Bug Report for Devs (Dorico 3.5)

Dorico
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1

Hey Dorico Peeps,

The past couple of weeks has seen me finally getting to grips with Dorico for use on a project. I’m really enjoying the software and there are a ton of great features that make creating scores very easy and intuitive - I’ll certainly be switching over for all things notation. Along the road I’ve found a couple of bugs, some of which I’d class as “biggies” — I’ve only just joined the forum and I don’t know what the reporting procedure is, but I’ve typed them up here incase it is of use to the devs. Let me know if you need any screen grabs or anything like that/forgive me if this is me not fully understanding the software.

NB this was all encountered in a single project. I have marked *** where this has happened in other projects too.

SYSTEM
Mac OSX 10.13.6
32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3
3.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5
Dorico Pro 3.5.12.1066

BIGGIES

  • Software window “blacks out” after switching between applications via tab button. Occasionally this black out happens without switching apps after a period of use of around 30min . Mouse must be moved repeatedly to reactivate/repopulate the screen. NB it is only all Dorico windows that becomes a black square, not the screen as a whole/other apps/desktop.***

  • Undo doesn’t keep up to date. Use of undo would undo actions from way back in the action history (e.g. I’d create text, use undo, and it would undo work earlier in the score (from half an hour ago) and leave the text where it is). Whenever this happens I have to restart the software; it seems to happen consistently after continued use.

SMALL

  • Rhythm cues above stave (acting as a guide to show elapsed beats during a gliss.) add random rests to the cue — these rests don’t exist in the cue, nor in the part above which they are written. The random rests cannot be selected or removed.

  • Performance: dragging the tabs of a cue, or extending a continuation line has extreme lag. It can often take 10 seconds or more for the line to move on screen, usually resulting in an over- or undershoot of the desired location (lag present only if manually dragging the line or using the alt+right; not if inserting line between 2 selected points). Loading time on current project is 4 minutes (I believe this to be an issue with the project itself, mentioned in another post, however I am unsure what is triggering this). ***

  • Percussion composite in the full score would often switch instruments at a place in the bar that hid rests, resulting in bars that do not contain the correct amount of beats (optically). I couldn’t find a way to adjust the start/stop points of these percussion mergers, so I expect this is my own lack of knowledge rather than a bug, but I’m adding this just incase. ***

FEATURE COMMENTS

  • At the request of perc players, I stripped out the “to X” function using a suggestion I found in the forum: creating custom text and inserting a blank space. As is already reported, this removed the “to” text but also removes the tag entirely, so it cannot be adjusted later. ***

  • Shared percussion: no way to do this natively at the moment (?) and Dorico automatically renames duplicate percussion (e.g. I couldn’t have 2 instances of “Suspended Cymbal”, I could only have Suspended Cymbal 1 and 2, or A and B, etc - this was confusing for some players with front matter differing from part names (e.g. “cymbal is shared” in front matter, but then having 2 separate cymbals listed in the parts). I couldn’t find a way to cheat this/temporary workaround.***

2

Regarding this, I just had an idea: Daniel @dspreadbury, would it be possible to make this drag operation somehow highlight the destination as the user drags, but defer recalculating the castoff until after the drag is completed?

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This issue has been reported before. It’s a nuisance, and it occurs only with some users (including me). AFAIK, the cause hasn’t been found yet. The devs can’t reproduce it, nor has any of us users been able to pin down the cause. Fortunately, the problem is only superficial, only affecting screen redraws and playback. It has no influence on the open project. My own workaround is switching to another mode and back, which forces a screen redraw.

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4

Here are the circumstances in which Dorico automatically numbers instruments. Putting each percussion player in their own group stops their instruments being numbered together.

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5

Thanks for the heads up!

6

Thanks Lillie I will give this a go!

7

It won’t lead to the instruments being auto-consolidated if you’re using the “playernames” token - so you may still need to have manual control over generating an instrumentation list.