It would be helpful, as a newbie Dorico user, to read the philosophy behind how the keystrokes were chosen. Knowing why makes it easier to remember. This is especially useful for the Shift, Alt, Cntl and combinations thereof. But it might also be useful for some of the other commands. Many of them seem obvious, like Shift-L for Lyrics. (But why was shift chosen instead of just “L”? I can guess, but what was going on in the architect’s mind?)
Knowing why is easier than trying to figure out the patterns reading through the list.
It seems to me that the popover is always invoked with the Shift key; the only exception I commonly use is Shift-A for rehearsal marks (also Shift-S to stop slurs). Unmodified keys are for the musical “atoms” - notes, rhythms, accidentals, articulations, playback; and a few others like moving to higher/lower staves, slurs, repeats, etc.
After that it gets harder, but I’ve gotten used to shift-alt arrows for lengthening/shortening notes, and (I just found out about this) command-alt arrows for moving passages forward or backward - amazingly useful.
I agree with you, it would be nice to have some philosophy behind this in the documentation; maybe in the “Dorico concepts” section near the beginning.
A great request.
I find myselft often wondering why I have to press so many keys at the same time (Ctrl+Alt+Arrow, Shift+Alt+Arrow,…) that need both hands when I would prefer to keep one hand on the mouse or on the piano.
While I’m thinking of it… Maybe Daniel has already posted about this in his blog?