I was looking forward to Dorico 2.1 very hopefully. I thought, the new notehead-editor could solve a problem I’m dealing with since many years (already in Sibelius). The length of ledger lines usually depends on the extent of the notehead. But when I enter e.g. a slashed notehead, Dorico (as well as Sib., Finale etc.) takes the left and the right border of the slash as the extension of the notehead. So the ledger lines are too long in both directions.
Notehead Extension and Ledger Lines.png
In Dorico I can check “ledger lines” in engrave mode and adjust them manually. Not bad – but I would prefer an automatic solution. AND: The shortening of the ledger-line in combination with an accidential is switched off. Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell Dorico, from where to where the real notehead goes and which graphical additions are to be considered as “off limits”? And wouldn’t the new note-editior the right tool to do that?
Ben
That’s a good idea, Ben. At the moment, noteheads don’t store any data about ledger lines, but this is certainly something we can add in future. I’m afraid I can’t commit to us adding this very soon, but I will definitely make a note of it as something for us to tackle when we can.
So I’m looking forward to future editions – and my preference of Dorico will grow and grow. I absolutely understand that this feature will need some time. But nevertheless it could be interesting to start by making ledger lines editable individually so that I can shorten the second line more than the first one. I imagine this to be a solution easier (and maybe faster) to implement than the data-storing-idea you mentioned above. But I must admit that I have not the slightest idea about programming in general and about writing a music notation app in particular.
