Well, strangely enough these synonyms seem to work perfectly fine in other occasions where there’s some inconsistency and the manual uses a different term than the application itself (move caret vs advance caret; create vs input key signature, etc).
A somewhat related issue happened to me with “note length conditions” when I was putting together a bunch of expression maps and needed to refer to that chart. Even though the manual is online and searchable, I ended up printing the chart out because searching for it does not return very clear results - or else you really do need to memorize where to look, which link to click and then where to scroll to on the screen to find it.
I completely agree with getting familiar bit and would add “First Steps” and “Dorico Concepts” as required reading. But it makes no sense, and it shouldn’t be necessary to have to learn additional terminology to find stuff in the manual. Plus, while setting everything aside to study it is useful and helpful it is not the only use case for it.
Often people would use search when and because they get stuck in the middle of something, perhaps while “in the flow” creatively, and need the answer right away. Not finding it quickly and reliably in a use case like this might be what’s contributing to frustration in so many threads.
Anyhow, as I said I made my peace with the manual, and I’ll move on now. But the amount of condescension and outright hostility on the forum every time something like this is brought up is really quite striking.
If the guiding principle is “figure out your own synonyms, you lazy schmuck” that’s fine, but then maybe let’s not put user-centric words at the top of the page lest people come expecting it.
