Notesetter,
I guess I didn’t realize that professional musicians have trouble understanding the crossed out example and prefer the more cluttered example. Oh, well, live and learn.
Doug 
Just to be clear, options only become “permanent” ( = saved to your user library) if you explicitly “Save as Default” in the corresponding dialog. Otherwise, the default behaviour is you change the options for the current project, flow, or layout only.
The Library Manager in Dorico 4 makes it a lot easier to transfer settings between projects.
If you haven’t yet worked through our First Steps guide aimed at introducing new users to Dorico, I’d recommend doing so – it covers a lot of ground but in a very supported way, and hopefully demonstrates some of the Dorico philosophy along the way, which you can then apply to other new things you come across because as far as possible, Dorico tries to be consistent.
Let me remind you something you might not know if you started with Dorico 4. The Create new window was totally revamped to make things easier for newbies. For those who began earlier wiyh Dorico 1, 2 or 3, there was no other way than starting a document with inputting a time signature, a key signature (and it’s totally fine by me). Now you have a dedicated window where you can choose those options so that Dorico will input what you need (as per the biased and mostly incorrect video by Tantacrul…)
The documentation has gone from history versions only (and valuable help here) to thousands of pages in what? Three years?
There are First steps guide available to go through most useful parts of the program, many very good videos made by Anthony Hughes or John Barron ftom Steinberg…
I think it’s reasonable to think there’s been some investment on making things easier to newbies. But your feedback shows there’s some more work to do, probably 
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Lillie,
Thanks for reminding me about the First Steps manual. I started with this, but for someone like me there is way to much info for us newbies. But, doing a quick review, I find it may be more useful now that I’ve actually written a couple of simple “flows” (as they are called), so I’ll go back and see what help it can give me. I have found that the manual is also very useful by using the index to find what I need.
Doug
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If you want a shorter and even simpler introductory guide, check out John Barron’s ‘Getting Started’ PDFs – there’s one for note input, and another for making an educational worksheet.
John has also assembled all kinds of resources onto a single page:
Hopefully all of this helps to demonstrate how seriously the team takes supporting new users as they become familiar with Dorico.
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Marc,
I’m glad that there have been a lot of improvements made to the program over the years, none of which I know anything about. I’ve started with Dorico 4 and this is only the 2nd music writing software I have used. I have and still use, once in awhile, Guitar Pro - which has some good features but nothing as powerful as Dorico. Even so, Guitar Pro has some features that I wish Dorico had and it seems to be more intuitive in some areas. But, I am a newbie to this program and a year or two from now most of the frustrations I experience now will be washed away as I learn the ways of Dorico. I’ve made several comments in the “Intuitive” thread if your interested.
Doug
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Doug,
You have been on this forum for more than a month now. And we know from your posts that you don’t think Dorico is “intuitive.” At some point being a “newbie” is not an excuse for not doing the serious legwork to learn the program. You know the program is for you not intuitive; so if you want to use the program, you’ll need to spend some serious time reading manuals, watching videos, and experimenting with the program to gain experience.
The forum is always available for you to ask questions, but those who help you (and who did go through the process of learning the program) would probably rather you spent the time you spend claiming the program is not intuitive on using the resources available to make you more comfortable with the program if you want to use it.
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It’s not a matter of professionals or others, cluttered or not cluttered. It’s more about the “common usage” of musical notation, just as the English language has commonly used rules of syntax.
I recommend a little book to all composers, arrangers, copyists and engravers. At first glance it looks overly simple, but it’s not. It contains dozens and dozens of examples of absolutely bedrock notation “common practice”.
https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Dictionary-Music-Notation-Pocket/dp/0882847309/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2A216LCXW4N77&keywords=essential+music+notation&qid=1661425927&s=books&sprefix=Music+Notation%2Cstripbooks%2C88&sr=1-1
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As the OP of this thread, and a Dorico user, officially I think since version 3, after having used Finale for close to 30 years, I’ll just say that I find Dorico to be about as intuitive as any application can be, given the extraordinary depth of its functionality. True, it did take me some time to learn it, and there are times where I just cannot find the answer to a specific question. But this seems to me a common thing with software since each application has to some extent its own nomenclature. Thus, it can be hard to know exactly what to look for in the manual or in forums. That’s why I am so grateful to the users on this forum, especially those that are moderators and really know Dorico well, for their continued help and rapid response to questions.
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Just to add to @notesetter 's absolutely correct posts above, professional musicians don’t interpret rhythms strictly from left to right the way beginners and amateurs do, but instead process familiar rhythms as larger chunks of information. It allows the pros to read music much faster than the amateurs. If you deliberately violate the accepted standards that the pros are accustomed to reading in order to present the music in a strict left to right manner, it does really slow them down. There are obviously exceptions and rhythms open to debate, but the rules governing the rhythm posted above are pretty clear.
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Notesetter,
Thank you for the recommendation. I’ve ordered the book and I look forward to using it.
Doug
I could imagine the example with the dotted quarters to be common in a Latin setting, since as far as I’m concerned, that rhythm (in that style) actually takes the place of a regular quarter note beat, and as such is (and probably needs to be) instantly recognizable…
Benji