dynamics position with popover

The popovers are amazing! They are fast, efficient and easy to use.
Said that, I admit that I do not understand the position of dynamics in some cases.
If I select the notes in a measure and I apply a piano crescendo hairpin forte (I invoke the dynamics popover with Shift+D and type p<f) I would expect the f of forte to be on the last note of the measure, instead it is on the note of the next measure. And if I do that on the last measure, a new measure is added.
Probably you consider that the dynamic is still ongoing, but probably this is intuitive only when I have an hairpin that does not end with a forte, or similar.

Assuming you’re starting by selecting some notes, the dynamic will always end immediately after the end of the final selected note. It doesn’t matter whether your hairpin lasts for one note or twelve.

This isn’t how some other notation programs work, but it’s entirely consistent.

The only thing that complicates things is if you have an immediate dynamic that ends at a rest. Dorico will automatically move the dynamic so that it’s before a rest, as it’s impractical for a rest to be performed e.g. fff.

Yes, it is consistent, but a bit less intuitive. If I select notes I expect to do things with them and not with the neighbouring note.
My guess is that pianists are puzzled, their hairpins should stop just at the last note and not go further.
But now we know it and will learn to select all the note but the last one.
More string and wind players on the programmers’ team, I guess.

It’s to do with rhythmic position - you don’t have to select notes to input dynamics, you can select most items and Dorico uses their respective rhythmic positions to determine the duration of the input dynamics. When you select e.g. four quavers and input a hairpin, Dorico inputs a hairpin that lasts from the start of the first note until the end of the last note, and the end of the last note aligns with the start of the following note.

There was a fairly long discussion around this here on the forum a while ago, I’m sure someone will be able to dig it out.

It comes up fairly frequently. I think this is probably the thread Lillie’s thinking of.

I think that’s exactly the one I meant, thanks Leo :slight_smile:

Thank you for the very exhaustive reply.
I have checked with the book by Elaine Gould which I think it was mentioned in some Dorico video tutorials and the hairpin position is indeed very well thought, and for when the sign stops with the last note, this can be easily achieved.
Yet for when we use a similar expression p<f over a range of selected note, the last note should be the target of the dynamic f sign, since it a precise punctual description that should be written always under a note and not slightly on the right.
I am sorry I don’t know how to post images here, but in the book (page 104) there is a clever example where a whole note has a similar dynamic range and the author suggest to subdivide the note with tied notes instead of the semibreve so that the f is placed under a note and not placed in the middle of nowhere.