Feature request - a menu bar that appears mid-screen temporarily

Dorico
1

I have an issue, not with Dorico, but with the problem of working on a large score on a portrait-oriented monitor.

While I try to make keystrokes for everything I do regularly (or use the pop-ups), there are always times when I head up to the menubar to find something I do rarely. And in portrait mode, that menubar is so far away from my score that I end up doing a lot of mousing. (And because I work at a standing desk, my neck also has to crane up to see the menus.)

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After my year in Sibelius I was so happy to return to the normal (and quite complete) menus of Dorico. They are well organized and useful. And while I prefer them to the menus of Sibelius (and Finale) …. I do miss the closeness of Sibelius’ menus (and tool bar) being at the top of my score page, and not way up top.

I am not suggesting a reorganization of Dorico’s Menus. But I would love to have a keystroke, that temporarily reproduced those menus mid screen for me to choose an item. Something like this (excuse my poor graphic rendering):

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After selecting an item, it would just disappear.

I know this is a modification of the OS to a certain extent (MacOS in my case) - but it would be quite useful. So much work obviously went into organizing the menus well (and the menus are very helpful when using a macro program like Keyboard Maestro.) But it would be so helpful to workflow to get them closer to where I’m working.

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2

I’ve thought similarly even though I work in landscape mode on macOS 99.9% of the time. My thought process, though, was to be able to undock individual functions, the properties area or even the menu bar so that one could place them anywhere on screen until not needed and then send them back “home” with a single mouse click or key press.

3

The right-click menu is contextual and hopefully contains a lot of the things you might need. If not, the jump bar is also a good way to work – if you can remember the name of the menu item you’re after, you can type the beginning of that name into the jump bar, and activate the function that way.

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