Looking at the example in the specs one would assume the scoring software should render the text as defined in rehearsal element text.
Dorico does not do that, but instead overwrites the value by its own sequencing algorithm. Worse: if one uses suffix in a rehearsal mark in Dorico, exports that to musicXml and imports back to Dorico, the suffix is lost.
The root cause is lack of custom, non-generated rehearsal marks, which Dorico enforces even on musicxml import.
Dorico does indeed attempt to coerce the rehearsal mark data into either a numeric or alphabetic form on input. Can you say a bit more about your specific requirements?
The musicXML that I receive has custom named rehearsal elements. Could be “intro”, “verse”, “chorus” or any other string.
When importing such musicXml file, Musescore and Logic respect those names and show them in the rehearsal marks, Dorico does not, which seems non-standard to me.
Thanks for the feedback. Dorico does not have a feature to show a completely arbitrary text string in a rehearsal mark, so there is not a direct correlation between what MusicXML allows and the practice of other music notation applications and Dorico’s approach. So I’m afraid it wouldn’t be simple to import these rehearsal marks in that way, and we have no immediate plans to try.