Erase background on text as default or as short cut?

Dorico
1

Hi,
I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to change the default text (or any fonts) to always have the background erased?
I can’t find this as an option other places than a checkbox in the Engrave Mode.

Furthermore, it seems impossible to create a shortcut erase background. Am I wrong/right? An help on this topic is appreciated.

  • Jan Martin
2

You could manually add something to your user-level keycommands_en.json file, perhaps. The command string required to activate the Erase background property for a selected text item is:

UI.InvokePropertyChangeValue?Type=kTextErasure&Value=null

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3

Thank you so much for this. Unfortunately I could not make this work, as I didn’t find the user-level file, only the system-file. And adding this string there only made Dorico behave strange. Any suggestions?

4

Define any key command you like on the Key Commands page of Preferences (e.g. for the Aout Dorico dialog) and that will ensure the user-level key commands file is created.

If you’re on Mac, you’ll find the file in /Users/your-username/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 4.

On Windows, it’s in %APPDATA%\Steinberg\Dorico 4.

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5

Again, thank you for trying to help. Nevertheless, I can not get this to work the way I imagined. I now have a (very nice) shortcut for erasing background for text objects. But only in Engrave mode. Which makes sense. But I’d love the shortcut to work regardless of modes - is this also possible?

Thanks for good advices!

6

No, the property is only available in Engrave mode, so you have to be in Engrave mode to use your shortcut as well.

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7

I made myself a script that includes switching modes, so it’s one step to run it:

local app=DoApp.DoApp()
app:doCommand([[Window.SwitchMode?WindowMode=kEngraveMode]])
app:doCommand([[UI.InvokePropertyChangeValue?Type=kTextErasure&Value=null: ]])
app:doCommand([[Window.SwitchMode?WindowMode=kWriteMode]])

3 Likes
8

Thanks Daniel, it works perfectly :pray:
It probably should be available directly in the keycommands tool in some later version of Dorico :wink:

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9

You can of course set a Background colour to any Paragraph Style, so that includes Condensing Labels, Instrument changes, etc, and any text expressions that you might add.

But not dynamic prefixes/suffixes, which is surely the biggest lacuna.

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10

I edit my previous answer. It does work perfectly for text items
For some reason, it does not work on lines or gradual dynamics. I wish one command could rule this.

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11

Hi – I successfully got this working in the keycommands file, but is there another syntax in the command that can make the property toggle on/off with the same shortcut? Thanks!

12

No, in general not, because the command to set a property is different to the command to unset the property.

13

what would the command be to turn OFF erase background, then? I can at least set it to a different shortcut.

14

The same command with Value=false as the argument instead of Value=null:

(I found this out by recording a macro of me doing the action.)

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15

For text items, you can also edit the corresponding paragraph style to have a white background wherever that paragraph style gets used, which should (if my memory serves) result in the same effect).

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