It’s taken me a very long time to get to a point where I can actually work an entire project with Dorico but, provided the project doesn’t require chord symbols I can do it. Your chord symbol system is absolutely appalling. With both Finale and Sibelius, all the various elements of every chord symbol was really well balanced and the size of each could be adjusted easily and proportionately. It was NEVER a problem. Surely, you could give us the same thing or, at least the option to choose, that system with Dorico. There are so many individually adjustable variables in Dorico, very few of which make any sense whatsoever, I find it practically impossible to get the balance right with all elements of every symbol. They’re all over the place. It’s an absolute nightmare. I find myself writing chord symbols in by hand much of the time or just abandoning projects out of sheer frustration and going back to Sibelius when chord symbols are needed. Come on, guys, it should not be this difficult to give us ‘user friendly’ chord symbols. We’re not all computer ‘whiz kids’. We’re musicians, arrangers, composers and this is what I do for a living. We have projects that have to be done with deadlines and this has been an ongoing nightmare now for years. PLEASE FIX IT.
Perhaps you could give some specifics about problems you’re encountering so your fellow users can assist.
Phil, there are hundreds of different conventions for notating chord symbols. That is, why in Dorico you can choose how you personally like to display them. Have you already had a look at the Engraving Options->Chord Symbols?
It could also be that some fonts don’t play nicely with Dorico, like Finale Jazz. @NorFont.com have some nice “handwritten“ options.
Jesper
I’m very well aware of that, but the options available are just unbalanced and far from any norm I’ve ever seen or used. Editing them is an absolute nightmare, never bringing satisfactory results. Take a look at Sibelius chord symbols; pretty much perfect every time. I have spent literally months trying to get them consistant on Dorico and the results are never satisfactory. I go back to Sibelius and they’re pretty much perfect every time.
Well, the biggest one now is chord symbols do not respond to any changes in selected fonts whatsoever. If I go back to V.5 it works, V. 6 is just non-responsive. But the end results, no matter how much I manipulate them, are always really amateurish looking, completely unbalanced, especially any extensions. How come they’re pretty much perfect every time with Sibelius? Change the size and all the components change proportionately at the same time. With Dorico, it’s half a day’s work just to get somewhere near presentable. Horribly frustrating. Since a lot of my work is for commercial and jazz clients, chord symbols are crucial. Consequently, I still have to keep going back to Sibelius. I’m pretty much at the point on giving up on Dorico altogether.
Clearly, there are lots of Dorico users who get good results with chord symbols. As suggested, it would be helpful if you could provide some specifics for folks to look at. Can you upload a small project file with chord symbols that don’t look the way you want?
With respect, there doesn’t seem to be a question there, just a vent. I guess that’s understandable since you’re frustrated, and perhaps you legitimately do know more about chord symbols than the folks here, but the thread is pretty much a non-starter.
In short: Show us what you want, and what you have so far, and let’s work from there.
My Chord Symbols use Petaluma and look exactly like the New Real Book, which (in my opinion anyway…) is the gold standard for Jazz leadsheets.
Phil, you might find the company history quite interesting. The development team for Dorico are actually the same people who worked on Sibelius Software in their earlier years.
That’s why your experience might be due to a simple user error, such as using incompatible fonts or having changed some basic settings.
If you can upload a small project and perhaps a screenshot of what you’re aiming for - like one of your Sibelius renderings - you will receive constructive help instantly, I promise.
As suggested by others here Phil, this thread is not able to be helpful much further than this, as there are no visual comparisons. Are you able to upload some PDFs of Finale, Sibelius and what you have in Dorico with specific information (or arrows etc.) so we all know exactly what you would like to improve, then we can see whether Dorico can provide what you wish for.
This would also help others coming to this thread later, wanting to change their chord symbols in similar ways 
In January I updated my Chord Symbol Nomenclature guide for my comp and arranging students. It took just minutes to switch between all these different styles:
I’m curious what you are doing that doesn’t use one of those systems because those are all pretty easy to achieve. Of course, if you’ve started by creating a zillion manual overrides, that’s not really how to go about it. I would delete or reset all your overrides, use the Library Manager to reset all the chord symbol stuff and Glyph Primitives, then go through Engraving Options/Chord Symbols to make all your edits. Get as close as you can only using Engraving Options and Font Styles, and only after you’ve exhausted all of those settings begin to do any manual tweaking at all.
Sage advice! 
