It would be nice to be able to lock the music, before starting on the engraving phase.
What do you mean by locking? Engrave mode won’t allow you to change musical paramenters by design.
If you mean lock systems, you can do that in Engrave mode.
The problem is (was) that I constantly ended up inadvertently making changes, because click-selecting in Engrave is very fiddly, and it was far too easy to jump from Engrave mode to Writing mode without noticing (I would recommend there be an option to have a different paper/background colour in different modes, so that this diffence is more obvious). But I just discovered that I can stop that jump from happening on a double-click, so that should improve things. Nevertheless, it seems an obvious thing to have a write-protect option, since Dorico is so clearly designed on separation of writing and engraving.
There’s an application preference to turn off switching to Note Entry on a double-click. That will stop accidentally moving to Write mode when you’re trying to Engrave.
Yes, in fact you can do two things: ensure the select tool (the arrow at the bottom of the note input toolbox in Write mode) is switched on, and also set the preference such that double-clicking doesn’t switch to Write mode.
Thanks, yes that preference was what I had found out, and it helped a lot (though I still managed to lose a bar of music somehow…). Nevertheless, I think my suggestions are worthy of consideration (making the difference between Write and Engrave mode more obvious visually), and ideally a lock-music option.
Dear justus,
The different panels around are really different between write and engrave mode… I guess you must have a very big screen to get confused between those two modes.
However, having worked quite for a long time with Sib, I find that it is very more unlikely to move or modify the music content in Dorico. Your idea is probably worth noting though.
I agree that some visual indicator of what mode you’re in would be useful. I also used to get confused occasionally between Write and Engrave mode (even on my small laptop screen – small enough that I hide the side panels until I need them!). Then, one day I happened to leave Engrave > Show Handles > Always turned on, and since then it’s been impossible to get confused.
I also agree that it’s way easier to accidentally move stuff around, sometimes quite dramatically, in Sibelius than in Dorico. Music in Dorico feels a lot more sturdy. On the other hand, Sibelius does (or did?) make a very obvious visual change when you switched between score and parts, by changing the colour or texture of the “paper”. I’m not suggesting that this specific change would work in the Dorico idiom, but it did mean you never got confused what “view” you were in.
By Default, you can see the frame edges around music and text frames in Engrave mode. Engrave mode is always Page View.
I’d say those were pretty good indicators. There’s also the large tabs highlighted in Blue, saying “Engrave” or “Write”. Though you can hide those. Write mode always shows the panel icons on the left and right, even with all the panels hidden/closed. And the menu bar will either have a Write menu or an Engrave menu.
All true. But evidently not enough to eliminate confusion for a maximally unobservant user like me!