rubberfingers: Love your moniker. Years ago there was a nice simple product called Paint Shop Pro that allowed Windows users with very simple needs (like adding text to photos) to get the job done quickly. The UI was so intuitive that no manual was needed. I kept upgrading through the product’s fifth version. Then came version 6, where apparently the implementors decided to give up on the simple-needs market and create a product that competed with Photoshop. Suddenly the simplest task was so insanely complex that I just eventually gave up. I also don’t use any of the other products that you mentioned because I don’t want to take several semesters of college classes in order to get to the point where I can start using them.
I understand that Dorico is a complex app that allows professionals to do things that I couldn’t even contemplate. I also understand that complex needs require complex apps. I don’t expect Dorico to dumb-down its app to my level of usage. However when something CAN be made simple (without affecting the app’s whole design paradigm) it SHOULD be made simple. Perhaps I am ignorant, but really don’t understand why Dorico couldn’t make a lot of simpler operations easier to do. If I can imagine the UI doing some simple thing in some simple, expected way, it seems to me that it should be possible to implement that without hurting anything else.
Ha! “rubberfingers” is a play on “rubberlegs”, which I’ve used online for hiking and bike riding, activities which tire me out to the point sometimes I can barely stand.
Although Paint Shop works well for simple stuff, I’ve reluctantly gone to Photoshop for some big projects. For a complex graphic novel, we needed the power of InDesign over other programs. Frankly, they are hard to learn. But our projects were such that we used them anyway.
Perhaps your music is ideally suited to Musescore? I use it from time to time, to share with colleagues. It appears to be easy to learn. I feel like I can write way faster on Dorico though, and the output is absolutely beautiful.
Romanos: It may be that I am prejudiced in certain ways about user interfaces. However I have encountered many people who keep making apologies for the seemingly pointless complexity of the Dorico UI, and there is no question that there is a large body of expected graphic UI behaviors that most Windows apps seem to have no problem following. So I don’t think it’s just me. What I really think is that when Steinberg hired the development team away from Avid (Sibelius), they got a lot of folks who were steeped in the internals of scoring software who were not particularly inclined toward UI development.
rubberfingers: I have tried MuseScore and I find it even more frustrating than Dorico. Perhaps it is because I’ve grown accustomed to Dorico’s way of doing things. And then there are features that I need that simply don’t exist in MuseScore (try doing a two-bar repeat, for example). But I may end up trying it again. Everyone keeps saying how easy it is, but it doesn’t seem easier to me.
DanKreider: thanks for your assist. I guess someone would have to watch me do it. I am aware of the notion of toggling note-entry mode, both using Shift-N and now (in 4.0) clicking on the note+ button [beneath the button you depict]. I do everything in my power to get into note-entry mode and I am clearly in that mode because Dorico displays the measure divisions as if it is ready to accept notes. Sometimes when I do this I can enter notes by clicking; other times I cannot, and sometimes clicking things causes me to depart note-entry mode without my having explicitly done so. That whole sense of not knowing why Dorico is doing / not doing something pervades my whole experience. I’m never sure what it is going to do.
I’m afraid I’m at a loss to know what key you might be inadvertently pressing. The first thing I do on a new Dorico install, or in any training session with a new user, is to disable note input using the mouse.
Associated with the fact that the development team had previously worked for Sibelius, are two possibilities:
An understandable interest in not using the simpler methods of Sibelius to input notes, etc.
A possible legal interdict against programing like Sibelius due to NDAs.
In the first case, how do you make a ground-breaking notation program if it looks and works like Sibelius? In the second case, I am only idly speculating.
David - most if what I would reply has already been said, so I’ll not repeat them. I would encourage one thing, however: ask questions. The community here is very helpful, and will give you an answer (several at a time, if need be) to anything that is unclear.
I’m not sure you saw it, but your Key aug signpost question was answered a few posts above. I would just say that the reason it isn’t there for any other key, is that presumably you chose the other key, as opposed to a default one. Make sense? And, one can hide all the signposts, so there is that.
Hope you get on well with the program, as opposed to “with the program.”
They are indeed described in the manual, here. Descriptions of this sort of thing should be relatively easily findable on pages that cover their area – if you didn’t know what this was called, you could for instance look at the overview of Write mode for a pointer.
They allow you to access either panels or popovers from the toolbox. Some notations have both a panel and popover equivalent, others have only one or the other. This panel/popover switch makes it possible always to access popovers directly from the UI, in addition to the key commands.
Tooltips are unavailable in the Notations toolbox at the moment for technical reasons.
When the arrow-icon is highlighted in blue, it disables mouse input. It is not a “select tool” like you find in other software. When you click that it changes the mode for note entry.
Just picked up on this part of your comment – the caret determines where notes go horizontally when inputting with the keyboard. You can move the caret to where you want the note to go.
(For the Select button in the Notes toolbox, you can equally think of it as " only select" as mouse input enabling/disabling – when it’s enabled, you can only use the mouse to select items, you can’t use it to input notes.)
Consider your “pointless complexity” may be reasoned design choices by others. And rather than apologizing for Dorico’s choices, many accept and understand these design choices underlie a better software notation experience. If you don’t, fine–you are not compelled to use the program. If you want a car with automatic transmission, don’t buy one with a manual transmission and complain about how easier automatic transmission would be. The Dorico team is very responsive to user input within the carefully crafted framework they have built. With practice, complexity becomes routine and the rationale of seemingly pointless functionality is revealed.
I agree. I’m a software developer first and a musician a distant second. It was quite common for my software users to ask why I did this or that when it would have been SO much easier to do the-other. And I’ve also been tempted to view other people’s software the same way. But the reality is that I spent hours and hours considering how to implement a function, taking both new and power users into considerations. I haven’t always right and I get that.
The other thing I was always amused with is someone saying “Most people do/want this is a particular situation.” No. That’s YOU. Not necessarily most people.
This all why software design is an art and one that evolves.
is highlighted in blue, it 