I read a number of posts in the past regarding this issue (going back to 2018) but it seems to still be an issue effecting the latest 5.1.70 as well. Coming from Sibelius/Finale for many years, switching back and forth between write and engrave mode can be a pain at times. However, making it worse is the fact that often when switching modes, the document can jump to other pages, most often back to page 1 again. This seems to primarily happen when switching from write to engrave mode and not so much the other way around. The only way I’ve found so far to prevent this is if you make sure to select something on the page first and then switch (if you can remember to do that beforehand each time). Page display, percentage sizes, etc. do not seem to have an effect on the issue. Coming from the other apps, it makes sense to have certain formatting separate (such as staff spacing) to help prevent grabbing/moving the wrong items on screen. But I’m not sure why you can’t select and move items such as dynamics, text etc., regardless of the mode your in. When working on large scores quickly, it sometimes makes sense to be able to just enter/modify everything at once rather than entering all the music first, then having to go back and edit/modify all the individual elements on the page. There’s often not enough time for that.
The fundamental difference between Write and Engrave mode is this: Write mode works semantically, Engrave mode works graphically.
You can very well move things in Write mode: their movement is based on the rhythmic grid, as you so define where the item should take effect precisely
In Engrave mode you can then adjust graphically the position of the item/s without changing its intrinsic/semanthical position (where does it take effect)
Here the manual:
If you are in page view in both Write and Engrave modes, in general you should find that Dorico keeps the same music in view when you switch modes. If you find that Dorico moves to a different page, it could be that you are using one of the “fit…” zoom levels (e.g. fit page width, fit two pages, etc.). This can cause Dorico to lose track of which page should be in view when you switch mode, due to the fact that the music area will have different dimensions in each mode. Use a similar non-“fit…” zoom level and you shouldn’t encounter this problem.
Yes I am in page view for both. Generally after most of the music has been entered in in write mode. Switching from Galley to Page view seems to maintain its position. Page view does not, especially as mentioned when switching from write to engrave mode. I’ve read and tried all different zoom levels and percentages. It doesn’t really seem to matter much what setting is used. In fact, if I zoom in or out of the score in write mode and then switch to engrave mode, it pretty much always jumps to to the 1st page of the score. This is under Windows 11. Unfortunately, the advise does not seem to work on my computer regarding zoom levels. The only way to keep the same position in the score when switching is to pre-select something on screen first and then switch while still selected. Actually, I just tried Dorico on my Macbook Pro and it seems to work just fine, no jumping around when switching modes. So it appears to be primarily a Windows issue. Unfortunately, the PC workstation is what I use for all audio and music apps these days.
There’s really no difference why Windows and macOS should behave differently in this regard, and indeed the program behaves as I expect on my two systems here. Can you make a screen recording on your Windows machine so I can see exactly what you’re doing, and what’s happening?
Unfortunately the app is acting differently on my 2 systems. See the attached videos taken on the PC at 2 different zoom levels. Jumps back to measure 1 every time.
Is there any particular reason why you’ve captured just a region of your screen? It would be helpful to see the whole screen, in particular so I can see how your Dorico project window is sized relative to your overall desktop size, and so I can see what zoom level you are using in each case. Are you certain that you’re not using one of the Fit… zoom levels?
Yes, the reason why I didn;t capture the whole screen is because I’m using (4) high-def ultrawide screens, and even the shortest screen capture I could take of the whole screen was maxing out the maximum file size allowed to post on the forum. So I had to reduce the window to keep the file size down to a minimum. I also made sure that neither zoom level was set to Fit to screen since I read previous posts on this forum regarding the same issue. I also tried multiple zoom levels on my Macbook Pro but was not able to reproduce the issue up till this point.
Are you still able to reproduce the issue if the whole project window is smaller? If so, please take a screen capture of the whole window at the smallest size at which you can still reproduce the problem.
Yes, the (2) video captures I posted both had the project window reduced in size. I can reproduce the issue at any size. I usually use the app in full screen. I reduced the project window size just to get a video that was small enough to post to the forum.
