I certainly appreciate the new Note-then-Duration mode. Having been a Speedy Edit user in Finale, there was a bit of muscle memory re-training to adapt to Dorico. These days, the duration-first mode is usually a good way to operate, so I will leave that as the default.
There are certainly some times, especially when laying chords into multiple staffs simultaneously, when the note-first mode will be the way to go. We can all find our best workflow for that. That isn’t why I’m writing.
The issue (not really a bug) is that I left note-first on by accident. I wouldn’t have thought that would be a problem. But when that mode is on, everything you touch immediately puts you into note entry mode. You can’t just select notes as usual. It took me awhile to figure out what had happened to me.
Now that I know, I will just be careful to go back to duration-first mode except while I really need to be in note-first mode. But I was hoping there might be some settings somewhere that would make it less of a problem to remain in note-first mode. I couldn’t find any settings anywhere that softens the tendency to jump immediately into note entry mode. Am I missing something?
I’m not sure I follow, Craig. There’s nothing different about how you get into note input when using pitch before duration. Can you be a bit more specific about what you mean by “everything you touch immediately puts you into note entry mode”?
I am questioning my sanity again. This morning, it is behaving as you say. Yesterday, somehow I got into a condition where I couldn’t ever escape the note entry mode, and that only cleared when I turned off the note-then-duration mode. Even though I thought I had existed the note entry mode, whenever I tried to select a note with a single-click, it immediately displayed the grid and started giving me the light gray noteheads.
I’ll keep an eye on it to see if I can pick up a pattern.
Something similar happened to me, but I cannot tell wheter it was my clumpsyness or some strange behaviour. At least that means that either both or none of us might have to question our sanity.
I’ll try pitch before duration once more to see if that happens again.
I have the same issue as Craig (I think):
Having written some notes in pitch-before-duration mode, I hit esc and so quits note entry. With the mouse I now want to select a region, but as soon as I click anywhere, I see the orange «beat lines» and the greyed-out «this is the note you will get» note. To select, I will have to hit K (and then re-enter as soon as I want to continue to enter notes).
Not a big thing, of course, but two more K’s than I expected.
I did not experience the problem when I just tried it. I was able to select single notes or via marquee.
It does not matter whether I input notes via a MIDI keyboard or my computer keyboard; the program seems to be responding as I would expect.
If you have the select tool (the arrow tool, now the first tool in the toolbox) activated, then this won’t occur.
If the select tool is not active, then mouse input is active, which means that if a note value is selected in the Notes panel, when you click in the score the shadow note will be active.
I think the issue is that the system sometimes resists going back to the select tool. Normally I do that by pressing the Esc key, but I’m not sure that works consistently when one is trying to leave the note-then-duration mode. I have not had a need to use that mode for a few days, so I have not seen this situation since my initial post.
Hitting Esc doesn’t return to the select tool; you could assign a key command for that tool if you like, but it doesn’t have one by default. However, if you don’t want to input notes with the mouse, my suggestion would be to activate the select tool, and possibly also enable the preference for disabling mouse input, which activates the select tool by default when opening a new project.
I feel a bit silly here, as I didn’t know about the select tool. Usually, hitting esc puts me in a situation where no duration is selected, and so I am free to select without having to resort to the select tool, as long as I am in the duration-before-note mode. In note-before-duration mode, this changes, which of course creates a need to get to the select tool easily. (But there is a certain logic to it, I admit.)
But where can I make the select tool shortcut? I have searched for “select”, “activate”, and “tool” in the Key Commands section in the preferences, without fruitful results …
In Key Commands it’s somewhat unhelpfully called “Disable Mouse Input”. I personally simply have the preference to disable mouse input active, since I never want to input notes with the mouse.
Don’t feel silly. That is exactly how I got into that same quandary. I guess I will do better turning off the mouse input, as Daniel suggested. I never enter notes via mouse.