Keyboard Shortcut Options in Dorico

Dorico
#1

Hi,

I’m curious how Dorico will handle keyboard shortcuts. Are we going to be able to have a full range of custom shortcuts early on, or will this need to be added into the software at a later date?

Also, will it be possible for multi-letter key combinations to be available?.. Either early on, or at some later date?


This isn’t going to be a deal breaker for me, but there will be a huge advantage if we’re able to use more than a single letter key at a time… in addition to the standard modifiers (alt, ctrl, shift, opt…).

I more or less plan on growing old with Dorico […hopefully slowly] — and it will be wonderful if Dorico by design will support (the easy to remember) multi-letter key combinations straight out of the gate.


Best Wishes for a fantastic release in Q4, and Good Luck,


Jim

#2

And UNDO as a single key shortcut !

#3

I discovered this option today, and I am very interessted to know about it more. Let’s say to show “about Dorico” I set a shortcut “D,O,R” and it works, if you type these letters one after another, even if something in a score is selected. In this case when you type “O” after “D” - “Force Duration” wont be activated. It’s great! If I set Cmd+D,O,R this command works when nothing is selected. When some item is selected, “Force Duration” will be activated. It is just an example. Could you tell me please how can I understand rules and a whole concept - what is possible and what isn’t? I would love to create my own shortcuts with multiple-letters in order to separate them from original Dorico shortcuts. Thank you

#4

This is a feature of the underlying Qt application framework, and we’re not doing anything special to either allow or prevent its use. I wouldn’t say that multi-key shortcuts are expressly supported, since maintaining them is not currently part of what we test and consider a feature of the program, but barring any major changes to the underlying framework I expect they will continue to work. The only documentation provided by the Qt developers is that the shortcut can contain up to four characters, so you can use e.g. Ctrl+C followed by Ctrl+X, but each component on its own must not match another key command, so you can’t actually use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X unless you first remove those shortcuts from Copy and Cut.

#5

Thank you Daniel, trying to understand…“O” ist actually a standard key command in Dorico to activate a Force Duration, but I do not need to change it in order to set a shortcut like in my example D,O,R wich contains “O” as a part of a whole shortcut. I will experiment:)

#6

When you use your “DOR” short cut, are you in a situation where “D” does not stand for “dynamics?”

Dorico shortcuts are context sensitive. For example I have B (without the shift key) as a short cut for “beam notes together” which works after selecting something in the score, but in note entry mode, pressing B still adds the note B to the score.

#7

So far I know Shift+D stands for dynamics, so pressing DOR one letter after another doesn’t conflict. It does what expected. As you said Dorico shortcuts are context sensitive. So Schift+DOR wont work. Or DOR wont work as well, when a caret is activated, because D produces a D pitch.

#8

in play mode it conflicts with D (Draw pencil)
Great find mipi

#9

Nice!

#10

Well, I’m disappointed to see Daniel’s comment above that it’s not officially supported, because it’s AMAZING to have multi-key shortcuts.

So, Daniel, a bit of a plea: Multi-key shortcuts is a fantastic feature! The ease of use of not having to think of ever-more-clever mnemonics when making our shortcuts is a great aid to workflow. (For example, using your Q for chord, I’ve got alt-Q plus digits 1-5 for selecting the first through fifth note in a chord. It’s great!) Please consider officially supporting them.

[EDIT: Removed my bit about a bug when the first key matches another shortcut. Having read what Daniel said about Qt’s documentation, I see it’s expected behavior. It’s too bad, really. When assigning a shortcut, there’s a delay while presumably Qt figures out no more keys are coming. So it seems like it should be possible for Qt to figure it out when the shortcut is being used. I guess that would slow things down though, the same way double click/tap detection does in GUIs. Alas… it would be so cool if we could have sort of “gestural” shortcuts, but that’s on Qt, not Steinberg :slight_smile:]

#11

No, there isn’t a delay, Qt just looks a one character at a time and as soon as it recognizes something that Dorico “knows” how to do, it does it. That’s why you can’t have X and XY as two different shortcuts - when you press X, you get whatever the X shortcut does, without waiting to see if you are going to press Y next.

Imposing a delay could lead to problems for fast typists. In the X and XY situation, what would happen when you want to use the existing shortcut X to add some text starting with the letter Y? Do you have to teach yourself to pause after typing the X, so Dorico doesn’t use your XY shortcut instead?

#12

some I use since yesterday
F for filter
F is used for note entry only when in Caret mode
so
F Q Filter Chord symbol
F N Filter Notes and chords
F 1 Filter 1st from bottom
F 2 Filter 2nd from bottom
F 3 Filter 3d from bottom
F 4 Filter 4th from bottom
F 5 Filter 5th from bottom
F T 1 Filter 1st from top
F T 2 Filter 2nd from top
F T 3 Filter 3d from top
F T 4 Filter 4th from top
F T 5 Filter 5th from top
F D Filter Dynamics
F P T Filter Playing techniques

#13

There is indeed a serious improvement in the workflow with this new freedom and all those accessible things. I will need to settle down and think for a while in order to build a comprehensive setup with my keyboard and the Stream Deck. Thank you team !

#14

As the number of possible shortcuts increases, I wonder if it may someday be useful to have not just a keypress but the possibility of a MIDI code assigned to a shortcut so that one could use a supplementary MIDI keypad to send shortcuts via a dedicated MIDI channel. It looks as if soon folks are going to run out of keyboard combinations for all the shortcuts they want to use.

(As for me, I usually just keep programs (and computer configurations) as “plain vanilla” as possible, as after many years trying to troubleshoot problems on other folks “really cool customized” machines I prefer to keep mine easy to troubleshoot. But I have seen recording studio engineers fly through complex procedures with customized shortcuts, so I understand the attraction.)