I give up 
. I thought I was getting the hang of this but I do not.
Here is a random project, currentky it will open in write mode, no selection.
Lou Courdéu.dorico (1.1 MB)
Let us say that I want, without any use of the mouse, to select the first note of the top staff of the bar number 80 because I think I have something to fix there. This is not the case, this is just a random sample.
The following key sequence:
6 .E
will select the first note, but I already hate it, because I could not do that if I was not in write mode, and it leaves the project as “needing to be saved” which it is not.
So now what do I do? Hit 79 times the ?
I have tried a lot of things, and certainly the GoTo Bar function will not help me. Neither will Selection functions since they all extend selection (except Deselect All).
I don’t understand your aversion to using the mouse even once.
If one has physical difficulty with that, there must be some adaptive system available to use both inside and outside Dorico.
In Page View, the bar will always become visible in the screen somewhere, but the closer the zoom level, the closer the caret will get to the bar.
This may explain it better (both of these examples used the same command):
The farther zoom level can force the previous page to be in view (first image). This is a problem because when you press Shift+N, the caret will go to the top-left bar. In the first image, this is 29, in the second it is 78.
If it helps, you can always use the up/down arrows to move quickly between systems. If you were looking at image with the caret active, it would take you nine down-arrows to get to the correct system.
(For what it’s worth, I don’t even use this command; I just hold down Cmd/Ctrl+arrow to navigate quickly through the start of each bar. EDIT: this is when I’m on the move. If I’m at home, then Home/End does the trick)
I’m not sure what you mean by “needing to be saved”?
Hello Derek,
It is neither an aversion, nor a disability. I have been working in Dorico using the mouse (or touch pad) a lot, with a vague idea that it might be well to use it less, no more that necessary. Then I found this
in a long topic about unexpected difficulties about big selections made with the mouse. It is true that selections made with the marquee tool can become a nightmare, even though they might work vey well in other cases. I decided to explore “the other way” and to find out how far you could go without mouse,.
I have never used Sibelius so I cannot judge about the differences between Dorico and Sibelius on this point.
I think it would be useful, during Note Input, that the caret moves to the bar you Go to.
Oh !
I has not realized that the top-left meant the visible top-left, depending on scroll and zoom. Yes, that helps quite a lot. The sequence
80
200
followed by the reentry of the note there and again would get me to my destination in about ten keys (what I meant by “needing to be saved” was that the project is immediately marked updated, and actually nothing has changed). This works but is not the simplest thing. I have never use Sibelius, do you know whether it can be considered that it is easier to give the mouse a rest in Sibelius than in Dorico?
I don’t question @k_b 's wisdom in this, but I doubt he tries to forego the mouse altogether. Sometimes it’s the path of least resistance.
Yes of course. I am currenlty trying to determine the best path fro Dorico. I Sibelius went as far as say “Hide your mouse”, it is possible that their path was quite different.