Hello,
wouldn’t it be a good idea for the meantime to offer a „Cue sized“ notehead in the Notehead Menu?
This would give us an easy workaround to produce cue notes - until there is a fully functional cue system incorporated into Dorico.
Daniel has said time and time again that they are taking the chance to build from the bottom up the best, most robust implementations they can, so I don’t think they will provide such a workaround. However, given how much feedback we’re giving, I would imagine that there is a very good chance the team will work on cue notes next.
Cue-sized noteheads have other legitimate uses, apart from “faking” cues. Chopin Prelude Op 28 No 8, for example…
Although “default noteheads” - as opposed to the “large” ones which are actually the real default - are not quite as small as cue notes, they can still be used to approximate the Chopin.
And that’s why we need such noteheads. There are also other situations where they are used.
I agree wholeheartedly, I just meant that I imagine both situations will be tackled at once!
I’m not at home right now, so I can’t include a screenie to show you what it looks like, but I’ve been using one of the diamond-shape note heads to approximate cues, and of course I add text to show which instrument is being cued. Even though I haven’t found a way to put the normal rest in to show it’s just a cue and shouldn’t be played, I find that it “intuits” quickly and easily from a player’s perspective.
There are lots of uses for cue-sized noteheads other than for formal cues. For example: writing a lead sheet or separate part when the parts for other singers/instrumentalists already exist. I’ve had to make orchestra reductions of operas that affect only a few players at specific places in the score, and where all the parts are handwritten. Not everything is a major project that includes all performers. In this case, and others, there’s no “bottom up” to build on.
Another example is alternative notes, very frequently used for singers. Parentheses are ok for a single note or two, but sometimes the alternatives continue–multiple sequential parentheses make reading difficult and are not very attractive. 
Cheers!
Ed
You do know it’s quite easy to reduce notes to cue size, right? Select the ones you want, and from the properties panel at the bottom, toggle “Scale” and pick your size. Or custom.
This is an old thread, scaling objects was not available until the fall of 2017.
Yes, just making sure pafnooty realized that, since he posted about it today.
I’m going to revive this again with a twist: has anyone figured out how to adjust the alignment of cue-sized notes in chords? I understand that stemmed notes must be aligned to the stem, however whole notes seem to be aligning to an invisible stem rather than centering. See attached. Unfortunately using the X/Y adjustment or even adding the low note in my example into a new voice wont take care of the misalignment. I’ve seen a few older editions where whole notes are centered even when cue-sized. It just looks odd the way it is now.
I should note that even when I added the low E into its own voice and then went into note spacing mode, D does not offer me the subsidiary circle handle for that note even though it is its own voice.
I think this left alignment is actually correct, because notes that sound simultaneously should be positioned horizontally simultaneously. But if you want to change it, put that lower whole note into its own voice column as well as its own voice (activate the ‘Voice column index’ property and set it to 1) and then you’ll be able to adjust it horizontally using the round note spacing handle.
I had tried half of that but not both options together. It worked. Just for argument’s sake, I’ll show this “corrected” (to my eye). I definitely hear what you are saying as far as left alignment is concerned, (and with stemmed notes that makes much more sense) however in an open chord format with whole notes, this adjustment looks more sensible. Whenever I looked at it the other way (posted above) it popped out of me since all the other notes were in alignment. It should also be noted that the whole note heads are not left aligned to the ledger lines. Adjusting the cue note seems to keep the proportion the same with the other notes. This not only has the advantage of centering the note heads, it also makes the ledger lines more even / symmetrical. I was delighted when the ledger lines started to shift as I adjusted the notehead. This was one of those hidden gems that makes Dorico such a pleasure to use!
Come to think of it… this might be a little bug: note how the ledger lines do not extend as far to the right as the whole note’s line does. Shouldn’t all the ledger lines be the same width? Just curious. I need to pull out the Gould (“the bible” 
) and see if she addresses it.
I totally agree regarding the alignment of stemless cue notes. In Finale I had the same issue. I understand the philosophy of left-alignment for simultaneous events, but left-aligned full-size and cue-size whole notes together in the same chord just look wrong. (Not terribly scientific, but just my two cents).
I have some older hand-engraved editions (many of my organ music scores are over 100 years old) and they definitely have the smaller notes centered, not left aligned. I think that’s what cued me in (pun intended ) to begin with. It looked different than I was used to seeing.