I was finally able to make the educational cross grade purchase and installed Dorico last night.
A bit of background first. My notation needs are pretty varied. Everything from standard scoring and arranging of classical, jazz, and pop ensembles to orchestral mockups for film to detailed music examples for scholarly writing (e.g. Schenker graphs).
So playback and engraving features are in equal demand for the things I do, but currently the bulk of my work is on the engraving side, creating examples for articles and books (and that pesky dissertation I’m still writing). I start everything in Finale and at some point (as early as possible) I export as EPS and finish the example in Adobe Illustrator. The flexibility that is afforded by working directly with vector images in Illustrator is unmatched by any of the native features of the big notation apps (I have also used Sibelius for some projects since version 6).
This includes Dorico, unfortunately. However, it is also apparent that the groundwork has been laid for Dorico to potentially become the first app to come close to the flexibility of the “notation app–>Illustrator” combo. The partitioning of entry, engraving, and playback modes is undoubtedly a forward-thinking conceptual step in this regard. If Engrave Mode can eventually become a “move anything anywhere” kind of situation I can easily see myself moving to Dorico permanently.
While I may not be able to use Dorico for my current work I am very encouraged by the basic design choices and am looking forward to seeing how it evolves. This team has obviously put a lot of thought and hard work into this, and I will support them and try to help with feedback as I can.
Best,
Dave