so I just used Dorico to write some exercises for my students during the summer recess.
Most of the Text is in Hebrew though with some in English.
I got a few problems. Worst is printing to PDF, the whole score goes mad, letters pop up everywhere, not only in reverse order but in weird locations as well throughout the screen… which renders my entire hard work useless. In the “Print” page overview everything seems to be alright though.
Also I am having extreme trouble in Engrave Mode both selecting multiple text boxes using a drag-box mouse technique and moving them all at the same time (I use those to write text in Hebrew, and chords using latin letters - IDK if there’s a better way to assign chords other than text boxes).
There’s also no apparent way to set spacing between text rows (such as in word - like 1.0, 1.5, double, etc) so to get a wider gap I need multiple text boxes for each line which makes it tedious for me. correct me if I’m wrong and I haven’t found this option. I also wish for text boxes and other elemnts to indicate and snap to auto alignment. If you look at Wix.com (site building), Canva.com or Cycling 74’s Max-MSP software they do just that and it’s a life saver. Everything looks so neat and can be easily placed in line, and in the exact middle.
Since I have 3 langs installed , 2 RTL and English no buttons (shortcuts,etc.) work unless I’m switched to English which also makes it annoying because I need to switch between said languages in order to write text, and back again twice just to input various Dorico notes/commands.
But all this hard fought battle means nothing if I cannot print my final result lol…
Thanks for the advice!! and have a great week
When you write in Hebrew or other non-Roman scripts, make sure that you are explicitly choosing appropriate fonts rather than simply allowing the program to find the appropriate characters in a substitute font. Dorico does not specifically support right-to-left languages like Hebrew, though it does support Unicode, so in theory if you input the text in the appropriate fashion, it will appear correctly both on screen and when printed, or when exported to PDF. Do make suree you’re explicitly choosing the font for your Hebrew text, however, to ensure a consistent result between what you see on screen and what ends up on paper on in the exported PDF.
FWIW, I’ve successfully used Hebrew text in Dorico projects (on Mac). As Daniel said, Dorico supports Unicode. Your Hebrew and maybe other RTL fonts must be Unicode-compliant. Having assisted in creating a couple OpenType Hebrew fonts for use in synagogal music I have seen that Dorico (or more precisely, the Qt framework Dorico is built with), supports most common OTF features needed for Hebrew. Apart from a few minor issues, probably caused by my imperfect knowledge of font technology, things worked remarkably well.
Chummy, if you attach a (trimmed-down version of) your project, preferably with the fonts you used, we might have a look.
which makes it tedious for me. correct me if I’m wrong and I haven’t found this option. I also wish for text boxes and other elemnts to indicate and snap to auto alignment. If you look at Wix.com (site building), Canva.com or Cycling 74’s Max-MSP software they do just that and it’s a life saver. Everything looks so neat and can be easily placed in line, and in the exact middle.