It is so great to get in touch with you again. I can’t wait to see the new up coming version 1.1.
I have a question: Is the graphical editor you mentioned in previous updates being delivered in the next version?
As for how chord symbols will appear, there will be a large number of engraving options that influence their default appearance, along with the ability to choose any text font you like, and you will also be able to edit the appearance of any particular chord symbol to look exactly how you want it via a graphical editor.
Yes, the graphical editor for individual chord symbols, accessed via Engrave mode by double-clicking an existing chord symbol, will be included in Dorico 1.1.
Partly off-topic, are there any plans for a graphical editor working on tempo markings? I’m thinking the same as the one Shift-X text uses. I would like to be able to write markings like i.e. the one in the attachment. I can do this with Shift-X, but I’d prefer Dorico to understand what’s going on (and less idealistically, I’d have to copy it in all instruments). I also sometimes want to change between bold and italics when writing tempo markings (I know about Immediate and gradual tempo fonts).
The tools in the text editor are excellent, but now we’re at it, it would be nice to be able to control them without the mouse.
I understand the desire for the flexibility that a graphical editor would provide for any kind of text, but to me, chord symbols as well as harmonic analysis (which I guess will be implemented in Dorico at some point) are special cases where such an editor is more or less indispensable.
Simpler typographical peculiarities, like the one in your example, can be easily handled by the font itself, provided that the designer has provided the correct glyphs and spacing. Dorico would need to support the right OpenType features for this to be easily replicated, but with access to the right glyphs, it would be possible to put it together manually, within a single line of text.
I don’t understand what you mean. I know that my desired result can be handled within the font - to be exact, in the attached example it would take bold, italics and superscript - but I can’t make it happen without the graphical editor, and this is only available in Shift-X and text boxes, AFAIK. My question is whether this already existing tool (the editor) could be made available for Shift-T generated texts (and perhaps other types of text, too). I have no idea what you mean by putting it together manually. Could you elaborate, if you have a workaround that I don’t know about?
Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant. I don’t think the text style panel that shows up when entering plain text is what Daniel refers to as a graphical editor, but I agree that some kind of text styles panel would be necessary for mixing text styles within tempo markings, dynamics, etc.
In any case, I was only pointing out that with the support for superscript and alternate glyph selections within tempo markings, you wouldn’t need a more elaborate graphical editor. Of course, at the moment, Dorico has neither.
Full support for open type features in the text editor would be fantastic! (Uppercase letters for titles without having to input the data in the project info dialog in uppercase letters…)
At the moment I’m also missing the possibility to modify the line spacing.
@Knut.
Ok, I see. I might have been confusing graphical editor and text editor. Anyway, as it should be clear now, I’m referring to the (relativity) simple text editor that already exist in Dorico. Is there any hope that this within a foreseeable future will be implemented for use in Shift-T texts and possibly others?
Shift+T doesn’t produce text: it produces tempo items. Similarly, Shift+P doesn’t produce text: it produces playing technique items. We may in the future make it possible for you to use the same kinds of rich text styles that you can use for Shift+X text items for these other types of items that happen to be drawn using text, but it’s not going to happen imminently. Likewise, the chord symbol editor in Dorico 1.1 has nothing whatsoever to do with the text editing popover that appears when you type Shift+X or when you edit text within a text frame. The chord symbol editor really has nothing to do with text, because (perhaps you will be unsurprised to hear), Shift+Q doesn’t produce text: it produces chord symbol items.
Thank you for the clarification, Daniel. I would still be apt to say, that if it inputs, acts and reads like text - it’s text! At least from the users POV - I suppose there are problems coding it that I wouldn’t even understand.
Anyway, I’m currently arranging a Puccini score with tempo markings all over the place, so I know I want to TREAT them as text. I guess I’ll have to use Shift-X for the more subtle markings.
Well, you can’t have it all, can you? I’ll just keep hoping for this functionality in a future update.
In the meantime, our attention has already turned to our next two updates. The first will be a minor update to Dorico 1.1, adding the graphical editor for chord symbols and fixing any small problems that emerge in the near future, and which we expect to be available relatively soon.
Yes, unfortunately we discovered some bugs in the graphical editor that could leave the project in a bad state, and so we had to make the difficult decision to remove it temporarily while we sort those problems out. As soon as we have it shipshape, we will issue a further minor update to get it into your hands.
