I’m a professional composer/arranger for 25+ years, doing the music prep mostly myself.
Coming from Sibelius, I’m currently exploring Dorico, which is quite interesting. It is obviously a much more modern software with very useful new features. (On the contrary, I get the impression, that often a systematic approach is favoured over the practical day-to-day uses, eg. enharmonically changing accidentals).
But what I really wonder: While we are experiencing huge new AI developments day by day in this word (e.g. composition by AI). How can it be, that simple things, as the formatting of parts things are still not at all done automatically, even by a modern software as Dorico?
You still need to find good page turns etc. yourself, what I maybe can somehow understand. But even then, if you e.g. push bars into the previous sytem or frame, why are the remaining bars not spread out evenly over the page?
A function to automatically spread staves across a two-page spread is a reasonable feature request, and one that others have made before as well. If the developers take the time, that’s something that can be coded up so it behaves deterministically and predictably. Whether it’s high on the priority list, I’m not so sure though.
As to why AI-based vibe-engraving isn’t a thing yet: obviously, I and quite a few other engravers have been personally bribing the developers for a number of years now, in order to protect our livelihoods.
I’m not a big fan of most AI. I’ve changed my mind on some applications of it, however. Richard deCosta’s Cantai VST where the voices actually sing one’s lyrics is pretty amazing - still very, very early in its development but still amazing. I also think that using AI for page formatting based on the user’s defined preferences would be quite nice provided we could still over-ride AI decisions if we wanted.
