I have just published an update to the Dorico 1.2 docs. This is available from now as both a PDF and webhelp pages. Although this update does not include any documentation for Version 2 features (I am as excited to publish V2 documentation as you are to read it, I’m sure!), a lot of the new information should be useful for both Dorico 1.2 and 2 Pro users.
Play mode - including an introduction to the user interface, piano roll and drum editors, and instrument tracks; expression and percussion maps; loading and whitelisting VST instruments; mixer; transport; notes in Play mode: inputting/deleting/moving/transposing, and played vs notated durations.
Engrave mode - more information on page layouts, such as casting off, staff spacing, note spacing, and system/frame breaks; text tokens; editing text, including labelled diagrams of the dialogs that affect text: Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, Music Styles, Font Styles, and text editor options.
Print mode - some more information on booklet printing and a full walkthrough of the printing process.
We are currently translating the largest section, the notation reference, and as we go through that process and continue to refine the docs, I’ll be publishing some more small updates. Hopefully the next significant docs update will be for Version 2, because I am very excited about it (as previously mentioned). In the meantime, if you are on Version 2 and haven’t yet come across Daniel’s release notes, there’s an awful lot of excellent information in there - you can find it here.
(Small note about dates: the latest PDF only shows the date of the most recent Dorico 1.2 release, and does not include the release date of the documentation. We are still working with our colleagues in the manuals team to get this included in future docs updates.)
((Small note from the author: thank you so much for your patience regarding documentation. I am working as hard as I can to get the docs up to date with the software - which is tricky, as my amazing colleagues won’t stop developing new features. Reading all your posts here and on the Facebook group always impresses me at the knowledge already built up in this community. I do take note now and then of helpful hints and questions that come up, and use those to help me focus on what Dorico users want to find out and how they ask about it/what terms they use. Please continue as you are, full of curiosity and passion!))
On a “constructive side”, as they’re only reminders and don’t need extensive “phrasing”, I think that would be very useful to have access to current implementation of token and popover pdfs. Popover is a year late and the new useful tokens are not included in the current pdf.
That’s the kind of doc that will be needed at school, this fall, where every student will need most of the input commands under sight in one place. Even more so they won’t have a personal license to practise every day…
There are a number of text tokens listed in tables here: Text tokens - there won’t be any tokens included that are unique to Version 2, but most tokens for 1.2 are listed there.
Popovers in the docs are spread out according to their purpose, but all the different types of popover are in the Write mode chapter, such as this one: Fingerings popover
Topics with popover entry tables all also have an index entry under “popover” in the PDF manual - would that help you find them?
No plan to update the individual reminders? As an everyday user, I can remember enough to care re-opening the manual once in a while, but I think the 2 pdfs exclusively related to these shortcuts are a must in a class of 15.
The format of individual files is way clearer than the manual and could be updated extremely fast by a simple copy-paste…
I understand that creating a 800 pages manual could be time consuming, to say the least! And, while not up to date*, the manual is very well done.
But I can’t refrain me to ask for these little helpers…
*I wouldn’t want to have to cope with The Team on this matter!
