Does anyone know if it’s possible to defeat the popup’s “intelligence” when doing certain things like inputting dynamics? Case in point:
I don’t want it translating my directions to any other languages, frankly… I can do that myself! 
Let me check the manual . . . oh wait… 
The way I have done this is to enter the “f” as dynamic and then go into properties and add “very marked” as a suffix. You can set arbitrary prefixes and suffixes in the properties panel at the bottom for dynamics. I have not found a (easy) way to change pop overs or edit the dictionary.
I agree, I think the dynamics popover is a little too liberal about re-interpreting what I input. If I input something like “p ma molto cantabile,” Dorico turns that into “molto p ma cantabile.”
I wish Dorico were somewhat more literal with turning what I type into the popover into the actual dynamic marking.
I use the dynamics popover like Traubitz : only simple dynamics in the popover and then I add whatever I need in the prefix and suffix fields, in the properties panel… until D’s team have time to make this behave more accordingly to my needs
Yes, that seems to be the workaround… and I’m also looking forward to when this doesn’t need to be worked around!
It is possible. The algorithm will recognize word boundaries only when there’s a normal space character. Several words separated by a no-break space will be treated as a single word, and thus not be recognized. (I’m guessing wildly here…)
So, in your example, ‘f very_marked’ (_ being a no-break space) will give you what you want.
I haven’t got a mac, but I think you can enter a no-break space with option-space on iOS.
On Windows it’s a little trickier. You can use this autohotkey script to get a no-break space by typing shift-space (copy and paste the code, there’s an invisible no-break space after Send,):
+Space::
Send,
Return
If you’re not familiar with autohotkey, you can use the attached compiled script. Execute the file and shift-space will happily be a no break space ever after (provided you don’t reboot or shut down the script).
nobreakspace.ahk.exe.zip (512 KB)
On mac, the non breakable space in Dorico is done with Shift+alt+space
On Windows you can type the ASCII Code for a non-breaking space directly into the popover: ALT + 0160
It’s the same on Windows, but here it works only in the lyrics pop-over. Does it work in the dynamics pop-over on mac?
Sure. It’s a bit awkward though. Autohotkey makes it so much faster! 
Well, that worked! Thanks for this, guys.
However, I would still classify this as a workaround, and would be much happier if I could just typing in what I want, without feat of translation services kicking in!