This is the first post from a Finale orphan. I do a good bit of liturgical chant which requires hard spaces that don’t jump to the next syllable. In Finale it was option-space but I don’t see a way to do it in Dorico.
Bill
Option-shift space is the combination for hard spaces in Dorico.
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Thank you. All my hard spaces from Finale show up as elisions in Dorico. Do you know a way to change all of those at once?
Bill
You could try Edit Line of Lyrics, which is a bit like the Finale Lyrics Window.
… and then copy the contents to a text editor, find/replace, and paste back.
(I’ve given it the same shortcut, for old time’s sake.)
Note that you have to have the same number of syllables as you went in with, or you can’t press OK.!!
Ben – I can’t make that work. When I move the lyrics to the text editor and substitute shift-option-space for the elision underscore and move it back into the lyrics editor, I don’t end up with the right number of syllables. I tried it with just “one two three four” and that came up as one syllable. If I use shift-option-space directly in the lyrics editor as opposed to importing from the text editor, the number turns out right.
This is for Gospel acclamations with an Alleluia plus chanted verse, and I have great piles of them, so I hope a straightforward solution is out there.
Bill
@billstevns Do you want to send me one, and I’ll have a look at it?
Shift-Option-Space is only for the popover in Dorico. Anywhere else on Mac Option-Space is the keystroke for hard space (U+00A0).
If you have tons of these to do, let’s see if we can figure out a time saving search & replace method!
Thanks Ben and Mark, but I can’t get that to work either.
::: Bill
It’s a limitation of the text editor, or possibly you aren’t doing it correctly.
It is indeed confusing sometimes to try to input Unicode. I’ve always struggled with it. Are you and Mac or PC?
They’re absolutely is a solution, it’s just a matter of doing it correctly.
Here’s the problem. When I import “one two three four” into Dorico and look at it in the Edit Lyrics window, it reads as one syllable (or lyric). When I go to the text editor and swap Dorico’s underlines to option-space and return to the Edit Lyrics window it is now four syllables so the OK is grayed out.
I am on Mac.
::: Bill
Right, because Option-Space only works inside Dorico itself. If you try to use it in the text editor, it won’t give you what you want. It’s just treating those as normal spaces.
You need to use Unicode to input those characters, or use something like InDesign which allows many sophisticated options for non-breaking spaces.
To clarify: Lyrics with non-breaking spaces typed in a text editor can be copied and pasted into the popover in Dorico one syllable at a time. The popover respects the hard spaces. The “Edit Line of Lyrics” dialog does not! It automatically converts them to regular spaces.
If you look closely at lyrics that contain hard spaces in the Edit Line of Lyrics dialog, you’ll see that they are actually represented as the mid dot character ·.
When you use find and replace, use · as the replacement character instead of a hard space, then paste back into the Edit Line of Lyrics dialog.
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Thanks, Daniel! I have seen those in the dialog, but didn’t have a way of knowing they are the actual · character.
Mac users can type · with ⇧⌥9 (Shift-Option-9).
On Windows I believe it is Alt+0183.
I replied to your Steinberg post earlier to say that the Shift-Option-9 dot works. For what I would need to do about 200 times it would still be lots of work, but at least now I now I see there is a solution.
Several times today I gave up on Dorico and switched to Doritos, but I kept going back, determined to conquer the foe. I find Dorico confusing because answers that are centrally located in Finale are all over the place in Dorico. The Jump command is a cool idea and helps find some of those answers, but others require screaming at the computer screen and clawing at my bald spot. We’ll see how it goes.
I am retiring my Finale T-shirts.
::: Bill Stevens
This is why you should use a Find-and-Replace. Google docs does this. One operation, done.