Editing symbol for tenuto

[pianoleo]

I’m not sure I’ve ever given it much thought. It’s an editor that could certainly use some love (e.g. either you should be able to scale X and Y independently or it should be a single property), but it’s an area of the software that’s hopefully only used by relatively expert users, and it’s well documented.

Granted, now that there are more SMuFL fonts knocking around more people are more likely to go in and tweak things that don’t work for them, but that’s only happened in the last couple of years (since Finale embraced SMuFL, perhaps?) and I don’t think this dialog has had an overhaul that recently.

I’m not sure that your suggestion, of two separate sections - one for the currently selected object and another for new objects - would be any less confusing, though.

When editing objects on the page, the note value and articulation of a selected note are shown in the left panel and, if you select a non-note object, relevant stuff is highlighted in the right panel. With that in mind, maybe a more consistent approach would be to make it possible for nothing to be selected in the centre of the Edit Music Symbol dialog. That way, when an existing glyph/text object/image was selected, the right side could show the existing attributes of the object, and to replace it - similar to replacing a double barline on the score with a start repeat barline from the right panel - and when nothing is selected in the centre, additional glyphs/text objects/images can be added from the right panel (like clicking and dropping from the Write mode panels).

I have no idea what this would entail, who would do it, what they’re tied up with for the next six months, and I’m sure they could come up with something better given time and priority.

[FredGUnn]

@Andro

But do you really think this is a good user interface design? It’s confused me heavily, and to be honest I think it is plain weird. I don’t recall using any other program that shows this sort of behaviour. I’d expect the properties of the glyph I am editing to show in the properties panel, not the default for accidentals. Maybe this is my conceptual error to regard the right hand side as a properties pane. But I strongly maintain this is weird.
…
I think you can rationalise it away, but it’s a sub-optimal experience, to put it mildly.

+1 to all of this. In all the DTP programs I use, if you select a glyph, the program tells you what font and size the glyph is. Here’s InDesign in a situation where I’m mixing text and a tenuto. I highlight the tenuto and InDesign tells me what it is. Illustrator works simlarly.

Finale’s Symbol Selection dialog is … not great, but you can at least select any glyph and see what font it is. (Size adjustment on previous / next window.) For elements that use the Expression Designer, like Dynamics, Tempo Marks, Rehearsal Marks, etc, you can select any glyph in the window and immediately see what font and size it is.

Dorico seems to be a bit of an outlier here, and it’s not helpful to the user. Even if it had a search function, you can’t even use Library Manager to find out what font a tenuto glyph is.

I think the only way to find out what font an glyph once the user has edited it, is to hit the Save as Default star, then manually search for that glyph in your userlibrary.xml file for the GlyphPrimitiveEntityDefinition that will tell you the Font Style. Not very helpful nor user friendly.

The Edit Music Symbol window also doesn’t logically anticipate what the user wants. Clearly this code is reused in lots of places in the program (Edit Playing Technique, Edit Chord Symbol Component, etc.) but it really should be “smarter” and adapt to what the user most likely wants to do. If I’m under Edit Music Symbols / Articulations, it’s not likely I’m going to want to add a glyph from the Standard Accidentals range, or want to add Bar Repeat Count text, yet that’s what Dorico shows me. Defaulting to the Articulation range and Default Music Font would be much more helpful. Same with all the other categories. You want to modify your Dynamic glyphs? Ok, here’s a set of Accidentals and some Bar Repeat Count text for you to work with, LOL!

I’ve already griped at length about all the issues with this editing window and chord symbols here, but nothing has changed since that post, so all those criticisms still stand too.

@pianoleo

(e.g. either you should be able to scale X and Y independently or it should be a single property)

Agreed. It could simply be a single “scale factor” property, or if there are plans to be able to adjust X and Y independently in the future, there could be lock/unlock icons to show this is currently locked and the other variable could autofill with any edit to the other, like Adobe’s below:

[John_Ruggero]

I had the all same problems understanding what was going on in the music symbol editor at first and using it. And even after having it used many times, find it exceptionally unfriendly and laborious to use.