Dorico 3 - Buttons getting stuck in ''pressed'' state after clicking on them, become unusable

I’ve been having this issue where at a random point, each button I click (like the tabs of the modes, or the buttons on the VST Instruments section on the Play mode) get ‘‘stuck’’ pressed (darker color), with them not activating (i.e. not changing the mode or opening the window they should) and with no way to ‘‘unpress’’ them, literally making it impossible to keep working further with Dorico. I tried closing and opening again the program and it happens again randomly after a short while…

Any ideas how to fix this?
Captura de pantalla 2019-09-07 a la(s) 03.40.34.png
Captura de pantalla 2019-09-07 a la(s) 03.40.28.png

I noticed the problem seemingly only arises when I try using the VST Instruments and specially the External MIDI Instruments section of the Play mode almost instantly when I press the buttons related to those functions. I even tried the latest version of Dorico 2 (I kept it installed in case something like this happens) doing the exact same stuff and works perfectly, the problem is exclusive to Dorico 3. If I spam click a lot of times I can see the button ocassionally glitching and going on and off for a second, sometimes actually performing its related function/opening the related window but most of the time doing nothing. It even happens inside the rename endpoint (or however it’s called) window, I rename something without issues and no lag apparent on the program, but when I go press Apply/OK on the window the button gets stuck too and doesn’t work either…

Welcome to the forum, chizfreak. Yes, we have seen this problem ourselves. It’s not impossible to keep working with the program: you can still click the buttons to change their state, it’s just that they don’t always redraw correctly. In my experience the problem happens when you click on buttons in very quick succession. Our current hypothesis is that there’s something about the way the event loop is being handled in the newer version of Qt that we’re using that causes this problem, and we are looking into it. In the meantime, you really should find that you can simply click the button again, and if that doesn’t work, try switching the project window to another mode, e.g. to Write mode and then back to Play mode, using the Ctrl+2/4 (Windows) or Command-2/4 (Mac) shortcuts, and that should unstick the drawing of those buttons.

And some buttons are out of sync.

If I compare the metronome in the main program window and in transport window i can click combinations, that it is
on, on
on, off
off, on
off, off
I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature.

Hello, thanks for the reply. Sadly, that workaround doesn’t work for me with most of the buttons (only the Modes button but as those are always set as active when you click on them, spamming click helps because if it registers more than one click it will still activate), as I said clicking multiple times the same button can help ocasionally but not always and with buttons that can be turned on and off the multiple clicks often register as On and Off one after another achieving nothing. This is specially true for the buttons I described: the ones related to opening rename endpoint buttons on the VST and External MIDI Instruments sections, the one that looks like a cog, clicking often makes it get stuck on pressed as my screenshot shows and clicking again once doesn’t ‘‘unstuck’’ it, spamming click many times sometimes makes it so the color of the button changes from blue (just got clicked) for a second and then going back to dark (stuck on pressed), 90% of the time not even opening the corresponding window, and even if the window opens, as I also said, even the Okay/Apply button of said window experiences the same issue, it justs brings workflow to a halt and it really makes it unusable as it’s not really a matter of ‘‘clicking once to unstuck it and trying again’’.

Can you say a bit more about the specs of your computer, chizfreak? Are you on Windows or Mac? What resolution is your display? I’m wondering what is making this problem much worse on your computer than it typically seems to be on all of the machines we’ve seen so far.

I have exact the same problem with the Dorico Mixer. Closing and reopening does not solve the problem.
Tech Specs see signature. Display resolution (external) is 1920x1080.

Have a nice evening, Markus

Are you by any chance running Vienna Ensemble Pro, Markus? That seems to be one way to make this happen at will.

Hi Daniel, thanks for your reply.
No, I’m not using Vienna Ensemble Pro. I tested it again with Dorico’s standard playbacktemplate, just in case it had something to do with 3rd party VSTs, but it happens, too.

Sorry for the late reply, been busy the last few weeks. I have a Late 2014 Mac Mini with a CPU Intel i5 2.8 GHz, 8GB RAM, GPU Intel Iris 5100. I have no problem running any other software. For some reason, today the issue is to a lesser degree, as you described: I can now click the buttons again and they work, they don’t stay stuck anymore. From what I’ve seen, holding the click for a few seconds before releasing it works almost 100% of the time whenever it doesn’t work by just clicking it again. I’m surprised the issue is like that now, given that I didn’t do anything new with my computer? One thing I noticed is that the more stress I put on the computer (more programs open at the same time) the issue starts happening more, but I can still just do the workaround (clicking again or holding the click a bit) to continue working thanfully. On a fresh startup, with only Dorico opened and on a small project, the issue seems to not even happen anymore. Maybe this information helps you guys fix the issue for the next update. Dorico 3 is great and all the new features are amazing, thank you for your work!

My impression is that the issue is more likely to occur if Dorico is doing some processing on another thread, which makes the UI marginally less responsive. We’re not yet sure what the reason for this change is, particularly since we’ve been trying to make the styling of the UI more lightweight in order to improve its responsiveness and redraw time.

I had that problem in Write mode, when changing from half to quarter note, using the keyboard. Then I clicked with my mouse on eighth, sixteenth, etc. and they were all lit up. Restarting Dorico fixed it.

I’ve had a number of little problems with Dorico 3 but haven’t found any real pattern of what I’m doing. This is new, D2 was fine. So I’m hoping it’s a little problem easily fixed! Loving D3 in general.