When I double click on a spot which takes me into note input mode, and then go into dynamic input mode (shift+D), I cannot enter a hairpin using the keyboard shortcut. Funny enough though, I can input 2 hairpins by using the keyboard shortcut twice. This must be a bug.
You don’t need to do shift-D. In note input mode, just type < or >
Or is that what’s not working?
Oh - you know that you need to then hit space to extend the hairpin, right?
Ah, cool. I didn’t know that hairpins can be entered without going into Dynamic mode first, it’s after all a dynamic. Using space to extend doesn’t work for me, it starts playing the score back. I use Alt+Shift+arrow keys for this.
Dear Andre,
you need to press space bar when :
• you are in Note Entry mode (caret on)
• you just pressed < or > key
It will not play. It’s the way to make the caret go on (by the rhythmical value selected). The hairpin will develop its length as the caret moves.
when you are in note input mode and press < to start a hairpin, you only tell it where to start. Once you press space after that (or enter a note) it will know the initial duration of the hairpin and create it. As you enter more notes, the hairpin will become longer until you press ‘?’ to stop it. Alternatively, you can create another hairpin to stop the previous one, which is why you’ve seen it do something with double pressing the ‘<’ key.
If you use those shortcuts when note input is disabled, it will create something based on the current selection, so it immediately knows the duration.
I see, it didn’t realize that because the hairpin isn’t showing at first. This actually works great, the way it follows note entree and the note values.
It’s funny actually that I didn’t know this, because I see now that it works pretty much the same way in Sibelius 
If I recall correctly… the difference is that in Sibelius, when you press H to start the hairpin, it appears immediately. In Dorico, you press < or >, but it doesn’t appear until you’ve entered at least one further note.
The same applies to slurs added during note entry, which I found briefly confusing when I started using Dorico: “I pressed S. Where’s my slur?”. But it quickly becomes second nature. I guess it is part of Dorico’s philosophy not to notate anything that makes no musical sense, such as a slur on only one note. And then the hairpin thing works the same way by analogy (even though a hairpin on one note does make musical sense).