This is semantics, but the G[et] in WYSIWYG refers to printing: what you see on the screen is what you get from the printer. The different modes in Dorico are not related to this.
I think this is only true of Galley view; this display in Page view in Write mode should match Engrave mode. And I think this is part of the design intent of Galley view, to show the music in a form that is not page- and layout-bound. The same was true of Finale’s Scroll and Page view: staves could be optimized away in Page view, for example, and inter-staff spacing was different.
So page view just shows what you have done in Engrave mode so one must leave Write, go to Engrave and then return to Write to see what it looks like in Engrave mode when in Write mode…hmmm. No, thanks. I’ll stick with Gallery view because that just adds yet another step.
True. But as we move to a paperless society, it has evolved to mean what you see on screen in the final product unless, of course, you’re not happy with what you see. So, we could go back and forth on this all day but I’ve got other things to do. I appreciate your comments and feedback and wish you well.
Oh, I seem to recall that, too! Some not-so-great-things about Finale have been given my permission to go away - far away! Dorico is a solid product. It just has a totally different user interface than Finale. Best of luck.
What I miss about Finale and Sibelius is doing everything in the same environment, using one keystroke to switch to a tool, then being able to create, edit, and move that tool’s elements at the same time. If it were also possible to have the same shortcut perform a different function in each tool, that would be amazing.
Anyway, I’m glad my question started a discussion that gives me more insight from others. Thank you!
@gplumblee As one who actually enjoys engraving music with my own two hands and with a minimum of outside intervention, I agree with you. But the tide of history is moving toward increased reliance on machines to do everything for us. Whether that is good or bad only time will tell.
In the meantime, get yourself another monitor and park Write Mode on one and Engrave mode on the other and you will get a lot closer to a more comfortable working environment. You can even create your own floating tool palettes alla Finale if you want to add even more windows.
@gplumblee
You use a laptop? I barely feel comfortable with Dorico’s everything-stuck-together-on-one-big-window using two moderately large desktop monitors!
But Finale was not always like this. It was heavily mode based until the introduction of the mass edit tool. From then on, it became essentially modeless and more tool based. That introduced its own problems, of course, but we overcame…
With some things you might be able to add features into Write mode to be able to do them. I wouldn’t want to see everything become one mode though, I think that would cause more confusion.
Part of the issue is what Dorico considers a note and in engrave mode it is possible to select part of a note.This is needed so that you can change the settings on a single notehead or stem within a series of tied noteheads, or adjust a single tie.
But if you were to allow selecting a single notehead or single tie in write mode, suddenly there would be a huge problem if you went to change the duration in the panel on the left or with a hotkey. You might think you were changing the duration of that “part of the note” that you had selected but in that case it would change the duration of the entire note.
This to me would be the biggest issue with “collapsing the modes” as a small percentage of users have asked for. Users are currently able to understand that Dorico considers a series of tied notes as a single note because when you select it in write mode it selects the whole thing. If selecting it in write mode only selected part of it, users would no longer have the program communicating this to them in such a direct way, and it would cause much more confusion I feel. It would probably make Dorico “less intuitive” in this way.
It would also mess up the piano roll because currently any notation selection done in write mode will have a direct analog in the piano roll, and it is nonsensical to be able to select “part of a note” in the piano roll.
When you are creating or deleting something (as in Write mode), you usually want to do that operation on the entire thing. You don’t usually just want to create a notehead or a stem - you want to make a note. But when you’re wanting to fine tune the appearance of things (as in Engrave mode), you might want to change the length of a stem without affecting the notehead itself, and therefore you are adjusting a component of something. So the entire selection logic has to be different - selecting an entire “thing” vs selecting “part of a thing”.
Mentioning the piano roll brings me back to how combining a sequencer with a notation program always creates more issues for those who only need graphic notation. But I suppose that as print publishing gives way to the digital world, these things have to be considered. I still only work with printed book production, and I have never used playback features in notation software.
There are a lot of users who were brought into Dorico on the promise of finally having a program that could “do-it-all” without having to go back and forth to/from a DAW. More of what I write in Dorico these days most likely won’t actually ever get performed and is just being used instead of a DAW to create music with virtual instruments entirely, due to preferring a notation-first approach.
At the same time, the program is also trying to service those who have sophisticated engraving needs and don’t care about playback at all.
It is a pair of very different camps to try to keep happy. There were complaints from people in one camp when Dorico 6 released that not enough was done on the playback side, that the focus was too much on engraving, following complaints from the other camp in previous versions about too much focus on playback.
I, and many others, fall somewhere in between these two camps, where I’m sometimes writing concert works where I don’t really care about playback aside from being able to hear wrong notes and such, and often writing entirely digital works with virtual instruments where the notation doesn’t matter aside from giving me a more comfortable view of the larger ensemble. It’s nice to be able to do both from the same program.
Kent, I don’t want to be offending, but Dorico has a Galley view, that you might be using for input.
You can very well input in Page view, which means you have a WYSIWYG application. No need to switch to Engrave mode, whilst inputting in Page view.
Not offended. I was typing the incorrect word, multiple times! Duh!
So, I know that I can enter notation in Page view but I cannot adjust anything that is adjustable in Engrave mode. Did I misunderstand what was being said about Page view?
Yes. There are a few things you can’t do in Page View in Write mode and need to use Galley view for these. One is instrument changes for doubling performers. Another case would be hidden empty staves, which would only appear in Galley view, and a third case I can think of is Condensing (if turned on).
Correct. So what’s the point of Page view? It’s just more difficult to visualize scores with multiple staves in Page view. Not really sure why Page view is helpful except maybe for lead sheets. Just my opinion.
