We should not need to start a Dorico score and realize the expression map is not there and then have to load a Dorico score and export the map and then worry about a master expression map list file. All maps you create or load that are new should automatically backup to a common pool you can draw from on your drive and only exist if they are different then another one to avoid confusion.
If you’re willing to do a little surgery of XML files you can do this today: export the expression maps from the project that contains the ones you want to be available everywhere, then go and look in your user app data folder to see if you have a file called userlibrary.xml in there, alongside other data like preferences.xml. On Mac, this is in /Users/your-username/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 2. On Windows, it’s in %APPDATA%\Steinberg\Dorico 2.
If there’s no userlibrary.xml file in there, then it’s easy: just copy the file you exported from Dorico in there and rename it to userlibrary.xml (from expressionmaps.doricolib or whatever you called it).
If you do have a userlibrary.xml file in there, then open it up in a good text editor, and replace the three lines that say:
<expressionMapDefinitions>
<entities array="true"/>
</expressionMapDefinitions>
with the whole corresponding section from the .doricolib file you exported. If you do it right, then those expression maps will be imported into every new project you start thereafter.
Good tip. Thanks.
Now is there a way to exclude the Dorico expression maps that we never use so that we don’t ave to scroll through them to get to the maps we do use?
No, there isn’t, because they’re part of the factory library and will always show up in the list because Dorico will always load them, whether or not they happen to be present in the current project.
I did this and got a file error on loading userlibrary.xml when I started dorico again. Used notepad… copied between expressionmapdefinitions… anyway pretty sure I did it right. Regardless I am going to stop messing with this and wait for Dorico to go a couple versions. Probably just use noteperformer as expression map making and fiddling has been a massive time expenditure with little return. Noteperformer is hard to improve on… yes you will improve here…but not there…
If you want to send me your userlibrary.xml file I can take a look and see if I can find the syntax error you’ve inadvertently made.