Flip slurs - key command?

Hello,

is there a key command to flip slurs? Couldn’t find another post for that question and as with flipping stem direction I could not find an entry in preferences/key commands as well.

Thanks!

Choose the slur (highlighted in orange) and then look in the properties for the ability to flip.

Please read precisely before posting. Thanks!

Edit: Sorry, of course thanks should be first!

You are right. I should have noticed you wanted a key command. Don’t think that exists.

Probably same thing as flipping stems, that does not exist - by now - either. But Daniel already promised to look into it, this amazing man.

We are thinking about how best to get keyboard access to all of the various properties without exposing every single one of them as a separate command. The plan as it stands is to create a kind of popover for the Properties panel that will allow you to type the first letter or two of the property you want to change to jump right to it, and then activate it with the keyboard.

It is totally understandable that you can not expose every command to a single key shortcut, there are simply too many options with a serious engraving program.

I do not know about Mac, in windows there is this possibility with the submenu key on the right side of the keyboard next to the windows key. It has the same function as a right mouse click. If one distributes letters to the commands (underlined), you can open this command or even another submenu with another keystroke.

Yet I like the concept of popovers very much, the above is just what a windows veteran probably would do.

Is something like you advertised on Nov 28 integrated with 1.0.20 already?

No, Wolfram, as I think I’ve said before, we comprehensively document every change we make to the software, so if something is not listed in the Version History document as something that we have implemented or changed, then it’s not been done. We can’t possibly address every possible feature request in each update, especially not when we only have three weeks to build an update. Please try to be patient. We are all working as hard as we can to improve Dorico as quickly as we can.

Dear Daniel,

I hate to contradict you, for I highly respect your commitment and your work. I have to tell you I was aware of the tiny correction (and yet, I admit it caused me to go more than 50 times in the properties panel) that when you write cresc. in the popover it no longer shows an hairpin in the score reading the forum. It does not appear in the version history, and yet I find this a really great improvement :wink:

If you hate to contradict me, then don’t! :slight_smile:

Sorry, Daniel, I did not mean to annoy you, and I am not really impatient. It’s just I want to get faster with Dorico and be able to use it as my daily tool… And - I must admit - sometimes I am a bit tired of looking longer than a quarter of an hour for the right solution. In my age, learning comes harder and harder (I became 50 last month :open_mouth: , and will have to come around with that for the next ten years, I suppose) and you tend to forget that you have read something somewhere else already :blush:

Oh, looking at my last posts I realize why you, Daniel, became annoyed. Wolfram asks this, W. asks that, and here he is again… I really beg your pardon!

Dear Wolfram,

I beg your pardon, but I think Daniel’s last message was… directed towards me ! :slight_smile:

Yes, even not being an english native I got that :wink: But I think his message from 10:22 sounded a bit annoyed, did it not? (Do you know “Asterix in Britain”?)

Yes, I know that very funny book!
I think Daniel’s message is not just for you, but for all of us, tempted to ask whether our needs are being fulfilled ^^
We sometimes need to be reminded that D’s team are working as hard as they can, yet developping such a complicated software takes time!

But in addition to having a solution where one can type the forst letter or two and then a third click to activate it, are there any arguments against additionally having separate key commands for Flip Stem, Flip Slur and so on?

The main argument against is that soon you run out of memorable shortcut keys, and different users have different priorities.

Once the scripting language gets easier to use, I expect it would be fairly easy to create a “shortcut” to generate any sort of user input, so it won’t really matter how many “virtual keystrokes” it takes to tell Dorico how to activate a particular property or whatever. From a usability point of view, when you have hundreds of commands, a simple way to remember (or guess) how to invoke the command you want can be more important than the absolute minimum number of key presses to invoke it - you can trade off typing speed against “thinking time”.

(Of course people who want to do everything with the mouse might disagree with that design philosophy!)

The argument against… what? From what you write, you seem (like me) to want to have as few key commands to have to memorise, which sounds to me like an argument pro having one single (user definable) key command which lets you flip slures, one for flipping stems etc. Right?

Hey, Everybody
After reading this quite long discussion (and even some slight arguing, :wink:), I still agree with “wolfram”, that a quick shortcut of flipping slurs and stems is really needed. I deal with a lot of ancient (not perfectly written) music and I want it to look as similar as possible and therefore I have to flip a lot of slurs and stems manually. So I desperatly hope some smooth solution is coming, like that “x” on that other well known app. I totally agree with Daniel, that not everything in the properties panel can have his own shortcut. But there are tasks — like flipping things — that are so often needed in the daily score writing, that it has to be accessible with just one smart shortcut.

Thanks Jürg