I use page view in write mode for solo piano, choral, and most chamber music (anything that doesn’t have instrument switching or divisi). It’s easier and quicker for me as I can then work on the engraving/layout simultaneously (switching between write and engrave with shortcuts has become 2nd nature), and then I don’t have to stare at clashing elements in galley view.
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@kasky1 I agree with you that galley view is great for reading, composing, and playback. To have a virtually endless scroll is a wonderful way to review your composition. That being said, Page View is so that one can see what the music will look like on paper — on a page! In this view format, it is WYSIWYG.
Engrave Mode uses the Page View as well. The thought behind that is because traditional engraved music was laid out for the printed page.
Perhaps we should consider that some users (Conductors, Instructors and Students, etc.) might be more inclined to use an electronic “scroll” that would be an “engraved” form in a digital medium. (My expectation, however, is that most musicians with an instrument in or at their hands will prefer a more traditional page format for their parts. With that in mind, maybe you would like to make a feature request for an upgrade to the galley view?
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Hi Anthony, are you using Lua scripts or a separate macro application, or do you add key commands in preferences and switch modes when needed to perform an action? I’ve added many shortcuts in preferences, but I often forget to switch modes first, which can cause issues. Is there a way to assign a key command in preferences that automatically switches to the correct mode before executing the shortcut?
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@jaskarbong I appreciate your comment and I like the way you think about this. I did make a recommendation to upgrade Write mode so that a lot of the Engrave work could be done simultaneously like I did in Finale. I was met with comments that essentially said that I am an idiot and this is contrary to the philosophy of Dorico. Granted, I was quite new with Dorico at the time and made an off-hand remark about some having “drunk the kool-aid” so I deserved a bit of backlash. Never-the-less, I seem to get digitally backslapped when I bring it up so I do not do that any more. Thanks, though. I tend to learn the first time around. All is well, no hard feelings, and I have now drunk the kool-aid and work with what I have. It does take a little longer to create a finished product for me (not assuming that for everyone) but I am OK with that as there are lots of other features that I truly love. Peace and goodwill to all!
Kent, that is exactly what I wish! I feel like Graphic Editing should be in Write mode, so I don’t have to switch back and forth when engraving the music. I also agree that it’s taking me longer to get a finished product. And I, too, am sticking with Dorico, because it looks great.
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Hi @kasky1, as sometimes happens, written text on the internet doesn’t give the right intonation of how something was meant. And also: English is not my first language and I may have chosen wrong words.
In my reply, I was also referring to your text,
…and I meant: “if someone doesn’t [yet] see/have any advantage in using Page view, one has the option to just don’t use it”, and I gave a suggestion about a Preference that can facilitate this (and that I didn’t see suggested in this thread, if so, sorry…)
EDITED[…]
… I just wanted/tried to help. Sorry if my text irritated you: it was not intended to, and the icon after the first sentence is there to suggest a joke, but as I said, naked text without intonation is sometimes misinterpreted on the internet.
Meanwhile other have written many helpful posts to explain the advantages of Page view.
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Christian, I think you are most often one of the fastest at answering a random question I might have, and I appreciate that very much!
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No scripts or macros! I’ve tried Notation Express XL, but I found it to be slower than keyboard shortcuts. I just use the standard shortcuts on MacOS (Cmd+2/3) to switch quickly between modes as I’m working. I’ve been using Dorico now for about 7 years, so it’s become automatic. On larger projects (orchestral, opera, etc.), I’ll use two monitors with both modes when necessary. Honestly, I don’t usually find it necessary until after I’ve activated condensing (like for final proofing or post-premiere edits).
I grew to really appreciate the separation of modes. It was definitely an adjustment coming from Sibelius and certainly frustrating at first. But it ensures that there are never any accidental musical changes while formatting, and it resolved the frequent occurrence in Sibelius where an edit in one spot could inadvertently affect spacing on other pages. Over time, the mode switching just became automatic, and I don’t find it to be any slower than the Sibelius alternative.
One thing that I’ve posted about before that is macro-adjacent is the use of a little free utility called HyperKey. On Mac, it remaps your CapsLock key to a combination of all four modifiers. I use this for almost all of my custom shortcuts to separate them from the defaults. For anything else that doesn’t make sense to me as a shortcut (like various filters, beaming, etc.), I create JumpBar aliases.
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Ah yes! I recently heard the term JumpBar in a Dorico video and have meant to look into it. There are still a lot of things I do through contextual menus that would probably be faster that way. Thanks for the reminder. Also, I’ll check out HyperKey, so thank you for that suggestion!
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I, too, appreciate the separation of modes. Whether making a lead sheet or making orchestral works, I want to concentrate on the creation, not worrying about whether a system break or page turn is where I think it needs to be.
Being left-handed I would often browse a magazine from back to front. I found that I would often do the same with Finale. As I got closer to the beginning, more and more of the end got messed up. From that, I learned an important lesson about workflow! Start at the beginning and do everything in order.
With Dorico, there is plenty you can do in Write Mode. The software will take care of many of the tweaks we used to have to do in Finale all by itself. If the Layout, Engraving, and Notation settings that we chose work well, we move on or tweak them as needed. We can turn to Engrave Mode afterwards for the final edit and cleanup, adding system breaks and frame breaks (from beginning to end 
) and whatever else needs touching up. Trying to “fix-as-you-go” — as many of us did with Finale — doesn’t allow the software to do its thing (based on our own preferences — what we told it to do! — in the settings) and ends up wasting our time instead of taking shortcuts. (Why spend hours moving individual notes and other elements around when a slightly tighter setting in note spacing would fix it everywhere, all at once — and look so much better?)
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Just to add my $0.02 FWIW:
- When I used Finale for over 30 years, I always used Page View when I composed and created scores. Except for very early on, I always liked to see how things were laid out, and as stated, there was no separate mode for note entry and page layout (although there was, and still is, a page layout tool).
- But as others have stated, it’s no different from Dorico. You do indeed see page layout while in Write Mode if you use Page View rather than Galley View. I generally don’t have to do much in Engrave Mode except for minor tweaks to systems or to input where I want some of the text tokens to go within a page template.
- With the new work I started inputting today, I did revert to Galley View, if for no other reason than to restrain my normal impulse to do things in Page View and make some occasional tweaks to the layout. I likely will stick to this for the foreseeable future, since with Dorico there is not a lot of page layout I will need to make (unlike Finale, where I even tended to resort to a pricey .lua script to adjust many page layout elements, often to no avail or to worse results).
- I sometimes do find that I’ve made some changes that were unintended, but never in Engrave Mode. It happens in Write Mode if I’ve accidentally hit a key without realizing it while Note Input was active (it’s pretty easy to do, which is why I always have Pitch Before Duration active by default, since that prevents my accidentally inputting notes). In all honesty, I’d had similar things happen in Finale, if I was trying something out on my synthesizer after forgetting to switch off my Caps Lock key while in Speedy Entry (it locks a duration, just like Duration Before Pitch in Dorico).
Overall, I think the separation of functions/modes in Dorico makes rational sense, but for my purposes I’d be fine if I could tweak some Engrave Mode elements while in Write Mode (just as one could move one or more measures to an adjacent system in Finale with an up/down arrow without a need for a separate mode). YMMV.
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@Christian_R I apologize for hurting your feelings. I’m a bit wary of responses that seem to have a narcissistic twist - I now know that wasn’t your intent. I was verbally battered here a bit in the past so it is a bit difficult for me to always assume good intent. I will do better.
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I think you have discovered the thinking behind the two modes!
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