I have only been exploring Dorico for a few days and as time has allowed, but I already I like much of what I have learned about the program, the interface and its methodology. Nevertheless, as someone who does a lot of choral/vocal setting work (currently on Sibelius 7.5) on a daily basis, I miss the pasting lyrics function of Sibelius and wonder when this is likely to become a feature of Dorico? Or maybe it is in there somewhere?
I have tried searching for this topic, without success, but I apologise if I have missed something along the way. Any help would be much appreciated!
Thank you for your response John and it’s good to know it’s on the list. I hope it is sooner rather later in the time-scale though, as it would be such a useful time-saver to have it available.
If there were a way of pasting lyrics where words separated by a non-breaking space could be assigned automatically to one note that would speed my weekly Responsorial Psalm composition significantly.
I just tried this, Michael, and it worked OK for me, even without a non-breaking space. If I copy the words I want to be attached to a single rhythmic position in e.g. TextWrangler and then paste them into the lyrics popover in Dorico, all of the words end up attached to that note, spaces and all.
That is because you need to use “non breaking spaces”. At least on mac, it’s alt+shift+space. Now, I rarely C&P in lyrics, so it’s possible that the behavior in this regard is slightly different between copying and typing in anew. YMMV
If you want all those words on one note, then as Romanos says, you need to use non-breaking spaces.
Typing a non-breaking space in Dorico is Alt Shift Space, but in BBEdit (and other Mac apps) it will be just Alt Space. (You can of course do a search and replace.)
If you want each word/syllable to go onto a separate note, then pressing Command V again will paste the next one.
Thanks @Romanos and @benwiggy . I did do a search-and-replace on spaces, and that helped. Although, as we know, when choral music has reciting notes, then one needs the first half of the line with non-breaking spaces, and the second half of the line with breaking spaces. It is fiddly to copy and paste with that requirement.
What I finally wanted to pick up on here, is that @dspreadbury gave different advice in reply 4 above:
And in the excellent tutorial on a similar subject, he says:
You can also copy and paste text with spaces in it into a single lyric if you find that easier.
I was rather hoping that there was some sort of paste-special command that pasted text with spaces into one lyrics popover. I guess I could make one in Keyboard Maestro.
Just realize that Daniel’s brilliant article was written almost five years ago in a vastly different version of Dorico. Although his approach there may still be valid (certainly parts are very much so), much about Dorico has changed since, so that different approaches may now be more effective.
The article on laying out Preces and Responses in Dorico was one of the reasons I switched from Finale - it show that it is possible to achieve a complicated layout, that was really hard to get right in Finale. I recommend it.
Regarding pasting lyrics, it would be unusual for functionality to be lost in a new app version (although Finale managed it when they unbundled their music scanning software from Finale).
Since you’re using BBEdit, you have fantastic grep-search capabilities available. Here’s a method to speed up and semi-automate the space substitution in lots of lines:
Mark by hand the halfway point of each line with an unused dummy character. For this example I’ll use a bullet • (Option-8).
Search for space plus (?=.+•) and replace with a hard space
Search & replace to remove the dummy characters
In English, what that does is find spaces only where they are followed by one or more characters (i.e. a word) plus the dummy character. So the spaces after the half-line remain untouched.
@GJHD
Salve e scusa se ti parlo in italiano.
Spero di aver capito la tua richiesta.
Con Pages, (software di scrittura per Mac) scrivo tutto il testo rispettando sillabe, spazi e vari trattini come dovessi usare il popover di Dorico; poi seleziono tutto e copio (command C) poi vado in Dorico, seleziono la prima nota, apro il popover della lirica e poi, tenendo premuto command, tengo premuto V fino a quando non arrivo alla fine del testo. Il procedimento è abbastanza veloce. Buona Musica.