Multi-select bars requires that you click any to start but on a note to end

This bites me again and again. I want to select some number of bars, so I click anywhere in the first bar, scroll right and shift-click anywhere in the last bar.
Whoops! That just deselected everything. Scroll back, select first bar again, scroll right, and shift-click on the last note in the last bar. Now it works.
Can this be made more consistent so that clicking in a bar away from existing notes/rests selects the whole bar, regardless of first or last?

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That is strange. It works for me until there is a note tied over from the bar before which fills the last bar. (my english!, but see the video).
strange selecting

Yeah, same thing here. It is not enough to click into the last bar, when there is a note “only” reaching into this bar.
Totally throws me off every time. Not only that the selection does not get extended to this bar, the fact that the inital selection is gone really is a bummer.

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This happens when there is nothing that starts in the bar. You can’t select a bar with only a tied-to whole note by clicking it at all. The same with extending a selection. I am caught out by this occasionally, but I understand the logic.

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There’s no need to scroll back to the start and reselect the first bar; Cmd/Ctrl-Z will get you the initial selection back.

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^z does seem to solve that part of it. Thanks for that! I hadn’t noticed that a tie to the previous bar made a difference, but in fact it does. I so often syncopate things that I’m often in that position.
It still seems to me that it should act the same, whether or not the note starts in the last bar. It sounds like it starts in the previous bar (or wherever) but visually it’s just a note in the bar. Maybe I want to copy the bar somewhere else, tied to a note ahead of that spot.
This reminds me of a related issue: what if I want to tie a note into both a 1st and 2nd ending? I can’t find a way to do it. Or if I want to tie a note into a slash region, indicating that the 1st note is anticipated? This is common in jazz drum parts.
Sometimes the inviolable tie is a benefit but mostly it makes a lot of extra work - for example, when I have tied the 4 horns into a half note and decide that the duration should be longer. I need to untie, then multi-select and press “.” then re-tie. I wish I could just select the 4 half notes and press “.”.

The l.v. slur is probably the best way to achieve this.

As you can see, the horns end the figure anticipating the final note. The drums are told to double the hemiola then resume time. I can’t tell the drummer to anticipate the start of the slash bar, as opposed to hitting the final 8th in the first bar and the first 8th in the second bar. I would like to enter a tie between the highlighted notes. I tried a slur, but that skips the slash bar.

The manual has something called “laissez vibrer tie”, which appears to do what I want.

Yep, that is what l.v. stands for

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Yes, but is this really expexcted behavior?

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I, too, frequently fall foul of this quirk. I know I should remember to get it right but I curse myself when it happens. As with @derhannes, I wonder is this is truly expected behaviour?

I can, after all, select empty bars elsewhere, just not with a tie running into it.

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“Empty” bars have a bar rest in them, while tied-to (full) bars have no objects.

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Hi Mark, As a programmer, I understand that. But if a user has to know how the software stores its semantic data in an object container, rather than using their eyes, there is something wrong.

Then again, we are entering the “intuitive” argument, which has been aired many times :o)

I believe that intent of Dorico is to model written music, in which context it makes no sense to say there is nothing in a bar with a tied-to note.

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Like others in this thread, I still shift-click on bar with a tied note, expecting to make a multi-bar selection, only to have the whole thing go away. Thanks to Leo for reminding me that we can hit Undo to fix it.

In case no one has made the suggestion, I’d like to make a feature request to enable this shift-click behavior in an “empty” bar with a held-over tied note. It’s not a priority for me, but I still do it all the time, and get annoyed. I think enabling this would make Dorico a little easier to use.

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I would extend the feature request to allow clicking on such a bar at all to select the note(s) in it even when they start earlier. I don’t know how possible that might be. Daniel?

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I like (indeed prefer) the Dorico approach to shift-click selection. It allows me to be precise about what is selected.

I respect all these contributors, but worry they have not yet internalised the Dorico model, which is so important to understand things like insert mode, force duration, extending notes, shifting notes along the grid or changing meter and note grouping. etc. etc..

(@jrandall It makes perfect sense. The note exists in the previous bar and is notated by extending it into the next bar)

(@Beechside That’s because you are not selecting an empty bar. You are selecting a rest)

Janus,

Like you, I have disciplined myself to select the start of tied notes in this situation, and sometimes folks give reasons that sound a bit like “I want what I want.”
But if programming Dorico to accept clicks on any part of a tied note is not asking too much, it seems a reasonable goodwill gesture for the Development Team to make to save frustration on the part of those users who (for whatever reason) forget.
I suspect some of us use Dorico much more frequently than others, which helps us remember the current situation.

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This could have collateral damage if you only wanted to select material up to the prior bar - would that include or exclude any note that tied over the following bar? What about notes in other voices (which is most often my use case) - a blanket select the bar is not what you want.