Change music font

Dorico
1

Hi there,
I‘ve started a short piece with the Petaluma music font and then decided that I want to change it to Bravura. How can I do that?

2

It may not be possible on the iPad. You’ll need to open it in Dorico Pro on the Desktop.

3

thank you Ben! That was my conclusion, too. Maybe that‘ll change anytime soon.

4

I use Minion Pro a lot in Dorico. When viewing a file on the iPad, it changes this font to a generic sans-serif one. I looked up how to install fonts on the iPad and it looked complicated, especially since I’d need to download them from a font website and besides, I need the versions of Minion Pro that I have on the computers. Does anyone have any suggestions?

5

Sadly, it can’t be done at the moment. The usual font installation methods for iOS don’t work with Dorico, because it uses the Qt framework, rather than using Apple’s APIs directly.

It’s a known issue and will be looked at. But yeah, if you’re not using Bravura/Petaluma and Academico (or a standard Apple-installed font), then you get a Sans replacement.

6

I was happy to see the 12 instrument limit removed in the first update, otherwise the iPad version would have been of no use to me.

But not only am I using some non standard fonts in my project, I also have replaced individual music symbols with glyphs from other SMUFL Fonts which are not part of Dorico.

I also tried to install them onto my iPad but Dorico does not have acces to them, so now for a different reason the iPad version is of no use to me.

I really hope this will be possible anytime soon.

And if its true that this is another Qt related issue, I really hope that the decision to rely on this framework will not drive Dorico into some dead end comparable to the palaeontological codebase Finale has to deal with…

7

Unfortunately there’s nothing that we can do about this in the short term. Qt does not provide access to the iOS 13+ methods for obtaining a font in a secure way, but we hope that this will be added in a future version of the framework.

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8

Both Sibelius and MuseScore use Qt, so Dorico will be in good company. Many other cross-platform apps use it. Without it, developing on three platforms would be three completely separate codebases.

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