Just to add a bit of perspective for those who wish Dorico had sprung into being “complete” (if such an application is ever complete), Finale 1.0 cost a cool $1,000 in the early ‘90’s, and it was so buggy it was quite useless, even for the most basic work. We used to say, “It may take five times as long as doing it by hand, but at least when you’re done you have—well, nothing.”
Granted, it’s an unfair comparison, because the state of the art today (system design capability, processor power, computer language sophistication, etc.) makes this a far more advanced environment than that in which Finale’s dev types were working.
But the fact is that Dorico came out in October 2016, and by the second week in November I was turning out music for the concert band I conduct, a big band, and my brass quintet. It was nearly a year before I could do anything practical with Finale. (Ah, those early dot matrix printouts…)
That speaks well both of Dorico’s capabilities right out of the gate, and of its intuitiveness and reasonable learning curve.
It’s certainly true that each of us has to decide whether/when Dorico is full-featured enough to meet our professional needs. But in the meantime, what a great start!
And to echo what Lew’s just said, many people didn’t get anywhere near Sibelius until it was available on Windows and Mac. By that point it had already been available on Acorn for 5 years and in development for over 10 years.
What Dorico can do today, 5 years after the team started work, is totally incredible.
As an arranger and engraver the fact that the Segno sign doesn’t play correctly is just not an issue for me. It’s possible to insert the sign (and for it correctly to show in parts etc.) and that serves my purposes just fine.
I think what would be nice in the meantime would be if there was a browsable SMuFL icon grid within Dorico itself, so that way we could find the symbols we want to use and c&p them into text boxes as necessary without leaving the program. It would at east be a step in the right direction.
Yes already, only one would also want that the function works in the playback.
One can get here the impression that some people did not want to have implemented these signs/marks in Dorico.
In the extremely case one can also write the notes in this manner.
And what’s on next?
I think now there’s only three ways:
1-The repeat signs will never be implemented
2-Repeat signs come with the next update
3-Repeat sign come with one of the next updates
Daniel, can you say what now?
Piano-EK, we need to be patient and have faith in the Dorico team. They are aware of our needs and have already mentioned several times that segno/coda signs and rhythm slashes are high on their priority list.
Piano-EK, are you following the Dorico Facebook groups? The attached picture is a copy of a recent post from John Barron with a clear statement about this subject.
Is there still no way to create a “coda” sign? Just trying to find out via a search here and found this thread. Sadly, too many such things currently omitted (though I know the team is working hard) so back to Sibelius (please add soon!)
robjohn9999,
you can already add the coda sign yourself (as you can do the segno sign or any other, which is part of the Bravura font). I do this all the time, using the SHIFT+ALT+X popover. The further procedure is described in this forum already quite a few times.
I’ve been skimming the threads for the exact directions for creating the Coda but no avail. I know in Write mode I select a note or other object, hit shift-option-X on a Mac, specify (“Bravura Text”?); but after this I’m lost (for example, what do I choose for “Default Text” in the upper left, and for where it says (in the upper right) either “None” or “Music Text”?) Could anyone kindly let me know what happens next to create a proper Coda sign? Much thanks in advance!
Dear robjohn9999,
Try and do it once, once you get the workflow, it is pretty straightforward. Of course, we all wait for this to be implemented (as well as automatic play of repeats, DS and coda), but we know it will be worth the wait (think about cues or chords…)
Do not change the font, only the right panel to Music text — the font will automatically change to bravura Text.
Copy the coda sign from the SMulf glyph page and paste it.
Then in Engrave mode, you can insert a system break before that bar, indent that coda system, and move the coda sign before that system.
You might want to make the font of the sign way bigger than it is by default
Hope it helps!
Here’s my standard description of how you can create a segno or coda sign: go to http://w3c.github.io/smufl/gitbook/tables/repeats.html and copy the symbol you need. In Dorico, choose [Shift]+[Alt]+ (system text). In the top right of the dialog screen which appears you change ‘(None)’ into ‘Music Text’ (this changes the lettertype automatically to Bravura Text). Paste the symbol, and if necessary, adjust the font size.
Creating segno or coda signs takes some time if you do it ‘from scratch’, but there’s a way to only have to do this once by creating a simple Dorico project file which contains all the symbols you might need and save it on your hard drive. You can keep this document opened when you’re working on other projects, and any time you need one of the symbols, you just copy that symbol from your document with the repeat signs to the document you’re working on. This reduces creating a segno or coda sign to a simple copy and paste procedure.
Clicking on barline 15, Shift-Alt-X, Music Text, and pasting in the copied SMuFL coda sign produces:
I don’t understand why the coda sign is automatically positioned so far above the staff.
I suspect you’re using the Bravura font, and not Bravura Text. I would recommend using Bravura Text, which you should choose by selecting the ‘Music text’ character style using the menu at the top right-hand corner of the text editing popover.
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