Hi
I’ve been using Dorico quite a while now (approx 1 year).
I’m not sure how to conduct a poll on this here among users but coming from Cubase where moving a midi note up and down is up arrow, down arrow respectively, WITHOUT the need to hold the ALT key modifier makes much much more sense, to me anyway. Am I the only one using Dorico who feels that moving note pitches up and down the stave should be the Up and Down arrow key WITHOUT holding the modifier ALT key?
regards
Martin
Dorico is consistent in its use of arrow keys without modifiers to move around; arrow keys with Alt to move something.
I tend to look on it as a ‘safety catch’, so that accidental key presses don’t move stuff around. (I have a desk cat.)
Martin, if you want to, you can change the key commands to suit yourself, regardless of what any other user thinks. We won’t be changing the defaults, but fortunately that need not bother you: you can change them in the Key Commands page of Preferences.
Consider that the Dorico development team, in the main, previously worked at Sibelius, and Sibelius uses just Up and Down to change the pitches of notes.
I, for one, have seen hundreds of Sibelius errors where a user (sometimes me, sometimes a colleague or a client, sometimes their cat) inadvertently leant on an arrow key (or dragged a note with the mouse when they meant to drag the page).
I have never seen such an error in any of my own Dorico projects or in any client’s Dorico projects.
The idea is that it’s harder to change something by accident, and not spot that accident. It’s a design choice, and I’d be very surprised if it ever changed.
Of course, you can rebind your keycommands if you so wish. The choice is yours.
Ok guys. Just me so perhaps! As you say Daniel I can customise it anyway. Just thought I’d put it to the masses. Thanks for the swift replies
My experience sis that the Dorico Team is always open to suggestions for improvement and adopts them according to their merit rather than by polling users. (Software development is not a democracy.)
I would say the overwhelming mass of Dorico users would support the way the Team approaches evaluating suggestions.
Leo’s defence of the team’s choices for key commands which edit pitches is valid and worth serious consideration. I would strongly advise against throwing such advice to the wind too quickly because of force of habit developed while using other software. I resisted my own temptation to change Dorico’s defaults for entry of note values into Finale’s defaults and, whereas I still occasionally choose an incorrect value, especially after I’ve been sitting at the computer for far too long, I’m glad I stuck to it. The only changes I might make to Dorico’s defaults is when there’s no shortcut for a certain action I often need, or for actions which I’ve found quicker and easier to do in a macro program, like key combinations for pizz. and arco, or for most dynamics (to approach Finale’s metatools: Ctrl-3 is quicker than Shift-D, m, f, return).