I am very sorry to say that, but what a disappointment Dorico is.
I was looking so much forward to working with this program, but it turns out to be a kind of official demo version:
Extremely unstable and buggy on my Mac, crashing randomly.
Languages (set up in german) are messed up, it seems that it is not fully translated, I can’t hear the note I am selecting and/or moving, it is a nightmare to import xml files and play them back, Halion tells me each time I launch Dorico that some samples are missing…
I found the download link by accident as I wanted to download my invoice.
Creating simple things as triplets is very inconvenient.
Cue notes?Do they exist?
If yes, where is a proper manual (maybe in german too?)
I know that this is a 1.0 version, but it seems that the release was a bit hasty and forced.
I paid with my money, and I expect a rock solid, well developed application, this is what my clients expect from me as composer as well.
But what I have here is something that might be solid after many updates.
I will not ask for money refund, I will wait for updates and give it a chance.
I’m sorry to hear that you are having problems. Would you happen to be the user with screenname Christof on the VI-Control forum? (I’m unable to register there so I couldn’t respond to your thread on that forum.)
Please find the crash logs in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and zip them up and either attach them here or email them to me, and we’ll take a look to see what’s going wrong on your system. In general Dorico has proven to be pretty stable, both internally and also among the 200+ beta testers we have had using the software for the last few months, but certainly one or two of those testers have experienced a disproportionate number of crashes and we haven’t figured out why yet.
The prompt you are seeing concerning HALion sounds will be fixed if you update to the latest version of the eLicenser Control Center and then run the default license maintenance task; I guess for some reason your current version of eLCC didn’t get updated when you ran the Dorico installer. Check that you have 6.10.2.18201 installed, and if not grab it from elicenser.net.
Creating tuplets should be as simple as hitting ; (semicolon) and typing the ratio you want, then typing : (colon) to stop the sticky tuplet input.
Cue notes do not yet exist, but this is a high priority for us to add in future.
Because we were adding features right down to the wire (and will continue to add features in a series of updates) the localisation into the eight other languages necessarily is lagging behind. We plan to have a first update available around the middle of November that will complete the localisation in all eight languages, including German. We also expect to have the existing documentation set localised by around that time, or shortly afterwards. Because the documentation is published online we can update it on demand as soon as we have a new version to publish, rather than having to tie it to an update to the program itself.
I am very sorry that Dorico does not yet live up to your expectations. Please rest assured that we are continuing to work very hard on the software to ensure that it really becomes the tool that all professional musicians want and need it to be, and we won’t rest until we get there.
Hi Daniel, yes I’m on VI control as well.
Thanks for your honest reply!
Updating the elicenser fixed the Halion bug.
I will dive into the tuplets thing tomorrow.
Maybe I am just too impatient.
Good luck to your team and thanks for the support.
Christof
It’s running so well for me, only rainbow wheel for me so far is switching between projects, but I hardly ever do that generally.
I’m finding note entry very painstaking. Without a MIDI keyboard it’s a complete mystery what octave a note will appear at the beginning of an entry, and I seem to be spending a lot of time having to double click, but most things I can see a logic I’ll get the hang of.
My biggest gripe so far is changing the name of a player doesn’t change name of the stave, and I can’t seem to find a way to change the font of instrument names. They don’t respond to default text font.
I don’t have a project I can use it for yet until I can have players share staves, and do first and second endings. Is there an ideal place for feature requests? I’m hoping for timely updates while critical features are missing.
Change instrument names by editing the ‘Staff labels’ paragraph style. To change the actual staff label, edit the instrument’s name, not the player’s name (open the Player card, click the little chevron next to the instrument’s name, and choose Edit Names).
If you want to change a note to a different octave, just press Alt+Ctrl and the up/down keys. The next note you enter will be in the same octave. It is very efficient once you get the hang of it.
Is there a fix in the pipeline for this? It really makes the first page of a score look scrappy when all text except the instrument names is in the “right” font. Hopefully an easy fix though!
Under Engrave/Paragraph styles you can change font for both Staff Labels and Layout Name, which both will affect instrument names in score and parts… or are you thinking of something else?
I get the rainbow wheel almost EVERY time I switch between projects and also when switching between windows inside the same project. This means that for me, Dorico is crashing very VERY often and nothing else helps than rebooting the computer. I very very very very much hope that this crashing disease can have a remedy, because it is really irritating and seriously disturbing working on Dorico projects. I have 64-bit Windows 7 Pro and I know it is not officially supported, but I don’t believe that the problem itself is caused by using Win 7 instead of Win 10.
