New shortcut for hairpins / F1 shortcut

Dorico
1

Hi all,

how can I assign another shortcut to both hairpins (instead of the <, >). Where do I find that in the key commands preferences?

And is there a way to assign a shortcut to F1 (thus overriding that it goes to Help)?

Thanks!

2

Hi Stefan, I am not at my computer at the moment, but < and > are not just graphical elements in Dorico’s way of thinking, they are another way to display crescendo and diminuendo.
You might look for shortcuts for gradual dynamics.

3

I don’t believe so, but maybe someone officially can advise on that.

And is there a way to assign a shortcut to F1 (thus overriding that it goes to Help)?

This I do know, and the answer is yes, because I have long used F1 for something else. The recent update surprised me when it opened the help page but I simply removed this from the key command editor and all was well again.

4

If you mean a key command for inputting a messa di voce (either <> or >< as a single item showing both hairpins), those already exist. See the page about the dynamics popover (and see the Note, where there’s a tip about adding messa di voce directly, without using the popover).

5

Hey Wing, excellent regarding the F1 thing. I couldnt override it when defining F1 to something else. But it works to first delete the F1 assignment to “Help”. Thanks!

1 Like
6

Hi Lillie,

I simply would like to set another shortcut to what now is “<” (and to what now “>” is).

How can I do that? I just cant find it in the keycommand settings.

Thanks, Stefan

7

Those specific commands don’t appear in the Key Commands editor in Preferences because they are commands that require additional parameters. With a few exceptions, commands that require parameters don’t appear in the Key Commands editor (because making it possible to specify the parameters in full generality is a complicated problem). Typically these days when we add new commands, we tend to do so in such a way that we can avoid parameters, even if it means adding more commands than is strictly necessary, so that we can make them available in the Key Commands editor. These two commands, however, are among the very oldest in Dorico and hence they do use parameters.

If you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can manually edit the keycommands_en.json (or in your case probably keycommands_de.json) file in your user-level application support data. You’ll need to both delete the existing command and define new commands.

Here’s some lines suitable for adding to remove the existing shortcuts:

					{
						"NoteInput.HairpinStart?Type=kGradualDynamicDown&GradualDynamicType=kCrescOrDim": [ "DELETE:>" ]
					},
					{
						"NoteInput.HairpinStart?Type=kGradualDynamicUp&GradualDynamicType=kCrescOrDim": [ "DELETE:<" ]
					},

These need to be added inside the kWriteMode context, i.e. following these lines:

			{
				"context": "kWriteMode",
				"shortcuts": [

You can define your desired shortcuts by adding them after `“DELETE:<” using a comma-separated list. For example, if you want a crescendo hairpin to use the shortcut H (I wonder why you would want that, despite advice to the contrary…) you can write:

					{
						"NoteInput.HairpinStart?Type=kGradualDynamicDown&GradualDynamicType=kCrescOrDim": [ "DELETE:>", "Shift+H" ]
					},
					{
						"NoteInput.HairpinStart?Type=kGradualDynamicUp&GradualDynamicType=kCrescOrDim": [ "DELETE:<", "H" ]
					},

If you make a syntax error in the JSON file, Dorico will fail to start up, or all of your shortcuts will be missing. Paste the entire contents of the JSON file into an online linter (e.g. this one) and check that the syntax is valid before you restart Dorico.