After further testing this morning, I think I’ve gotten closer to the possible cause of these issues. I copied one of my orchestral templates to my Macbook and tried it only to find that it is now doing the same thing on the Mac as it was on the PC (jumping to other pages). However, some of the stock templates did not seem to do this (at least not very often). The issue appears to have something to do with having multiple tabs and/or layouts, especially if you have more than one layout of your full score. I tend to setup layouts for sketches, orchestration, and final conductor scores depending on what stage I’m working on. Each one references the same flow, just showing different staves. Also some are set to page view while others may be set to galley view. I had a few different layouts of the full score set to different tabs to switch back and forth if needed. However, it even tends to jump to the first page when you’re not switching between tabs, but just have the tabs displayed at the top of the window. After deleting all the tabs and then displaying just one layout at a time, it seems to be staying in place (at least for now) when switching between write/engrave modes. I’m not sure this has anything to do with the zoom levels. However, if you switch to a different layout of the score and then back, it jumps to the first page again as well. But generally when the layouts are all referencing the same flow. So the app seems to be getting confused when there’s multiple layouts of the score that you’re working on. I will continue to monitor this to see if anything changes or not over the next few days.
Hum… could you explain this further and show the difference between these two approaches ?
Indeed, this is what may confuse new Finale refugees, because a score is considered first and foremost as a graphic representation of sound.
When I am writing in Dorico, I never have the impression that I’m bringing out the meaning of the sign I’m using, which is something that only linguistics and language can claim. The word « sémantique » has a very specific meaning in French, and we probably don’t understand each other.
Notes, pitches, durations, articulations, dynamics… and anything that might affect playback is handled in Write Mode.
Engrave mode allows you (graphically) to move those notations around the page, without affecting how they might playback.
Yes, sorry @kmm. I put my reply into the Hide details arrow…
OT response to @ObiwanKenobi
Hi @ObiwanKenobi, I made a short video to further explicate this with an example. I hope what I explain is understandable (the movements that I show with the mouse can be also made using the move shortcuts, of course: Shift+ Option(Alt)+arrow keys).
The most important thing to look at are the red dotted lines that connect the beginning and the end of the item to the rhythmical position where it will be semantically applied, even if graphically moved in another position
(and sorry for the last wrong note in my video…, just noticed 
):
CleanShot 2024-11-26 at 23.44.38-converted · CleanShot Cloud
Add-on: in my video it may not totally clear why you may need to move things by their rhythmical position (in Write mode) versus move thing only graphically, even if it is self-explanatory for many things (in Write mode you establish when exactly things happens, and in engrave mode you can fine adjust the graphical position for collision avoidance for example).
That said, all the different global options that Dorico offers, make possible to customise automatically the position or properties of items, without changing their semantical meaning, so you can easily change settings globally and every items will adopt those changes. This makes the look of the score very consistent and elegant. And just in case you need to fine tuning a single item changing its graphical position/properties (as an override to the global settings), you can make this in Engrave mode (but normally the needed changes here are really tiny, if you have good global customises settings).
For further reference (and much better explanation!) see this video/s:
https://youtu.be/-BYsKNIhP9A?si=f4PcVvFK1gcbeiGA
and
https://youtu.be/XQS-MWoO430?si=Qp7R0PyCRRB2x9vp
also this video, with some general concepts:
https://youtu.be/sY_LdqdR1_I?si=9z0EDpJHBK91QyBi
I think this discussion is getting off the topic a bit. The main purpose of this post was the issue regarding the score jumping back to the first page when switching between Write and Engrave modes.
Thanks. I was just trying to get this issue straightened out first before moving on to other discussions.
To be clear, are you saying that you have multiple tabs open for the same layout, or that you have multiple full score layouts in your project, and you have one tab open for each of those layouts?
I had tabs open for different layouts of the full score. They are separate layouts but all reference the same flow (such as one for conductors score, another for sketching and orchestration, etc.) I’m not sure what the benefit would be of having multiple tabs open for the same layout.
There isn’t one, but Dorico makes it possible, and customers do many and varied things with Dorico, some of which derive no benefit for them. So thank you for entertaining my question.
Ok, so is having different layouts of the same score, or having them in different tabs causing the issue of the score jumping to other locations when changing modes?