I just updated to Dorico 6.2 - it seems the update has changed dynamic entry slightly - so that now you must press enter to confirm any dynamic entry after pressing ctrl D and typing them in… It might seem like a small deal, but as someone that enters dynamics for a living (literally) - it means I have to either take my hand off my mouse and press enter, or move left hand most of the way across my keyboard. Whereas before I could just click out of the input box when I was done entering dynamics and it would automatically apply.
This change doesn’t seem to bring any benefit to anything - only adding another step in what should be a very speedy dynamic entry process, as it has to be repeated so often.! Hope it can be reverted.
I never noticed that you could previous dismiss (some) popovers just by clicking outside of the popover. This seems to have been undocumented behavior – it’s not mentioned in the manual, and I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned on the forum – and IMO unexpected. I’m not sure you can expect Dorico to maintain undocumented behaviors.
We can’t expect them to keep undocumented behaviors, but they can sure as hell expect their users to complain when they make new (anti-efficiency) behaviors.
And don’t forget - everything that goes into designing a powerful tool such as Dorico does not make it into the manual. There are many workflow designs and clever little quirks that make Dorico what it is. I assume/d this is one of those. There are plenty of software examples that use untargeted dismissal as a core user interface element.
Personally, I would expect untargeted dismissal to work the same as hitting Escape, closing the popover without taking any action. I would have been very surprised if I had clicked outside the popover and found that it actually did something.
There have been some changes to the way that popovers work, mostly to do with fixing bugs (from the Version History notes).
Surely if you’re typing “mf” or “cresc” anyway, then your hands are on the keyboard and pressing Enter is no great hardship?
However, it now seems that you have to press Enter twice when selecting from a list, e.g. in the Playing Techniques or Tempo popovers, and I’d agree that this doesn’t improve efficiency.
It’s not as much a hardship as it is just an extra step… repetitive tasks must be very carefully tweaked as they are so embedded amongst the community. The steps involved should be kept to an absolute minimum as efficiency is king. That half a second extra every time adds up… In addition, for the power users among us, this is a REALLY annoying habit to now unlearn. I am constantly inputting dynamics, to discover they aren’t sticking >.<
And yes - the double enter is also a pain… seems like the devs are a bit drunk on enter if you ask me
Nope - there are many different dynamics and combinations that land you in different parts of the keyboard. For example Forte would be Ctrl + D, F. That keeps the L hand entirely on the left side of the keyboard. To then have to move the entire hand and arm just to confirm the dynamic is absolutely mad in my opinion.
And there is no mouse moving involved whatsoever. In fact, I can actually click onto my next task straight away - so the next action I do is already beginning. Whereas pressing enter does nothing to help my next action.
Interesting! I guess I always have hit Enter after entering dynamics so I didn’t even notice the change. You can still input Shift+X text by clicking outside though, so that behavior still exists with some popovers. (I usually just click outside for that as Enter obviously doesn’t work, Cmd+Enter seems like too many keys, and Esc to me feels like you want to leave without accepting the input.)
Agreed! For me the most valuable element is being able to just crack on with something else straight away after typing in dynamics. Much like the text function. I guess they need to choose a system and stick with it. I feel for anyone writing lots of text and dynamics interchangeably
If you like speed, you could setup shortcut macros in an external macro program; one keypress instead of many. And also if you didn’t know about it, you can add a dynamic marking to several staves at the same time even if they’re not at the same rhythmic position.
That’s actually a good point. I also don’t really understand why everyone says the new behavior is to be expecteded; I’m also quiet used to the “Excel” model of clicking outside to confirm.
A power user, among other things, is precisely a person who considers those extra seconds as precious because they know they’ll be doing repeated actions maybe tens of thousands of times.
