hide cautionary clefs, keys and time signature

The only reason I can see for going down the Flow 2 and Flow 2a route is that it avoids a need for cautionaries - I can’t see any other reason for doing it. The downside is that a flow is no longer always an independent piece, it can also be one piece made into two, or more sections, purely to appear correct.

I remember a brief conversation I had with Daniel before Dorico was launched. The subject was merging Word Processing and Music Notation. He told me that it was an objective (I’m fairly sure he may also have said long-term) for Dorico. To be honest, I think they’ve made more than a fair crack of achieving that from the start. There’s a huge amount you can do already - and it looks great and is easy to work with.

Merging Word Processing with Music Notation isn’t a niche thing. Away from all the scores and parts, there are thousands of textbooks out there that mix the two together. Most of them are hundreds of pages long. Some of them are centuries old. And as far as I know, all of them organise themselves into chapters - that’s their way of defining “independence” within their work.

On the surface, separating content into flows may not seem unduly onerous. But if you have a chapter separated into twenty flows, and you have twenty chapters in your book - the amount of flows in your work is, being blunt, ridiculous.

As I said before, I don’t see this as in any way urgent. As david-p has said, one can already do this by using two separate programs (which I have, often). But it would be better, and so much easier, to do it in one.

Mine was just an example…I have plenty of others.
After, 2a, I’d also have 2b, 2c…2j etc. It’s normal to have a hundred or more separate cues, some need cautionaries, some don’t.
But I don’t want 100 flows–maybe 20-30 for scenes or major numbers.
Dorico will never semantically understand extra-musical considerations.

Dorico is missing a trick here.

Merging Word Processing with Music Notation isn’t a niche thing. Away from all the scores and parts, there are thousands of textbooks out there that mix the two together. Most of them are hundreds of pages long. Some of them are centuries old. And as far as I know, all of them organise themselves into chapters - that’s their way of defining “independence” within their work.

BUT…

Using the criterion of independence for both genres exposes a philosophical and semantic incompatibility between a musical project and a text project. If a musical Flow in Dorico is defined as an independent piece of music, and a textual flow is defined as a chapter, then any work which comprises text separated by music or music separated by text is actually a mixture of two different types of flow which will fight each for supremacy.

David

I just don’t see the problem with having 100+ flows in a project. In fact, I’ve just dealt with a project that had 105 flows, and Dorico handled it fine, albeit slightly slowly. The developers freely admit they’ve got more optimisation to do.

There’s no technical problem of 100 flows, but there is an organisational loss.

I agree with the “organizational loss” idea. My wish is to have a way to group flows together, so you could have a “Chapter 1” group of flows, and a “Chapter 2” group of flows, or you could have an “Act 1, Scene 3” group. Doing this would be easier to navigate where you need to go, instead of looking for Chapter 3 example 21, when you had chapter 1 example 21, and not to mention possibly Chapter 2.

Robby

DAWs are going in the direction of more organisation with track folders and collapsible structures.
At the moment my organisation for a project like this is in the mac finder. I’d love this not to be the case.
If flows could be put into folders (that appeared as meta-flows) it would be great for many things, but I would still rather click on a time signature and just hide the cautionary.

Hi all of you …
I took the time reading all your comments on hiding clefs, keys and time signatures and it seems to me like a “big” issue. Seeing all those wishes and needs it’s already way over that simple question: “why should we need the hiding” …
Actually I’m missing some sort of “ok, we think about that”, from the dorico software designers.
Because dorico is meant to be the most flexible music-notation software nowadays. As I mentioned earlier in this topic, I really do need the hiding, because I would have to deal with hundreds of flows …

Jürg

+1 as well!

+1 YES.

Agree!!!

+1 I think its important that the team really and truly try to understand the users’ needs. This is a golden opportunity to work WITH the users (and not preach at them like some other notation programs). I am 100% excited and supportive of this cool new program, but coming from Finale is a nightmare for me. Honestly. The simplicity of right-clicking something and having the option to show or hide is a basic function of a notation program which does NOT interrupt the “flow” of creativity, and while I think that Dorico’s Flows are truly an awesome, nay: brilliant, way to have multiple movements within one document (like Digital Performer has multiple sequences easily contained within one file- which is a game changer for those of us who need to write larger works with many pieces in them, etc), I see it as a forced work-around for something here, that really seems inelegant and overly obtuse. I can’t imagine this method lasting for long, or many composers putting up with it. I truly hope that changes.

