This is a very strange one. All eight voices here (two shown) have the same instruction following the asterisk.
When I use the Export Graphics feature to create a pdf of the project, the pdf looks on screen exactly as shown, but if I then print out the pdf, the hard copy looks like this:
The centre two letters of the third word aren’t there (‘gy ym’ instead of ‘gyflym’).
However, if I use the Print function to print to pdf (I use Kofax Power PDF, if that’s relevant), the words are printed correctly from the resultant pdf file.
This is way beyond my limited knowledge of how printers work, but is there a way (short of not using Export Graphics) that I can ensure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen?
I guess the fl in gyflym is a ligature that’s lacking from the font, and substituted by something from a similar-looking font by the OS. And maybe the printer driver isn’t as smart. Or maybe there is a bug in the Qt framework in the handling of automatic ligatures (it’s a known issue that Qt doesn’t support all OpenType features yet).
Is the font you use Academico?
Thanks for the response, Pjotr.
I’m not sure what the font is, but it’s the default font for dynamics (the phrase within brackets is a suffix to the ‘pp’ marking).
I’ve just had a quick look to see what Qt is, but I’ll have to read up on it later. What puzzled me more than anything was that this behaviour appeared only if I printed out the pdf created by the Export Graphics feature, and not the one created by my pdf printer.
Maybe the issue might be restricted to suffixes/prefixes to dynamic markings, in which case it might be safer for me for the time being to use Ctrl-X for uncommon usages such as the one under discussion; indeed, since I wrote the above I’ve deleted the suffixes and replaced the instruction with plain-vanilla Ctrl-X text, and the ligature problem didn’t occur.
Qt is the programming framework Dorico is built in. No need to read up on it, unless you want to become a Dorico developer . I think the font used for dynamic suffixes is also Academico (assuming you didn’t change your defaults). I will try to reproduce this case later today, maybe there’s a pattern.
Edit: if the problem doesn’t occur in Shift-X text, I guess text handling in dynamics just is slightly more primitive than in regular text.
I tried to use the word gyflym as a dynamics suffix, both in Academico and in my default font Alegreya. In both cases, I do see the fl ligature also in print, printing the PDF that Dorico generated using Export Graphics. So I’m afraid I can’t reproduce the problem.
That is most intriguing. Thanks so much for investigating. The only thing I can think of is that the text was originally in Sibelius and exported as part of a MusicXML file, and that I just cut and pasted it in to the suffix field (though I don’t recall doing this). I certainly have noticed that imported text sometimes has letters missing on screen (usually the single word ‘a’), but I can spot those before printing of course. I should, on reflection, have tried to replicate the issue myself as well, by doing exactly what you have done from scratch - indeed I will do so in my next session, and let you know the result. Thanks again.
I suspect that this is a printer driver problem. Graphics and text that looks the same on screen can be output to the printer (or indeed to PDF) in many different ways, and it’s difficult for the end user to discern why something might or might not be working just by looking at the output image. It might be worth checking whether any updated drivers are available for your printer.
Thanks, Daniel. I did check the printer drivers and it seems that all is up to date. It does seem from OKI’s website that they still support the C831 - indeed, they offer a number of different drivers for it, and it’s possible that I’d chosen the wrong one. The choices are: PCL5c, PCL XL, PS and XPS. I’m wondering whether any of these is more suitable for use with Dorico than any others from the list. (Apparently the installed one is PCL.)
. I think the font used for dynamic suffixes is also Academico (assuming you didn’t change your defaults). I will try to reproduce this case later today, maybe there’s a pattern.