in the score, including tempos, dynamics and general instructional text. A playing technique is specifically an instruction related to how the sound is physically produced, which makes it distinct from those other types of instructions.

However, I do agree that having both “playing technique” and “playback technique” as terms is far from ideal, and we are definitely open to changing the latter term. Because these are the abstract terms that provide the connection between the written instruction and the sound provided by the playback device, some people might think of them as “articulations”, since that tends to be the umbrella term used by sample library developers to describe collectively things that are either genuinely articulations or playing techniques (articulations arguably being a subset of playing techniques, though the reverse is not true). But that would be a disastrous term for Dorico to adopt, because “articulation” has a precise meaning in music notation, a meaning to which Dorico hews closely.

@ebrooks, you argue that Dorico’s terminology is vague and ambiguous, but with very few exceptions (such as the aforementioned “playback technique”) I think that is wrong. Wherever there is an established term that we can use, we use it, including borrowing terms from Cubase where possible, and we try to be precise in our use of existing terminology from relevant fields. But Dorico introduces some novel concepts for which no suitable existing (single) terms exist, hence the introduction of terms like “flow”, “endpoint”, and so on. We try to explain those terms clearly and use them consistently, and although obviously as one of the key people behind making decisions about terminology I cannot be objective about their ease of understanding, I don’t believe they are difficult to grasp or to retain.

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@dspreadbury thank you for your response.

You reject performance instruction because it can apply to markings such as dynamics and tempo.

Indeed, I had thought it a better descriptor because it captures the totality of the desired performance - including playing technique, articulation, dynamics and tempo. And each of them translates directly to the corresponding category in playback, triggered via samples or curves, and controlled by user. To me this was a logical way to conceptualize what Dorico is already doing.

But in the beginning I kept trying to link crescendo samples to corresponding score markings, and I kept getting confused with this:

image

  • I can link legato notation to crescendo samples, but I cannot link crescendo samples to its own notation

  • On the left side of this menu, legato is a playing technique but on the right side it is not a technique at all, it’s now length:

I don’t know if I’m really able to express how confusing (and frustrating) this can become. And even if playback technique is renamed, it still does nothing to bring clarity to its categories.

This is why I thought performance instruction is a good solution:

Performance instructions:

  • playing technique: bow
  • articulation: marcato
  • dynamic: forte
  • tempo: rallentando

Playback instructions:

  • playing technique: bow (via samples)
  • articulation: marcato (via samples or via curves)
  • dynamic: forte (currently - via curve only)
  • tempo: rallentando (via curve)

This is also extensible - if VIs add new functionality (say fingering on modelled instruments), this is very easy to scale and add categories if needed.

EDIT: just to add a short response on rack configuration. I agree it’s not perfect. My thought was simply that it is more intuitive - save this rack somehow suggests the entire rack with all of its contents, even if only 1 instrument was loaded.

I think it’s subjective, I don’t find “endpoint” to be not intuitive for new users. As for your example, I am Italian and English is not my mother language, but “nomenclature” looks very comprehensible to me, while I think the word “lingualogical” doesn’t even exist, I’ve never heard it before and I can’t find it in any dictionary. A search for “lingualogical” on google gives exactly 0 results.

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English is my mother tongue. “Nomenclature” is an English word, and “lingualogical” isn’t. I’m amused that while I don’t get zero search results on a Google search for “lingualogical”, this thread is the fourth result and a post from a certain ShikiSuen on the Xenforo forum is the third result. The first and second results seem to be some educational website in the U.K. that’s ripped off a Nando’s menu, so I’m not tempted to give them terribly much credence.

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For grins I googled “linguaillogical” and I get “Is Chinese an illogical language” as the first hit.

This is similar to the difference between Sixteenth Notes and Semiquavers, except that the Sixteenth Notes become an accepted standard in the US.

I don’t see the comparison. Lingualogical isn’t a word in U.S. English either.

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However you know what it means at your first glance, isn’t it?