I have a big band template that has trombones 1,2,3 and bass trombone. In that template, I added a condensing group for all 4 trombones in one system. And that works as expected.
However, one client has bones 1, 2 and bass (no bone 3.). For those projects, I copy the template, and immediately delete the 3rd bone player and layout. In the condensed score, that leaves the condensing group as:
Notice the superfluous comma. That group does not condense the bass bone with the others.
I have to delete that condensing group, then create it again with 3 bones. It seems to me that if you delete players, the condensing groups should adjust.
I think I’d describe it slightly differently. The custom group is still there, but it now has a void in the third position, and that void is preventing the three remaining players from condensing. Prior to deleting Bone 3, all 4 players could condense to a single system if all the other condensing rules were satisfied. When the Bone 3 player is deleted, the bass bone can never condense with bones 1 & 2, even though there is a (malformed) manual condensing group in place to do exactly that.
Yes, in this case I want all 3 trombones (1, 2, and bass) to condense together when possible. That works if I recreate the group from scratch. But if I have a group with Bones 1,2,3, and bass, and then I delete Bone 3, I should be left with a manual condensing group of Bones 1,2, and bass. It almost works that way, but the condensing group is not adjusted properly when a player is deleted.
I reckon not. Look, I get it that IT professionals don’t like people commenting on the difficulty of tasks when they have no visibility into the internals. I did IT professionally for 42 years. I understand the ego part of the job.
I don’t believe this one is complicated. It should simply be a matter that, when a player is deleted, you also need to chase through the collections of manual condensing groups and remove any residue there.
Being a former IT person, you should know that unless one understands the internal structure of the programming and back-end data structures, one cannot deduce how difficult a change might be.
It is not just ego, at least not on the programmers’ side.
Nah. The Dorico team does amazing work on a very complex problem. But this one is not complex. It is just a matter of a little housekeeping that was overlooked. I realize they have lots of big challenges, and this one is a very small problem that would rarely occur with the workflow most people use. I trust they will get around to it at some point, and when that happens, it literally will be 10 minutes (for the code fix and maybe a half hour of regression testing tops). Trust me. I’ve done stuff like that 1000 times.
I would not comment on the scope of complex issues, but this is obviously not a complex issue. It is just a matter of container hygiene.
