Dorico 4 manuals published (English & translations)

Hello and good day,

Dorico 4 manuals have been published today to accompany my colleagues’ impressive new release. Whilst fairly substantial, and certainly pretty good for a first-day for us, they’re not complete yet and so referring to the Version History is still necessary (and frankly, who wouldn’t want to read Daniel’s Version History under any circumstances??). For example, the Key editor is not yet included in the manual.


Edit, 18 January 2023


You can find Dorico 4 documentation using the following links:

I would recommend using the New features page at the start of the relevant manual for you ( Pro | Elements | SE ) to access the new additions to the manual most easily. That will also easily let you know whether a new feature is in the manual yet, or whether that one needs the Version History.

And finally, a little word from me about what else is in this updated manual: in addition to the new features, there’s been all sorts of work to improve what was already in the manual, including making sure every task that requires a panel like the Properties panel gives you an appropriate heads-up about how to have that in view (especially important for the Properties panel, given that it now shares the lower zone with fantastic new panels).

Likewise, additional notes, keywords, related links etc have gone in over the last year – if you’ve asked a question here or in the Facebook group at some point, chances are wording relating to how you phrased your question will have gone into the manual, and if not in the body of the text, as keywords that should improve your search results.

A couple of my own highlights, which I hope are useful to you as well –

  • Margins topic – new to the manual, if not the app; a page that brings together the key margins that affect the available space on pages, and hopefully clarifies a bit better how flow heading margins and music frame margins work and interact
  • Labelled images clarifying where font/paragraph styles are used for chord symbols and staff labels
  • Labelled examples of page templates, clarifying what information (tokens) appear on Dorico’s default First and Default page templates
  • A new one-stop-shop for “things that look like text or can display as text sometimes but aren’t strictly text in Dorico because they have their own notation category” (I know, I know, it’s not quite a visual index), plus a firmer explanation of text items in their own right
  • Updated overview of the user interface
  • Consolidated tasks for moving things rhythmically, moving things graphically, and lengthening/shortening things that outline all the available key commands, not just “a bit” and “a lot”

I hope you all have a great day exploring what’s new in Dorico 4!

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Impressive work, Lillie!
Thanks.

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Will there ever be a printed version of the manual available? Printing it doesn’t seem to me to be an option …

Ideally it would be a book with bible paper. My Piper edition of “The Brothers Karamazov” has 1303 pages, but weighs only 586 grams - suitable as bedtime reading. But that manual would definitely not be cheap, and you would hardly have it in your hands, when Lillie announces a new version :roll_eyes:

No, we won’t be producing printed versions of the Dorico Operation Manual ourselves. Steinberg decided some years ago to stop printing paper manuals and I don’t see that decision being reversed.

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Will we have a online help like in previous versions ?

It is here. Not 100% finished as of now.

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ok :wink:

You can print it yourself, as long as you promise to plant three trees to take its place. :laughing:

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A post was split to a new topic: ‘Automation and CC’ section resets to velocity

Thank you Lillie! I don’t have a count of the number of “save the day” moments I’ve experienced from using the manual. I don’t often mention them, probably because they show off my ignorance. :slight_smile: But I wanted to take a moment to recognize its importance to me and show appreciation for what I’m sure were some long hours.

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Could this topic be pinned, please?

You can bookmark every post you want.

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Thank you, Gregory. I really do appreciate hearing that very much.

(Also, to my mind at least there should be no stigma attached to learning something new: it’s a joyous thing, and after all, we all have to learn something for the first time, some time. I was looking at Dorico with someone today in fact, and that ended up being the first time they heard about the Shift-Alt/Opt-[ and -] commands for cycling through layouts. Made their day, it seemed!)

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Yes I can pop a pin in it – it didn’t seem appropriate for it to appear above the announcement of Dorico 4 on launch day!

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Thank you @Lillie_Harris for your tireless work on updating the manual with all of these new features, as well as changing many, many things as things get updated and moved and re-labeled, etc. It is always so important to have a great reference for such a deep product!

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Glad to hear you think so, @hammerman – there seem to be no ends to its depths, that’s for sure!

Thanks Lillie, I’m still taking in the enormity of the Dorico 4 release and this will help a lot.

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Thank you so much - this book is a real labour of love!
Kevin

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