The ability to hide this kind of thing should be available on an ad hoc basis within a flow. Having to use a new flow for an incidental like this spoils the usefulness of flows as sections or movements.
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Nice to see you, George. You shouldnât interpret my question âwhy would you want to do this?â as anything other than a genuine attempt to understand the requirement. People have a tendency to ask for something by telling you what they imagine the solution to be, rather than what problem theyâre actually having. A big part of my role as the product owner and designer of Dorico is to understand user requirements and try to synthesise them into a cohesive, logical, and useful whole. If the software has thousands of designers each expressing their own needs in their own way, then the software will not be cohesive or logical for very long. So when I ask âwhy would you want to do this?â, I am trying to understand the underlying requirement, not reacting to a request with disdain or dismissing it out of hand.
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Good point Daniel! Iâll give an example.
Iâve been scoring a theatre show, with major numbers as cues. These are always to start a new page for all players and make sense to be flows. Within these are minor numbers (incidental music, reprises, play-offs etc.). A lot of these change key etc. and require cautionarys, but individual pieces donât.
Conceptually, flows = major numbers and are numbered 1, 2, 3âŚ
Minor numbers are then 1a, 4ee etc. and should be within the flows.
Now⌠if the flows could be recursiveâŚ
I guess, Steve, that your âminor numbersâ could quite happily exist within the âmajor numberâ flow that precede them, and you can achieve the appearance you want by inserting e.g. a system break or something along those lines?
I suppose what Iâm saying is that a âminor numberâ isnât truly an independent bit of music since it sounds like it follows on directly from the âmajor numberâ and hence is connected to it in terms of key, meter, etc., but I do realise that this same issue also affects âattaccaâ transitions between movements in larger works as well.
I would put the incidental theater music/excerpts in separate flows since these things are constantly revised or moved as a production goes up. Then the individual flows (along with the major numbers or sections of numbersâas in Ragtime) could be moved around or recombined as needed.
But then, Derek, flows are becoming less useful for organisation.
Surely organisation is the point of the flows? I shouldnât need to use them for ad hoc notational items.
Daniel, some are connected, some arenât. A cautionary that shouldnât be there is as bad as a missing one.
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Fair enough. I hope I explained why I want to do it. Dorico looks to be a potentially great product, particularly when trying to do things the others canât. But please donât make the easy stuff, hard.
Thanks. Itâs a little difficult to wrap oneâs head around, but it worked pretty well.
Just read this whole thread. Seems to me that part of the frustration with Dorico (and there is some) revolves around, first of all, identifying what the problem is, and then learning how to solve it. In many cases Dorico can already do what we need, but we donât know how to make it do it!
I think thatâs the case when getting used to any new product or service. Think of Dorico as the ultimate Swiss Army knife with several thousand attachments. Yes, that toothpick or blade or scissors is probably there somewhere, but finding it is a challenge.
I agree that the use of flows to perform basic aesthetic functions diminishes the overall usefulness of the feature. It shouldnât really matter why or why not I want to hide or show somethingâI just do. I make a lot of worksheets, examples, and illustrations, and these things must be accomplished quickly in order for the work to go smoothly. There are already many things in Dorico that do help me with efficiency, but there are other things that are time-consuming. Now, with that said, I found an older thread mentioning that thereâs no general âshow/hideâ functionality, but is this something that is in the cards, at some point?
Within reason, yes, though implementing hiding and showing requires special implementation for each type of item to be hidden, so itâs not something that you should expect to simply appear en masse in the immediate future.
Hello everyone, I have xml file created by my colleague on Sibelius 7.3 with about 40 solfeggio examples for our solfeggio book. Every example is 8 bar long. And we really dont need cautionary clefs and time signatures. On Sibelius I just use hide/show function for cautionary clef and hide for time signature. That way my editing time is really very short.
On Dorico I have to rewrite solfeggio examples one by one in to different flow? For me it doesnt sound like good solution. And I would really like to make our book on Dorico.
Well, as Dorico does not currently allow us to hide cautionary clefs etc., I guess that individual flows are exactly the way to go here. Of course itâs a bit frustrating that this doesnât work with xml import. [But adding flows is really quick and easy and and you can cut and paste the examples one by one. Shouldnât take too long⌠hopefully.]
EDIT: I just remembered that thereâs a âsplit flowâ command somewhere, I think in write mode. (Iâm not in front of Dorico now.) Take a look, you might not even need to cut and paste anything.
Yes, you should be able to simply select the note that should be the start of a new flow and choose Write > Split Flow. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to this command if itâs something youâre going to need to do 39 times, in the Key Commands page of Preferences.
I was just about to ask that same question on how to hide cautionary key signatures on a system break. The use of it is quite obvious in this situation, but since D.S. al Coda is not yet supported, I understand why Dorico prevents me from hiding anything that could lead to an engraving mistake/inconsistency. We are just spoiled by Sib*** and alike which let us do these mistakes â even though I wish I could tell Dorico right now that itâs ok to have a sectional break within a single flowâŚ
For now, I hope that these D.S. al Coda repeats will be fully supported, soon.
Are there any news in Dorico 1.2 with hiding cautionary time signatures at the end of a system?
No, and itâs not something I anticipate us tackling any time soon. As explained before, you should use separate flows for this kind of situation.
Hi Daniel, I just bumped into a reason to have a hide option for cautionary time signatures. Iâm making a lead sheet of a song in 4/4, but I need to use different subdivisions in different parts of the song, since I want Dorico to display dotted half notes in one part and sixteenth notes in one quarter-note-length groups in the other part (let me add here that forcing length is not doing the job since these notes are also tied with other notes in tuplets). I ended up having multiple 4/4 time signatures after each other with specified subdivisions [4]/4 and [1+1+1+1]/4 but for musicians it looks like I need to remind them all the time to play in 4/4.
You can already hide time signatures. Select the time signature, open the properties panel, and you should find âHide time signatureâ.
as âchrisg0619â and others mentioned. There are people, how definitly do need the hiding of cautionary key and time signatures.
Working with lots of snippets of music (one up to four bars) for my worksheets and solfeggio papers, is perhaps not the way Dorico is meant for by the software-designers, but the need is here. Sometimes I work with 200 and more examples, so this would mean 200 flows. Thatâs not manageable anymore and I wouldnât find my way around all those flows. So I could start a new piece every tenth flow and my paper is torn apart in different files.
Hopefully you â Daniel â see and understand at least the need for this wish!
JĂźrg