I must do this again and again, because the changes made do not stick. For example, I am writing an organ duet. I have changed to names to be:
Organ I
I
Organ II
II
They stay like that for some time, but then they change like this:
Organ
I 1
Organ II
II 2
So the “I” is dropped of from the full name, and the abbreviated names get numbered “I 1” and “II 2” instead of “I” and “II”. I just have to it again and again before printing. Funny. I think this has been discussed already, but I did not find the thread.
Other than those two issues, I am very happy with Dorico knowing that updates are coming. I am only worried that problem #1 is so diccicult to fix that it will stay for a long time. I wish I am wrong, because right now, it is very difficult to “really” use the all the time crashing Dorico.
If I’m not mistaken the naming glitch is being addressed in 1.1. I know I’ve seen this same issue elsewhere on the forum.
Regarding stability, I’m not sure we can hold the D team accountable for a program prone to crashing if it is being run on an unsupported OS. Just my 2 cents anyway. Hopefully the update will help.
Hi Jode, you might get lucky with the new version of Dorico on win 7. If you don’t, I really think you might have to bite the bullet and go for Windows 10, simply because the support team won’t be able to help you fix this problem.
@Jode,
I am running Dorico without problems on a seven-year-old computer running Win 7 Pro. Although the system is showing its age in other ways (loggin onto my desktop after a restart takes ages) there are no adverse affects on Dorico’s performance. So your problems with Dorico must be related to something other than the OS itself (RAM size, drivers, other programs or utilities running). Hope either version 1.1 solves your situation or that you find the cause.
Thank you, Derrek. I never thought it could be the OS, so I more than agree. I have 16 gigs of RAM, tried running Dorico with minimal other tasks and progs running etc. No help.
Because everything else (including competitors F. and S.) is working beautifully, drivers are updated, and also Dorico itself is running fine for hours without crashing if I am working on only one project, it is a bit difficult to believe my system is causing this. But sure everything is possible.
Thank you, Fratveno. Does not work for me. I tried all kinds of space and letter combinations with also the non-breaking space (Alt+0160). No difference. As soon as I save the file and reopen it, the names are again changed.
Yes, that’s exactly what I was looking for, so thanks again - I still think it was reasonable to expect to find this with all the other font settings, though!
While waiting for the nexte update I use a simple trick : give a different name to instruments in the same instrumental group.
For example, in an orchestral score including 4 french horns spread on 2 staves, I would label the first staff “Horns 1,2” and the 2nd staff “Horns 3,4”. Having also 3 trumpets on 2 staves, the 1st staff is labeled “Trumpets 1,2” and the 2nd “Trumpet 3”.
Thank you, Mikhai. I don’t really get it. I already have different names:
Organ I (full name)
I (abbreviated name)
Organ II (full name)
II (abbreviated name)
At first, for a while, they look correct (both full and abbreviated names), but they do not stick. As soon as I save the file and reopen it, the names are changed like this:
Organ (full name)
I 1 (abbreviated name)
Organ II (full name)
II 2 (abbreviated name)
So the “I” is dropped off from the first full name, and the abbreviated names get numbered “I 1” and “II 2” instead of “I” and “II”.
I also tried the same names with Arabic numerals (Organ 1 etc.), but the same happens always. What am I missing here? Thank you.
I might not have understood your problem so if I don’t get the point don’t hesitate to tell me.
I’ve uploaded a small template for you. Is it what you’re looking for ? Organ_setup.zip (181 KB)
First I would suggest you to create 2 organs without renaming them. They will automatically be labeled Organ 1 and Organ 2. If you want to have roman numerals you shoud select “staff options” in the engraving options (SHIFT+CTRL+E) then select roman numerals. If you just want to have the abreviations “I” and “II” in the following systems I would suggest you to erase the existing abreviation in the name editing dialog (in the score setup section) and replace it with an underscore “_”.
The problem is Dorico will automatically assign numbers to staves the names of which are identical. If you add a number yourself it will “fight” with Dorico’s naming scheme.
In the example I sent in my upper post, naming staves “Horns 1,2” and “Horns 3,4” really introduces different names because there is a comma after the first number in each name. Dorico assumes it is part of the name itself. It sees “Horns 1,” and “Horn 3,” which are considered different names. That’s why adding a number after the comma is no problem.
I must confess when I open the name editing dialog box I see the second number (after the comma) has disappeared. But it sticks in my score, so…
Instead of an underscore, which would have been visible in the score, I replaced the existing abreviation with a non-breaking space (Alt+0160). Works. Now all systems of all 14 pages of the score have correct labels.
So thank you so much again, Michaël. Much appreciated. Label problem(s) solved.
