Argggghhh. Dorico is a computer program. It does what you tell it. If you tell it to jump 20 or even 200 bars, that’s what it will do.
I have scores where 20 bars is only a couple of systems on one page. I don’t want some artificial-intelligence nanny telling me that’s too far to jump to the next occurrence of something in a particular voice, when I know perfectly well that is exactly where I want to get to.
If Dorico did stuff like that, I wouldn’t waste five minutes using it. I’d go back to using something that behaves like professionally written software. (And that doesn’t include Sibelius or Finale, by the way).
I agree with you that sometimes what Dorico does is quirky, but I totally disagree with you that it is so disorienting that it is worth endlessly repeating the same basic complaint.
What makes sense when working on individual parts or in page view can be completely different from what makes sense when working on a large score in galley view.
I think it is much worse than “quirky.” I have documented quite a few cases of this erratic behavior, and they clearly involve more than one root cause. If you are arguing that a person can learn to live with it, that’s exactly what I am doing. On balance, Dorico is far better than any of the alternatives. But I don’t think that would be a wise product management choice to accept the “quirky” behavior long term. There are people, after all, who have given the product a look and found it overwhelming. I can’t say what percentage were turned off by the whack-a-mole thing. I suspect many didn’t get that far.
I don’t think it is a great situation to have a product that can be so irritating to use, even if the end results are great. I am hopeful that the team can find ways to smooth out some of these strange behaviors.
If I may, I think the thing we users cannot admit in your last post is that you mix two things: the screen movements (which we all know about now, and that still needs some fixing) and the fact that Lock duration has a very specific behavior (which I find totally predictable and understandable). And I really do not like your idea of changing a tool that works fine, just because another part of the software needs some optimization!
If the Lock Durations situation were the only case, I would be very happy.
Hopefully we can all agree that even if the Lock Durations thing can shoot the music 100 bars to the left (and I don’t agree that is sensible behavior – or certainly would be a case for a user option to limit the jump), hopefully we can all agree it should not also make a vertical movement when we are in Galley View. For me, that vertical shift doubles the disorientation. If I am working on a score with 25 instruments and 400 measures. when the giant leap happens, I have to regain my bearings about which measure I am now on, and ALSO what instrument I am working on.
I think my frustration is amplified by the (presumably unrelated) parallel problem, which is that the arrow key navigation (moving to the next or previous notes in the same instrument) is basically non-functional right now. I know that is under study and I’m not trying to be a whiner. I just mention that these are the kinds of things that make the product really frustrating to use. Having said that, Dorico is still a very big positive on balance, and I trust that the team is on a path to resolve these problems along the way. I find that I have to take “mental health” breaks when it gets too frustrating, but the good news is that even with these breaks, I still get done a lot faster than if I were using Finale.
Here is an example of the screen moving around, completely reproducible.
Please let me know if the video doesn’t work.
In this example, I am trying to unlink 2 slurs. Unbeknownst to me at the time, there is another slur linked further ‘north’ in the score that is out of view. I select the slur in question to unlink it from the second slur. Once the operation is complete, the score moves to show the top slur which is also now unlinked.
Recognizing after the fact what just happened, I can somewhat understand why Dorico made the jump. However, to me I don’t believe Dorico should have ‘jumped,’ as it was very disorienting when it happened. In a case like this, I think a scrolling of the view would have been far less disorienting, as I could see where Dorico was taking me.
I don’t believe to assume that this is exactly the same thing as other users are talking about, but to show a reproducible issue is what I intended to do here.
I agree. It took me about 8 seconds to figure out where the music went, and that was even with you moving the mouse around it to draw my attention. I think this factor is exacerbated by using very large screens. But I want as much music as possible in front of me at all times so that I can see what I am doing in context of the full composition both instrumentally (the vertical plane) and temporally (the horizontal plane.) But the more music your display can accommodate, the more disorienting these big jumps are.
If by “scrolling”, you mean a smooth sliding to the new position rather than an abrupt jump, yes that would greatly reduce the disorientation factor. And if we assume there is actually some good argument in favor of these jumps in all cases, then a “scrolling” solution might be the best way to make everyone happy. Personally I wish it didn’t move at all, even if there is some good reason to move, but I would be perfectly happy with any solution that makes it less disorienting. If I know where I have been hijacked to, then I can quickly get back to where I really want to be without losing my (very limited) concentration.
If a scrolling solution isn’t practical, another approach could be to “backlight” the measures recently edited so that your eyes can quickly find the changed material. That could be a subtle, translucent colored box that dissolves over 30 seconds or something like that.
Looking at the two examples that Craig posted a few days ago…
In the one where pasting a chord symbol caused a jump, I’ve tried to reproduce this for myself and have been unable to. Craig, if this is reproducible on demand, please provide me with the project so I can take a look and see what’s going on.
In the one where using Alt+right to move music caused a jump, likewise I’ve cooked up as similar a situation as I can from the tiny video you made (it would be good to make those videos in a higher resolution so I can actually read the music), and again there is no vertical shift. So there must be something that is specific to the situation that trips Dorico up. Again, if you can reproduce this on demand, please attach the project or send it to me.
For Robby’s example when unlinking a slur, the problem is that Dorico doesn’t “know” which slur was selected before you unlinked them, so it ends up moving the view. We might be able to improve this in a future version, but it’s not simple (in general Dorico doesn’t persist state before and after commands in this way).
I don’t know if this counts as whack-a-mole disease but it certainly is unexpected behaviour. I just loaded a document. The first page of the Full Score was showing and I pressed Cmd-A to select all the music and the display suddenly scrolled to the middle of the document, which is page 152. Why?!
In that case it’s because Dorico is trying to show you the middle of the selection, which if you go from having no selection to having something selected, it does if it thinks the selection is out of view.
I would think the algorithm would be improved if it were:
If any part of the selection is on-screen, then don’t move an inch.
If no part of the selection is in view and it is possible for the entire selection to be within view at the current zoom level, then scroll as necessary to accomplish that, ideally scrolling in a smooth way rather than a giant leap.
Otherwise, if no part of the selection is visible, then scroll forward or backward only enough to bring the CLOSEST part of the selection into view (again with a smooth scroll being ideal.)
I am only posting this video, as I am under the impression that the development team is looking for examples of how the view moves around unexpectedly. If this is no longer needed, please ignore it.
Here is another video of some jumping around. While it is not near as disorienting, it does move, when I expect it not to.
No, Robby, this isn’t at all the same kind of thing, is it? The view doesn’t move. I feel reasonably sure that other posters to this thread would find it annoying if Dorico did move the score in this situation. You see how we can’t possibly win, of course…
To me at the moment, it felt like it moved. The bar was in the middle of the viewing area, and after adding the time signature, it is now at the bottom of the viewing area. Maybe it’s not a move necessarily. But I do see a few things from time to time that could cause some users (not necessarily myself) some disorientation.
Robby
Edit: After watching the video again, you are correct Daniel, the score didn’t move at all. The staff spacing changed, making it look like it moved. I think in between me looking down and then back up, it seemed to move when it might not have.
What should I use to record my screen? Win10.
The Whack-A-Mole disease follows me since my first use of Dorico last year. Happens quite often and I really hope to get rid of that behaviour soon as it’s very irritating…
I’ll puy my screen on REC and make a montage if I can find the right soft to record.