It’s been pointed out that Dorico doesn’t have a feature to “hide” text, so that, say, text can appear in a part without also appearing in the score – or vice versa. (Shift-X is part-specific but the text so entered also shows up in the score.) I think it would be useful to allow some text to be entered in parts alone. A common case would be indicating tempo in the score with both the standard words (Adagio, etc.) and metronome marks, but showing only the associated word in parts. In a band or orchestra, typically it’s the conductor who needs the metronome specification, not the players – assuming they watch the conductor
I agree that this would be useful.
In the meantime you can hide text in individual layouts with the color property. If you haven’t done so, take a look at the last but one (I think) discover Dorico video on youtube. John explains the process in depth there.
EDIT: It’s the latest discover dorico video, the one from September, around 12:20.
I have some “cues” which I only want the conductor to see, but they are “glued” to the uppermost part in the score, which means that in this case they also pop up in the “Flute 1” part, which I don’t want.
When in the part, select the text you want to hide, press the “Color” switch in the bottom panel, and then press the small black square that pops up to the right of the “Color” text. Then, drag the Opacity slider down to 0%. Voila, the text is gone (or rather invisible), but only from the part. It is still visible in the score (or vice versa).
Eirik -
Having the ability to selectively display or hide text has been discussed - and requested - numerous times. Changing the Opacity is a very kludgy work around with limited value. Working with your example - if you have a large score with 20 instruments you have to go to each instrument and “hide” the text. Then if you are exporting to PDF you have to remember to export in color instead of black & white = otherwise your “hidden” text is displayed on the PDF/.
It gets worse, suppose you have a preliminary reading of a piece - but you know it needs more work. So you just want to write a note to yourself - “extend section C another 4 bars” - but you don’t want that to appear on any distributed scores. You have to “hide” it on all parts and the full score. BUT - there is no handle to your “hidden” text - so after you distribute the preliminary scores you have to remember exactly where you put that “hidden” text to make it visible.
If you’re curious, there’s a whole different discussion here: Steinberg Forums
This has been discussed since many years and in many threads.
If one uses a notation program as a graphical tool, yes, show and hide are essential parts of the process.
Dorico distinguishes itself from this. It is build on the foundation of semantics. Everything you write has a meaning, Everything you don’t write, is not existent.
You put down the sounding notes - you don’t put down the rests (simple example).
You can tweak everything that is there (existent), how it displays, how it sounds - but you can’t ignore its presence.
You can make it very small or you can make it translucent - it will be always there - nevertheless.
In a way, Dorico notates music, like a daw notates sounds. There is always a substance of something. You can tweak a sound or you can change the display of written music.
A simple show and hide option goes against these principles - thats is, why Dorico has a „built in“ resistance in this field.
Yes. One of the few features that I miss from Sibelius is the universal show/hide. Back in the early days of releases 1.x & 2.x, I tried to lobby Daniel into relaxing the “semantics only” approach and implementing universal show hide with options to apply to selected layouts. It’s sort of a Swiss army knife tool.
While this has not happened, since then Dorico has implemented show/hide on selected objects in a sort of scattered ad hoc manner (at least that’s how it looks to my eyes). For example you can now hide fixed dynamics - but for some reason you cannot hide hairpins.
If I think about it, it might be a static “intensity marking” versus a “dynamic change of actions”. So to speak, something 2-dimensional versus something 3-dimensional.
I am just guessing to try to understand the difference.
