Hi folks, please forgive me if this has been addressed before.
I’m having an issue with instrument names and I can’t seem to solve it:
Both full names and abbreviated names on subsequent pages revert to earlier settings when a project is reopened. I’ve attached a couple of screen shots. In the “before” picture, I’ve changed the singular full name to “Clarinet 1&2” and plural short name to “Cls.” This is reflected in the score to the right. When I reopen the project, the singular full name has reverted to “Clarinet 1 &” and the score now shows a strange “Clarinet 1 & in Bb 2” I can seem to get my changes to stick. This is shown in the “after” picture. Perhaps it has something to do with the strange name in the “Editing Instrument” field, where it says “1 Clarinet in Bb 2?” I can’t change that field though.
You’re basically getting into a fight with Dorico’s automated numbering that you probably can’t win at the moment, I’m afraid. Dorico has its own way of handling instrument numbering, as you might be aware, and it’s grabbing the last number off the end of the name and treating it as an automatic number.
I’ll try to think of a possible workaround you might be able to use in the meantime, but my gut feeling is that with Dorico’s current behaviour you may well not be able to get the result that you want, which I know is pretty bad.
Yes, I’d be fine with the latter, but the problem is that every time I try to make a change, the next time I open the project after saving it has reverted to the incorrect name. The change never sticks. Daniel has acknowledged and I hope he’s able to come up with a work-around for now! Would be very interested to know. Worst-case scenario is that I make the changes to name directly before printing or exporting for now.
Oh, I thought it was the ending figure that did it, since Daniel said: “it’s grabbing the last number off the end of the name and treating it as an automatic number.”
Unfortunately, no. The problem seems to be deeper. For now, I’m just going about my work in the score. When the time comes to print or export, I’ll change the instrument names just before I do so. Unfortunately, when I reopen the score the next time, those changes will be lost.
Hoping Daniel can come up with a “quick fix” before the underlying issue is addressed later.
I’m sorry to say that I have not. For a project I was working on myself recently I ended up having to work around Dorico’s limitations in staff labeling by setting the instruments to have no names at all (by using the Edit Name dialog accessed from the instrument held by each player in the Players panel), and then resorted to putting in the required names using Shift+X text. This is obviously a very long way from ideal. In my case, I only needed to show the names at the start of each flow, because it was a work for choir and organ and it was not necessary to show the names on each system, so this wasn’t too laborious, but it wouldn’t have been much fun if I would have had to have done this at the start of every system.
We are hoping to make some progress on these kinds of issues before the next update, but at this stage I can’t guarantee that we will manage it.
That’s a very honest and fair response, Daniel. For now, my work around is just changing names directly before I need to print. Sure, the next time I open the score it’s back to square one, but at least I can get the printout I need. Looking forward to seeing this addressed in the future.
Speaking of instrument names, do you think something like this (see attached image) will be possible in a further update?
I don’t mean to be out of topic, but might this problem find its solution together with the future handling of divisi and staves with more than one performer ?
