Hiding items -- is there a way to set a shortcut for setting the opacity to zero?

Sometimes I want to hide things in Dorico for various reasons. Without a hide option for some kinds of objects, the best option seems to be opening up the “color” window and bringing the opacity to zero, and then, propagating properties, to ensure it does the same in parts. I’m wondering if there’s some way of setting a keyboard shortcut to do this?

Thanks!

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What sort of items are you hiding, and in what contexts? It might well be there are other ways of achieving your desired end result.

Using the opacity setting locks you into printing/exporting layouts as Color rather than Mono, because Mono can’t include opaque items. Normally this is fine, but it can cause issues with some printers.

I often need to hide noteheads and only keep stems when setting glissandi and using the standard notation of stems to indicate intermediate rhythmic points. It’s something I have long wanted, to be able to simply hide a notehead. Not sure why this is technically difficult. [It’s something trivial in Lilypond.]

This is very common in modernist scores:

image

Also, sometimes in the very dense New Complexity School music I set I need to create a fake voice to hold extra dynamics. I have to set the noteheads to white to hide them. Again, this is a hack.

For this context, you can create a “noteheadless notehead set” and apply that to the relevant notes. It’s worth keeping something in the notehead, even if that’s just empty text spaces, so you can still select noteheads after making them “noteheadless”

Once you’re happy with your noteheadless notehead set, click the start to save it as default and make it available in all your future projects (you don’t have to recreate it for each project).

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This never worked for me, but I could try again. Yet it would be much simpler to just ‘hide notehead’.

Can you give an example of this?

It might, but then does that notehead still contribute to note spacing, collision avoidance etc etc etc? (rhetorical questions demonstrating the knock-on effects that must be considered)

The noteheadless notehead set definitely works, I’ve used it myself a number of times.

Yes, in your user keycommands file add the following to the kGlobal context, substituting whatever shortcut you want where I have Ctrl+Alt+H:

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