Popover for menu items and property options?

Currently we have popover for quite some things, that’s great – but when I need to reach for menu items (say, changing noteheads, splitting beams, creating stemlets) or property options (change the look of triplets, silencing notes, switching strings), in most cases I still need to do quite some mouse clicks. Sure, assigning key command is a way to go, but those features are not used in a day to day basis so it would be a question of who to assign and how complicated should it be.

So, maybe having a popover would solve such problem. Let’s have “Shift + . (dot)”, or maybe “Shift + U” for “menU”, which would bring up a popover, that I can type something like “beam” and it would have commands like “split beam” and “join together” show up in the drop down, and I can select what I want and do it that way. Same for properties, it can share the same popover, or maybe another one (Say, “Shift + K” for “looK”), and I can type things like “type” on a slur and have all the slur type options available in the drop down, along with a “default”. Or if I know what I want I can type “type flat”.

Such kind of thing is more or less expected for programming IDEs, but I’d say composing/notating is equally keyboard intensive so anything that can reduce mouse click is preferred, when it can be done.

We have discussed this kind of thing before, a kind of Alfred or Spotlight for Dorico, and we do hope to implement something like this in future.

Yes! Great idea! The more we can do without the mouse, the better!

You mean like this?


Screenshot.png

Yes, but at the popover location rather than on the top (top center or top right), and it’s in context with whatever is selected, aka say if I select a slur or a hairpin, I would get different options listed when I type “style” (for slur it would be normal, flat, etc.; for hairpin it would be hairpin, cresc., cresc…, etc.).