FR: Halving or doubling the current note duration for input

Dorico
2

In case this actually did interest someone (despite no response for two days :stuck_out_tongue:), I just found a workaround after some digging, involving lua scripting/hacking of keycommands_en.json, which I’ll share here for future reference.

In fact, I discovered that there is built in functionality for augmenting/diminishing the note duration for input, but only in the context of Step Input On Tab, namely Note Value Longer and Note Value Shorter, so you cannot simply – in the standard way – go into the key commands section in the setup dialogue and assign key commands for these tasks and expect them to work in the “normal” step input context. Instead you will have to follow the steps below.

First of all, for those of you reading this not familiar with these kind of hacks: be careful! I recommend reading the following post carefully before attempting to do this on your own: Dorico 3 - Keyboard shortcuts for microtonal accidentals? - #6 by dspreadbury

  1. Create two .lua files, with the following contents:
local app=DoApp.DoApp()
app:doCommand([[NoteInput.NoteValueLonger]])

and

local app=DoApp.DoApp()
app:doCommand([[NoteInput.NoteValueShorter]])

respectively. (I chose to name the files NoteValueLonger.lua and NoteValueShorter.lua.)

  1. Open the keycommands_en.json file (see file paths for Windows and Mac in the link above).
  2. In the file, looking something like this:
{
    "common" : {
        "contexts" : [
           
            {
                "context" : "kGlobal",
                "shortcuts" : [
                   
                    {
                        "Edit.BeamTogether" : [ "Ctrl+B" ]
                    },
                   
                    {
                        "Edit.ChangeVoiceToDownstem1" : [ "Alt+2" ]
                    },

…

                    {
                        "Project.Player.Duplicate" : [ "Shift+D" ]
                    }
                ]
            },

…
– locate the string "context" : "kGlobal". Just below that, you will find a key (json terminology) named shortcuts with a value (json terminology) of all the user assigned key commands.

  1. Within the shortcuts value, manually add two new key/value pairs like following, replacing the dummy paths and key commands with appropriate ones:
{
    "Script.RunScript?ScriptPath=/your/path/to/NoteValueLonger.lua" : [ "your+key+command" ]
},

{
    "Script.RunScript?ScriptPath=/your/path/to/NoteValueShorter.lua" : [ "your+key+command" ]
}

Make sure that the file still contains valid json syntax after your edit, by checking it against a validator!

Even though I got it to work eventually, I still find it odd that this functionality seems to be designed only to work in the Step Input On Tab context. Is there a specific reason for this to be limited in this way, while – as far as I can see – it could really come in handy elsewhere?

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