free comments or comments attached to page or flow

Dorico
1

Dear developers and users,

Dorico currently supports comments attached to bars of specific players if I correctly understand the feature.
Ia there a way to add comments to the followings?

  • the comments to text frame (title, subtitle, composers etc.)
  • the comments to music frame on a specific page
  • the comments to graphics frame on a specific page
  • the comments to flow
  • the comments to a specific page
2

You can add comments to the “Other Information” field of each Flow. Though obviously, they won’t show up if you export Comments.

I don’t think you can add Comments to any of the other things. Given that Comments don’t print, what sort of comment would relate to a page itself, regardless of what music was on it?

3

The short answer is no, you can’t attach comments to anything other than a position in the music. At the moment we have no plans to extend the comments functionality beyond the current approach of attaching them to the music.

4

@benwiggy and @Daniel
Thank you for the kind answers!

5

Daniel, at the moment I only can see comments in the list on the right side, if I’m inside the flow, I am working on. If I have a big project with lots of flows, it’s quite easy to overlook a comment. It would be helpful if there would be a list of all comments inside Dorico. Now I have to export the list, but this means, that it won’t be synchronised anymore.

6

Attaching here my question: if you want to add general notes about VSTi settings, would you attach them as comments in the score, or write them in the Other Information field of the flow?

I guess both would work fine, but maybe there are reasons to prefer the one or the other for this task.

Paolo

7

You could add it to the Expression Map ‘Description’ field!

Most notes about VSTs would apply to more than one document, so I’d probably just do it as a text file.

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8

That’s a case I had not considered, but it will be useful in various situations.

What I need now, is a way to describe the mixing choices for a particular piece. So, it is something that has to be saved exclusively with a project.

Comments have the great advantage of immediate visibility, but the disadvantage of making the general notes disappear among the other more detailed comments.

The Flow Info field has the advantage of being clearly general, but at the same time a bit hidden. But if one starts using it for this kind of annotation, it will be natural to go checking it frequently.

Paolo

9

I think this would be solved if the previous suggestion I made is implemented: the ability to show all comments in one location, regardless of where they’re “attached.”

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10

I recently tried to add a comment to tempo instruction, but Dorico did not add it to the comment list. I hope the development team will rethink the comment feature. It is worthy of extension to all items.

11

I experienced the same recently.
I ended up using staff-attached text instead.

12

Comments are always staff-attached rather than system-attached. I would suggest adding a comment to the top staff at the same position as the tempo. We could potentially make Dorico clever enough to find the top staff when you select a system-attached item in future: I will make a note of it.

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