Insert Mode unexpected consequences

Dorico
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EDITED FOR CLARITY:
I realize that other posts have skirted this issue in the past, but I’m now at Dorico 4.1 and am not sure if the changes promised in past years have happened.

In a nutshell, adding measures or beats, regardless of how many parts or players are affected, screws up my score in multiple ways. E.g., I just copied 8 measures of music – in ten instruments – into the middle of a longer piece. Woops! I was careful to ensure that I added the same number of beats to every player. But it didn’t matter. Dynamics markings in later measures are scattered all over the place, embedded text no longer lines up, different types of barlines got mixed up, etc. Worst of all, the cues (or whatever they’re called – I can’t find a name in the manual, but I’m referring to the bookmark/notes managed by the bottom icon in the Notations toolbox) shifted by one position; that is, the third comment/cue/bookmark/whatever moved to the pre-insert location of the second one, the fourth moved to the position of the third, etc. – and no, their spacing is unrelated to the length of my inserted material.

All of this has rendered Insert Mode a choice of last resort for me. It’s much easier to do even simple insertions the hard way: count the measures to insert, insert that # of new blank measures, select the material to be copied, copy it, go back to the blank measures, and then paste.

If I make a subtle mistake and don’t select content of exactly the same duration for every player (easy to do when there are rests or ties across barlines) the problems can get so confusing that if I discover them later on, my only solution is to just delete entire blocks of content and replace it with an excerpt from an older version.

There was talk in an older thread about a feature that would let users ID an insert-mode endpoint, beyond which content would not be affected by a particular Insert operation. I can’t find any documentation on such a feature – did it ever happen?

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I use Insert Mode almost never.

Great quote! :slight_smile:

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Heh – I was wondering if anybody would notice that…

1 Like
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Why don’t you update to 4.2?

I can’t remember exactly when the changes occurred, but you now have 4 different insert modes (whether to affect a single voice, a player or all parts), together with the stop line (which stops inserts propagating to the end of a flow).

It’s worth experimenting to see how each works and altogether much safer to use.

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Whoa! I don’t recall receiving notification of that upgrade. I’ll update immediately.
If just one of those modes operates the way that inserting space with the Bars Popover does, I’ll be a happy camper.

Thanks for the heads-up, Janus.

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As of 4.0 there is indeed a stop line feature!

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CORRECTED (Thanks, Derrek & Mark, for your useful feedback!)

OK, I updated to 4.2, and as Mark noted, the “stop line” feature was indeed what I’m looking for (and the four Insert modes are kinda useful, too).

But even this enhancement is doesn’t make Insert Mode usable. I also see other weird things going on. In Global Insert, e.g., some things still flow past the stop position. For example, if I select a cluster of notes just before the stop point & hit R, the notes are duplicated after the stop point. But other objects shift only as far as the stop position, and Dorico even creates partial measures to accommodate the new content. I don’t see any pattern that would let me predict what gets bumped and what doesn’t. So this feature doesn’t resolve the problem I originally reported – it just changes the details.

But the strangest thing – and I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature – is that Copy & Paste operations no longer function when in Insert Global Mode. If I attempt a copy function, using standard Ctrl-C / V shortcuts or context drop-downs, or even Alt-clicking after selecting content, Dorico instead performs a Cut & Paste. IOW, the copied content is deleted from its original location. When I toggle Insert Mode off, copy/cut/paste begins working normally again. (Hitting R duplicates a selection normally; & Cut & Paste always work.) Was this intentional?

One last whine: I wish that Dorico would update its Operations Manual whenever the program undergoes a significant update (and also include a copy of the Version History). The body of the 4.0 manual, the latest version I can find online, does not mention the new Insert Mode enhancements.

Anyway, bottom line is that, until Insert Mode produces consistent, predictable output, it’s too unreliable & confusing for any but the simplest tasks, like sliding notes around without changing the duration of anything. Too bad, b/c a straightforward Insert Mode could be one of Dorico’s most powerful and useful features. There’s a reason why MS Word and so many other applications default to their own Insert Modes.

Janus, I just downloaded a new copy of the Dorico Operations Manual, and it’s still 4.1.0. Apparently, the Web version is 4.2, but the PDF is 4.1.

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click the top of the red line and drag it upwards (off the score) - it will turn into a line of dots - release and it will disappear.

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Program updates always come with an updated Version History and usually multiple videos on the new or changed features. I makes sense to take advantage of them.

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You can easily remove the stop line by typing Shift-Alt-I again, or click the red :no_entry: button in the system track. (See also this thread from a few days ago.)

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The online manual is for 4.20

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It works fine for me! (ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, Alt-click, R all behave as expected)

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Nope, doesn’t work. Are you using the Win64 version?

Shift-Alt-I does work, though, which is good enough for me.

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Yes I am. Win10.

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Just confirmed again. Copy/Paste absolutely, consistently, does not work on my machine when I enable Global Insert.

If you select a cluster of notes, hit Ctrl-C, select some other part of the score, hit Ctrl-V – and do all of this when Insert Global is enabled – the original instance of the copied notes remains in the score?

That’s not what happening here. Everything works normally when I disable Insert Mode.

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Yes, the original remains in the score and the copy is added, wherever I place it, along with rests in all other parts.

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Possible explanation:

I tried the copy/paste/Insert experiment on several files. I found that some files that I had created with earlier versions of Dorico (including 4.1), and that had been updated automatically the first time I loaded them into 4.2, exhibited this anomalous behavior. Copy/Paste acts like Cut/Paste when in Insert Global Mode.

However, I created a new blank file in 4.2, which worked fine. Janus, do you have any scores that go back a year or so to experiment on?

I realize that there are many other variables that might explain what’s going on, but this possible issue is worth investigating.

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Old files work too (Tested on a 2017 file).

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No, false alarm. I found some files created in 4.1 that worked correctly in Insert mode. Doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason…

So, with Janus’s help, I’ve confirmed that the problem is a function of, at least, some file-specific characteristic. That’s progress. I was a software engineer in a previous career, but without a developer’s product-specific knowledge, I don’t think I can say anything else halfway-intelligent about what could be causing the problem.

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OK, found one more thing. If I copy & paste to the same player, every test I’ve tried works. If I paste to a different player, content is SOMETIMES moved, not copied – but not always.
Arg.

Also, I found that I can delete the Stop Position bar by dragging it off the last measure of a page – while in Page View. In Galley View, I think it can only be dragged off the first or last measure of the entire flow. Shift-Alt-I still works in either case.

Getting there…