After seeing quite a few posts by disappointed users without an iPad, I wanted to gather and share new features and improvements in the iPad version that I hope we may see in Dorico 4. Not sure if everything will make it, but Daniel has indicated in the blog post that much of it will.
UI improvements:
- Visual tweaks of icons etc
- Redesigned mixer
- Redesigned midi editors using Qt quick framework:
«As the beautiful and powerful new Key Editor in Dorico for iPad demonstrates, Qt Quick will provide us with the means to build higher-performance, smoother and more polished user interfaces, and over time we will migrate more and more of the application to this framework, with the promise of even greater performance gains in the future.» https://blog.dorico.com/2021/07/how-dorico-came-to-the-ipad-the-behind-the-scenes-story/
New properties:
- Accidental scale
- Tie segment thickness
- Rest editing in percussion kits
Hub improvements
- Including the VERY useful automatic creation of time and key signatures as well as bars, and my new favorite «Project will use multiple flows» toggle. I can see why this was all abandoned in the initial design philosophy, but in practical use it makes setting up quick lead sheets smoother.
Setup mode:
- Solo/selection player toggle
- Ensemble builder
- Player sorting
New options:
- Preferences
- Snap system and frame breaks to barlines
- Detect grace notes, slurs, tremolos and trills in midi recording
- Layout options:
- Show player name instead of instrument name
- Notation options:
- Hide key signatures at start of systems following first system
- Hide clefs at start of systems following first system
Various stuff that has been requested a lot:
- Read view (would love to see this in Dorico 4, although I have a feeling we won’t)
- Histograms
- M1 Native(?)
- Transformation tools (sounds very powerful!)
- On-screen Keyboard, fretboard and drum pad input
- Piano roll editor in write mode
- Hints of midi regions
- Simple engraving tools in Elements
I’m sure there’s more in the iPad version, but this already seems like a great collection of new stuff for Dorico 4.