I am very slowly trying to navigate the learning curve for Dorico, being a Finale refugee. I have two thoughts, one related to this thread. It is my impression that Dorico is oriented toward some very specific engravers. I believe I am in a minority of users that write a great deal for fretted instruments. My impression is that Dorico is not friendly in that regard. When I have made suggestions for future updates, I have received some very nasty replies that the developers do not consider those priorities. As a result, it has made me less motivated to undertake learning Dorico, so it can become my primary notation software. I want, very badly, to make it something that I look forward to using, rather than a necessary substitute for something that I have been comfortable with for a very long time. I’m sorry if I sound a bit negative, but there appears to be a tremendous amount of arrogance from some on this forum which is very counterproductive.
You might like to ask again with some of your questions in those threads, as there might have been improvements from when you asked previously, or better workarounds now.
I can imagine the Dorico team thinking everything is a priority, but they do have to decide one-by-one which can be accommodated into an update.
It might sound like some of us here are vehemently defending Dorico, but I have noticed as soon as Daniel answers, there is much less speculation as to the reasons why. If you are able to, ignore those posts which have the kind of tone which annoy you, as usually you will get a helpful answer among them.
And your questions might help make the Dorico team aware of something they can consider in the future when they return to fretted instruments improvements. I have used Dorico for classical guitar and am waiting for lute to be better supported (although by the time it arrives, I may no longer actually need to do it, it is a while since I played it )
Feel free to ignore this post also but personally I think it was good to have your post here Terry.
Hi Terry
It is part of the rules of participation on the forum, stating personal attacks, berating/bullying of other users is not tolerated. As such, you can use the ‘flag this post privately’ button/feature (found by clicking the three-dot menu at the bottom of individual posts), to call attention to any such posts falling foul of that requirement.
Now, although it is discouraged to open multiple threads on the same topic, I would as @arco suggests, consider posting again with your questions/concerns, this time maybe including new info, test project examples, screen-shots, mock-ups, more detail about the use case, etc… This may in turn help ‘clear the air’ of those previous bad responses to your posts and give (separate) chance for one of the team themselves to respond.
Further fretted instrument attention from the devs will come round again; they do know there’s more to do. It would be a shame your valuable insight/input has a chance of being missed.
So, a +1 to the sentiments from @arco post above and please do be encouraged to focus on the product, what it can mean for you, the amazing team of devs effort and dedication AND by posting here, that your voice will be heard as an active/supportive user.
I’m not sure posts requesting specifics from Terry constitute nasty responses. I suppose users are (up to a point) entitled to rant, but to solve a perceived problem, specific information is necessary. Otherwise, those who attempt to read every post may feel certain threads are wasting their time.
I agree, if Terry wants a solution, he should post again, but this time include specific examples of what troubles him.
I have a similar experience with chord symbols. In a prior life, I dealt with “user experience” related to medical software. Our goal was to allow the user to quickly make an accurate input to allow the desired event to occur.
When trying to deal with chord symbols, it is in no way intuitive how to make changes. For example, I did not know that Finale fonts did not play well with Dorico until I read this thread. So why include them as an option? I get it, someone might want them anyway, but the majority of users simply want something with the flavor of Finale Jazz, not the exact font itself. The KISS principle is valid, IMO.
So, I agree with Phil. I do NOT think it is just a matter of education of the individual user here – the user interface and design of the software (with regard to chord symbols) is the problem; it’s too complex.
The Finale fonts have some problems but they also do many things predictably.
While they are installed automatically by recent Dorico installers, they’d also already be installed on any computer that has a recent version of Finale installed, so it’s not necessarily Steinberg’s fault that those fonts are available for use within Dorico (aside from Daniel Steinberg driving the SMuFl train, of course!).
I write only occasionally for fretted instruments & am far from an expert on them. However, FWIW, my first attempt to write a part for a fretted instrument was for mandocello, which is not included in Dorico’s prepared list, even though it’s extensive enough to include instruments I’d never heard of. It wasn’t difficult to create the instrument definition from scratch & add it to Dorico’s list. My part (“Giant Steps” by John Coltrane) includes specific chord voicings with chord diagrams that Dorico created from my notated voicings. There are no playing techniques specific to fretted instruments, & my knowledge of this instrument & the entire category is rudimentary at best, so I’m sure there are limitations I didn’t encounter with my basic needs. I’m sure there are implementations missing, but the essential functionality is there.
(PS - Can I play it on mandocello? Sure, at around 1/256 tempo! It’s a work in progress.
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