Completely agree. One of the major (pun intended) things that pulled me in to buying Dorico was the beauty of “Flow” as movements. BUT- If I have 46 flows in the first movement, and 132 flows in the slow movement, and 76 flows in the last movement- well, the beauty is gone, and I have to figure out where each flow ends a movement and starts another? Since I’m still new, forgive me if I seem to misunderstand this- but I find it really and truly awkward and anti-intuitive from a creation point of view. I used to write works by hand neatly, then make a copy, then cut them into strips to position them better and hand-draw various other things around the staves. Came out looking pretty good, but, man oh man I’m Happy those days are long gone. This feels like that to me.

Greetings, I already cannot figure out for the life of me how to get past a seemingly VERY simple issue: I had a simple phrase which ended with a half note. I decided to copy and paste it (so I would maybe change stuff after), and then decided to delete the half note at the end of the first phrase- which gave me a half rest. OK, so far so good. But I want to delete the half-rest, and essentially elide the first and second phrases- so I did the “EDIT> Remove Rests” thing, and then there was a gap (see graphic). I tried to select the music following, and move it to the left by a 1/2 note, but can’t figure it out. I feel embarrassed, since I am a long time notator…

Given you’ve already deleted the rest, the obvious thing is to select the remaining music and use Alt+left arrow to shunt it back. In future, turn on Insert mode (hit I) before deleting the rest.

‘Remove Rests’ does not delete the rest, it hides it. It is meant as a tool when working with multiple voices and easily hide rests in one of the voices (it automatically applies ‘Voice ends here’ and ‘Voice starts here’ at the appropriate places).

As the rest (and corresponding beats) are not actually removed, you end up with the space in between (or so I think).

To remove the beats, you have to work with the Bars popover (Shift+B) or with the new system track in Dorico 2.

I’m not sure what you would need to type in the Bars popover for removing a number of beats.
Typing in -X removes X bars after the selection.
I do see that you have a measure-less piece, maybe it then removes a number of beats?


-Edit: or you might be able to turn on Insert mode and simply hitting Backspace. That might shift things to the left.

Ah, thank you! I will try this.
I’m sad because I didn’t receive any email notifications on replies to the posts,
so I’m bummed- as I could have tried this weeks ago!
Thanks again,
-Istvan

Another thread has documented that e-mail notifications are not timely. The powers that be are looking into this situation.

So idea to use another function (split flow) just to hide cautionaries is real workaround. But problem with that is that a few or more unexpected problems could arise and workflow is again slowed and I have to find another workaround. It is something what I experienced. Not going to details.

I really don’t want to split flow just to hide cautionaries .I want to split flow when I actually think that this part of music is separate from previous one. I want that flows help me with my workflow and not to be used as substitute to another function and possibly slow my workflow.
I want that Dorico have really simple function that every other notation software has.

What is problem with adding “Hide cautionaries” function? Every payed and free notation software in world have it. Is it something about Dorico inner structure? Why this function is actually omitted and also why workaround is proposed?
Possible reason not to have function like that just because conducters or players must see cautionaries is not real explanation.
Also there are enough music teachers and students in the world which will greet this function. Dorico must make things simpler not more complicated.

Look at my complication:
I’m working on book with about 1000 solfeggio examples. I divided it in 9 parts (dorico projects) and every project has about 100 music examples.
That means I have 100 flows in every projects. And I have to numerate it all. Also workaround. In Sibelius you click place where instrument name should be and put number. In Dorico I put text frame then write number. But when I move staff vertical spacing down in engrave mode number doesn’t follow. In Sibelius does. So then again I have to realign number.

Real comforting thing about Dorico is that final product is so superior that I want to go through this pain.

I don’t really have anything new to add to what I’ve said earlier on this topic. Separate spans of music should be entered as separate flows. That’s the way Dorico is designed. It’s more likely that we will add the reverse function, i.e. to make Dorico show cautionary key and time signatures at the end of a flow because it should be attacca to the following one.

However, the use case you are describing, creativetones, in your post is certainly one that I would like Dorico to make easier. It should be easy to number an example, e.g. to use the flow name as a staff label, and I am certain that we will have some features to help with this in future versions.