Dorico needs a terminal CLI.

Dorico
1

Dorico needs a terminal CLI. For example: I prefer to do my music engraving on computer A while compiling the track stems (currently WAV files but I prefer the availability of FLAC in the future, saving bunch of spaces and compilation time) on computer B (so I can do other setups during the long compilation time).

Currently, I have to do all these things by using GUI operations, including those operations done through Apple Remote desktop. This wastes a hell lot of time and is really inefficient if compiling stems for lengthy large orchestral ensembles. The most efficient way is to provide a similar experience like Linux / Unix / macOS devs do: Allowing user to auto-compile track stems through terminal (including Windows Terminal, the WSL) commands. In such case, user can use SSH to do the command on computer A to compile on computer B… plus the auto conversion** of wav files to FLAC + auto-moving them to a folder shared in local intranet.

** the auto conversion is done by user-written bash / zsh / fish script, utilizing FFMPEG.

If doing this CLI, users may use options to set the output audio bit depth and sample rate to the stem files written.

2

Thanks for your suggestion. We have no plans for anything like this.

3

Got it. Then please make Dorico UI responds faster and smoother, reducing such needs described above.

4

Also, talking about FLAC.
Dorico can only export WAV as loseless format at this moment.
For a full orchestra in 3-4 minute, the total size of all outputed stems can be 600MB-1000MB in WAV (24bit 48kHz).
If using FLAC, then the size can be reduced within 150MB in most cases (plus time saved from writing zeroes for blank measures and rests, saving SSD lifetime).

I guess Arne Wallander had already talked about this to you folks. Could you people please bring FLAC support to Dorico 4?

5

Modern SSDs are built to handle a minimum of 150 terabytes written (TBW), which equates to a 40 GB daily read/write workload over a ten-year period. Larger drives will handle as much as 600 TBW.

You’re not going to run out of Writes before you change your hardware for other reasons.

6

Still, having lack of FLAC support wastes pretty much time compiling all stem tracks for lengthy large orchestra.
Please do consider those time wasted since SSD cache gets exhausted.

7

We will certainly consider adding support for FLAC export in a future version.

8

Thanks for addressing this, comrade.

9

FLAC support would be nice, and trivial to add.

With the CLI, there’s already LUA scripting (I don’t know how deep the API is), simply adding a passthrough for that on the command line arguments should suffice. E.g. dorico.exe -exec myscript.lua, with an equivalent mac version. Common approach with similar applications, also easy to add (I’ve done it myself lots of times) and should give you everything you need, depending on the lua API of course.