Hi,
I just stumbled over a little problem with a hairpin on a system break.
Please look at the attachesd example. As you can see, I have shortended the haiprin in Engrave mode.
Now insert a system break before bar 6. Now the offset of the hairpin is attached to te first part of the hairpin before the system break instead of end of the hairpin in bar 6. I hope this could be changed.
gradual dynamic.zip (503 KB)
This is working as designed, and I don’t anticipate changing it. When the hairpin is split over a system break, the edits you have made to its properties persist with the segment of the hairpin on which they were set. You set the horizontal position of the end of the first (and only) segment of the hairpin, but that data is still associated with and valid for that first segment of the hairpin when a second segment is created. You’ll need to use Reset Position if you want to remove these properties.
Daniel, your answer is a bit worrying. I just noticed this behaviour on a piece I was just finishing. After some changes, a hairpin was split between two systems and I just noticed the change by fortune. I never would have thought, that a hairpin I’ve changed at the end is suddenly changed in the middle, only because it is split over two systems. This can’t be the way you want this to happen, even if there are some boring technical reasons for this behaviour!
I believe the expectation is that users will create hairpins that are the correct length, in Write mode. It doesn’t take long and it definitely solves the problem.
I believe the expectation is that users, if there is a need to change something in Engrave mode, want the changes to stay where they were done. This is the whole point of Engrave mode for me: graphical fine tuning!
My example was of course just a very simple case to show, what the problem is. But the piece, where I found this problem, has very tight notation, because things have to fit onto 2 pages and there are other elements in this situation which made the change necessary.
As I wrote this is a little problem, because I stumbled over this for the first time after 3 years of extensive use of Dorico. Nevertheless it worries me, that I can’t trust Dorico to keep my changes in a sensible way and have to check everything again!
In general we try not to delete data that you might still find useful. The casting off could change in a transitory fashion because of an edit elsewhere on the system. If you then made a further edit such that the casting off goes back to how it was before, wouldn’t you then be equally perturbed to find that the edit had been removed, even though now the casting off has gone back to how it was before?
The simple fact is this: the property is stored relative to the segment of the hairpin, even if there is only one segment. If another segment comes into being, Dorico does not remove properties from the first segment (this would be deleting data that can still apply, e.g. would you want it to remove the vertical offset in such a circumstance? of course you wouldn’t!).
I don’t think this is unreasonable behaviour, nor do I think it is contrary to the general philsophy of how the program operates, which is that wherever possible we will retain edits you have made in Engrave mode unless you explicitly remove them.
Daniel, I would prefer to lead this discussion in German, but you have tot cope with my English. I’ve just tried some other stuff and found out, that the behaviour is very consistent in Dorico.
everything_is_broken.zip (508 KB)
From a musical point of view, all four items are still one object: one hairpin, one slur, one ritardando and one line. Even Dorico still “think’s” of them as one element: if you delete one part of it, everything will be deleted. It is different to splitting e.g. a half note with an accent into to quarter notes. There you get to independent items, which both have got an accent. But in these cases I wrote down in the example project, it doesn’t make sense to me (from a musical point of view), that Dorico creates a gap in between single elements. It’s your decision and I will get along with it, but I am still not convinced, that this is a good and sensible way of doing it. It is of course good to retain the edits, but I would prefer to keep them in the right place! You’ve done miracles with condensing and other stuff, so I doubt that you are not able to make this behaviour smarter!
Your English is totally clear, Heiko (infinitely better than my German). Dorico does of course think of all of these things as a single item, yes, and it treats them that way too. I’ve explained how items that span multiple systems work: each segment of the item can have its own properties, and those properties are applied if that segment exists. That’s the end of it. If you change the casting off after making adjustments in Engrave mode, you should check to see whether the adjustments you made before still make sense. This would be the case whether Dorico retains the edits or removes them.