Are the factory defaults in Dorico 5 set to the Elaine Gould recommendations?
I think Gould was a major reference point for Dorico.
No. Dorico is not Gould. But it has been stated that the team consults Gould for recommendations in many areas. Gould is only a book, not an ISO standard.
And Gould is not always right or good!
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Thanks. I know. Just looking for a reference point.
Could you give an example?
Itās not the only source used, but as one of the very few comprehensive surveys of notation style and practice, it has certainly been well consulted.
I vaguely remember some version of Dorico being released with a new āGouldā style for some type of notation 
And of course, the business of having a clef in-between repeat barlines is something Gould advises, but which is not universally admired.
Standards are of course just ātraditional practiceā; and there is something of a vicious circle in which people find the music that they are familiar with to be the most legible. (Thereās a generation growing up with CPDL 
)
There was a draft BSI British Standard for the presentation of music scores and parts (BS 4754 : 1982); but it was only 20 pages long, and never fully āratifiedā, or whatever the process is.
I would welcome an ISO for music notation; but imagine trying to get everyone to agree on every aspectā¦!!!
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Gouldās book covers a lot, but if you consult it frequently, you will always find cases that are not covered. I canāt imagine an ISO for music notation that covers everything. It would also have to be constantly expanded for new notation styles.
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Many Johannes (imho)!
I wrote to Elaine the list. Some has been acceptedā¦
And yes, freedom is a plus! 
Personally I think one of the charms of music typesetting is that there are NO strict rules (besides the basic ones), and NO music-typesetting-police!
There is a vast collection of printed (or hand-written or copper-engraved or ā¦) music available through the centuries which can serve as guideline or repository of styles (good and bad). Besides you have your eyes, and your musical skills, and (hopefully) āle bon goĆ»tā. Together with guidelines (like Gould) you then have the freedom to create your own edition and offcourse the other musicians have then the freedom to prefer another edition 
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Mmm.
Charming. Where are the police when you need them?
You could say the same about graphic design, or typography, but I suspect that anyone who has actually studied it would disagree.
And what is āgood tasteā, if not some sense of commonly, or universally, agreed customs and practices?
There is a very good music Notation and Engraving forum, where the reasons (such as there may be) behind many of the styles are explored and explained, e.g. ādoing it like this draws the eye towardsā¦ā
In all the arts, the great masters are those who have learnt and understood the rules before they choose to break them. But thatās not an excuse for sloppy work! 
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(I was expecting something much worse. Itās quite ugly, but legible at least.)
I wonder whether the ārniā and āmā in the T+B parts, bar 5 were scanning errors or what.
There are certainly worse things there ā this happens to be something I was made to sing from on Sunday; but no one could argue that is purely a subjective style choice, of equal merit with something from Henle Verlag.
Thereās a reason that ādonāt crash different elements togetherā is a rule.
Oh, my condolences. Now that we get music in advance electronically for gigs, when thereās a bad enough score I just defiantly recopy my part for myself on one page!
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Oops that is an example of real bad taste Ć nd bad in guiding the eye, but there are many examples which are more terrible!
But luckily no one is forcing you to use it, that is wat I meant, offcourse there are ārulesā or guidelines which you can follow (and have to follow if you want good readable music), but not as in traffic where you will get a fine (or worse) if you donāt follow them.
Elaine Gould her book is, just as someone said, a ā¦ book, and there are more books, and there are lots of examples, I think especially in old and modern notation (but do not pin me down on that) which do not follow them.
As you say it is mainly a question of agreed customs, clarity, guiding the eye Ć nd practical things like page-turning points (if you need hands and feet together), and yes there are these guidelines for all those things.
The ābon goĆ»tā can be a can of worms, but imho it is a collection of experience, learned things, understanding reasons why, and (yes) good taste whatever that may be.
In writing music by hand, one can do as one likes, which can be beautiful or terrible, in computer setting the legibility is in general a bit better, but still you can f**k it up (see the endless examples, like yours but also in the online Musescore library), Dorico in general does a very good job, but very often I have to correct manually things which do not look good without that intervention.
The many āchordsā in the Bach toccataās for instance, written out with different voices for each note need horizontal spacing), or you can write them as a chord in one voice (BG does this). But who decides what is ārightā or āwrongā?
Both these examples are correct, but as a musician I feel that they have a different feeling to them:
or
(and sorry to hear you have to sing from that!)
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Itās a great book, and one of the most thorough and comprehensive for conventional Western notation, but it did originally grow out of the Faber house style guide. There are many prescriptions presented as rules that I would consider house style decisions, some of which I (and many other publishers/authors) donāt necessarily agree with.
If an up-and-coming engraver can only afford to purchase one book, I guess Gould is the one to get, but I would soon supplement with Kurt Stoneās Music Notation in the Twentieth Century, Gardner Readās Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice, and Ted Rossās The Art of Music Engraving & Processing (available digitally here) for a wider perspective. Also keep in mind thereās not a chord symbol in Gouldās entire book, and she gives basically no guidance on jazz, commercial, or musical theater work, so is obviously incomplete for anyone who works in those genres.
Hereās one that annoyed me until recently as Dorico took Gouldās advice until D5. Gould pg 559:
With an instrument change involving transposing instruments, the key change should always occur at the point of entrance, not the to indication. Placing it at conspicuously at the entrance is another clue to the player that something is different, in case they were reading ahead and missed the instrument change notification. It also contradicts Gouldās own advice where she discusses clefs on pg 9: āThis placing alerts the performer to the change at the relevant point (i.e. at the entry), and not further back before a group of rests, where it may be overlooked.ā Iām not sure why she thinks clefs belong conspicuously at the entry and not key sigs, but I think her instrument change example on pg 559 is simply wrong.
(Itās probably in the realm of a house style issue, but underlining is for typewriters and hyperlinks, not professional publications, so I would consider her use of underlines wrong, or at best outdated, here too.)
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Haydn to Leopold Mozart: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute; he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.ā
āGood tasteā, a special power.
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And one would think Gould would stay away from Word-like
(MS Word)
and do it properly;
(LaTeX, in which, of course, you can set the exact distance value for the underline)
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I was joking about an ISO standard.
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I never liked Gouldās recommendations for coda sections, and I much prefer Doricoās defaults.
I donāt think Iāve ever seen hers in the wild, and indeed, Dorico calls the presets āStandardā and āGouldā.
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This is most definitely something that should be on the front burner at Dorico, because itās so far from āstandardā (to the point of never having been seen OTHER than in Gouldās book) that itās almost a bad joke.
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