Dorico 4.3 crashes a lot after change to userlibrary.xml

MacBook Pro, running 10.14 just fine, Dorico 4.3.11 (latest update), NotePerformer 3.3.2 (also latest). Never any problems before, Dorico always ran like a champ and hardly ever crashed (just an aside, I love this program).

Last month I began a project in which I wanted to make a narrator “player” which would have zero staff lines but behave like a normal player in terms of spacing and all that in score, and have a part. My success or lack thereof with the project I won’t go into here. I found the following forum post which actually worked, involving altering one bit of the userlibrary.xml file (in the Dorico 4 folder in my case rather than the one described here) …

I followed the directions slowly and carefully, I used TextEdit to make the alteration. It worked, I made a narrator ‘player’ and it spaces and all that. However, I began to experience pretty regular crashes. I’m a habitual saver so I never lost anything. In fact, as a hangover from my sometimes horrifying Finale days, I still will go to the Finder while while working on a Dorico project and highlight the project file and right click to make a duplicate. Just highlighting the file in the Finder now crashes Dorico. Sometimes I’m working in Dorico and will make an alteration in the Engraver save and then go to Write; or I’ll add an item in Write; I can just save the document; I can slide the view in one direction; I can make a change to a Paragraph Style. These actions sometimes (and increasingly often) crash the program. None of the above ever happened before. They happened occasionally at first and then now very, VERY often.

Here’s the thing. Before I changed the userlibrary.xml I made a copy of it by duplicating it. When this was happening enough that I knew it had to be due to my alteration, I put the xml file back. That was weeks ago now and yet it STILL happens, that’s what I don’t understand. It happens working on previously created projects, new ones, anything. Maybe I fowled something up. I’m attaching the xml file, in case someone can tell if there’s something wrong with it. I just haven’t the savvy to read these things. Dorico is crashing so often now, I have deadlines, I want my lovely Dorico back!
userlibrary.xml (14.5 KB)

Thank you!

Can you do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the resulting zip file here, so I can get a look at the crash logs?

Thank you!
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (769.6 KB)

It looks like Dorico is crashing when attempting to open a project from iCloud Drive – is that right? If so, what happens if you move your project out of iCloud Drive to another location on your Mac?

Wow, this is news to me, I keep all my projects in the same local folder on my computer. In fact I never set up iCloud and don’t use it at all, at least I’m not aware of using it (maybe happening without me intending??). I’m truly mystified, and a not a little upset with Apple for this and whatever other behind the scenes non-permitted hoodwinkery is afoot.

OK, very interesting. Certainly the crashes are somehow related to an error being thrown by iCloud. I will send you an updated build for you to try out that we think should address this problem. Look out for a private message from me in due course.