I start this thread partly hoping I then will remember what to look for every time I want to change the bars per system.
So to my question: What made you choose this term? I’ve searched the internet for an explanation but couldn’t find anything that seems to be near the meaning in Dorico. Have you invented it yourselves? I doesn’t become better or makes the software more exclusive just by changing names of terms to something that is hard to remember. It’s like saying; Oh, this composer must be very good since he can write so difficult!
I’m surprised that this topic didn’t show up when I started typing the headline before posting. It should have been the first choice for the search engine.
TBH, I’m really glad someone asked this because I had no idea what it meant, and it really seems to be a typesetting term, not so much for music but for textbooks/written content. As a user since Sept, I do find the terminology in Dorico sometimes confusing and more complicated than it perhaps needs to be, at least in my opinion. Language and terminology matters. No big deal, but when there is an option for a simpler term, that might go a long way for new users. Same with “flow.” As a gynecologist, that means something very different to my mind than a movement or section of a work…
It’s fascinating to hear folks’ thoughts on this. I spend most of my professional time working in graphic design and collateral publications, so I’ve always enjoyed Dorico’s use of nomenclature from the print world.
Ted Ross talks about “casting off” in The Art of Music Engraving and Processing, which I think dates back to 1970. I’m very used to the term in the context of sheet music.
I would humbly submit that casting off is not really a complicated term; you have simply found it to be confusing because it’s unfamiliar. Since it’s actually a term widely used for many decades in musical typesetting practice, The Dorico Dev Team seems wise not to invent a new term (which would confuse others).
It is also interesting and related that casting off is a term used in knitting. But I am sure it is from printing not knitting in this case, but another similar use of the word casting.
@Tomas_E and @dtoub I agree. Most musicians are not typesetters. “Page formatting” is self-explanatory; “casting off” requires a google search. As is “line spacing” rather than"leading". Dorico doesn’t use “kerning” for “letter spacing”. Thank goodness.
Perhaps “Flow” was chosen for want of a better term, “Movement” would have sufficed and been less foreign, however, even if not right for all occasions.
Well, this is a professional software to create beautifully layouted pages, so regardless if people like it or not, they are, in fact, typesetters - for music. Heck, there’s even a whole “Engrave mode” for that stage of the process.
(Photoshop is also using terms from the profession because when you use such a software, people will be expected to know their way around such language.)
(And if you use “flows” to create lots and lots of little snippets for worksheets, using “movement” would be just as wrong. The term “flow” was chosen to be exactly that: Not too specific.)
As Ted Ross says, “a thorough knowledge of music would make the musician only a novice in engraving.”
Every industry has its terminology, and if you’re working in that sphere, it’s not unreasonable that they should be preferred, even in favour of more generic definitions.
Should the Dorico Help Pages have a Glossary of terms that mere musicians might be unfamiliar with?
Yeah, you’re right. What I meant to say was that there were no notation programs like in the last decades at least, for every composer, professional or not.