popup position / slash notation ...

for me that’s the key… why is a particular interpretation for a musical symbol confined by someone else’s convention?

ok… we’re out of school now and can create and re-create musical symbols.

perhaps i want > over a note to mean something else than the standard interpretation?

in that case placing it anywhere within a string of tied notes would make sense.

…in that case, you are free to create a custom playing technique with the articulation you want, and assign it to your heart’s content. Flexibility!

We all get tweaked here and there by Dorico’s rules, but in the end, I’m glad for them. Even when I’m not.

In the properties panel, you can set if you want an articulation to be set on the first note of a tie chain or the last one… I understand this might not be enough for you, but I thought it had to be expressed, for the sake of the fellow Doricians who read this thread and might not know about this property.

i’m playing devil’s advocate here.

i realize that i can create a custom playing technique to do what i want but i also understand that there seems to be some disconnect between what can be placed independently using the carat (shift-N) and what can’t.

it would seem to me a simple solution to allow any musical symbol to be placed anywhere within a chain of tied notes without having to make a custom playing technique.

but that’s just me…

You can place a “musical symbol” anywhere within a chain of tied notes – that’s what playing techniques are. Articulations, on the other hand, are not “musical symbols” but rather specific instructions for how to play the attack or release portion of a note.

It might be consistent and logical but it’s not really user friendly. The best would be if that popover would be a floating layer that behaves kind of like the “sticky” property in CSS, i. e. it would be positioned at the start of the selection while it’s within the viewport, and as soon as it’s outside it would stick to the edge(s) of the viewport that is/are closest to the start of the selection. Basically like the player/instrument names, clefs, and accidentals in galley view.

“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell”

― Carl Sandburg

I guess you have never been caught out by a clef change that “vanishes” in galley view when the “floating clef” appears on top of the changed clef, leaving the displayed notes and clef inconsistent with each other!

I’ll go for “predictable” over “friendly,” as a general rule :wink:

If I find a user interface consistent and logical, it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’ll become friends.

A basic rule of thumb of good user interface design is that it gives you feedback to your actions. “Don’t make me think” is the main principle. Open or save a file and it should give you some progress indicator (or any sign that it’s doing something). Click a button and it should show you the state of it (active/inactive).

Likewise, press a keyboard shortcut and a good UI will react in some way. If you press the keys and you don’t get any feedback because all the action takes place outside of the viewport, that’s confusing at best.

“Don’t make me think” sounds like a problematic philosophy, for software or anywhere else.

My two pennies say popover should always show where the focus of the screen is… And ideally Dorico would remember my viewing preference on each file…

It actually doesn’t make sense at all to open a pop up window out of view. It’s a visual feedback of what you’re doing without the visual and the feedback.

From a construction standpoint the popup might be at the ‘correct’ place because it normally should be at the beginning of a selection. But if this selection is out of screen the construction has to make an exception to keep the function of the visual feedback.

If the visual feedback is not needed for the function you could drop the complete popup window concept and keep it as the row of key commands (what it actually is). That would be consequent. But “sometimes I see it and sometimes I don’t” is not a consistent and logical interface. Even if you know why.

It’s not a drama the way it is now. But it should be corrected some day.

No, it makes perfect sense in user interface design. It doesn’t mean that the user should stop thinking and blindly follow the algorithm, it means that it should be easy and intuitive for people to use an interface, they shouldn’t have to wonder what a button does or even whether or not an element is interactive at all, it should be clear on first sight. That’s the philosophy.

A popover that opens outside of the viewport without any feedback to the user does make the user think (“What’s up? Nothing happened when I pressed the keys? Have I done anything wrong?”), and that’s in need of improvement.

I know what the problem is/was: when the propbel occurs, it occurs with imported XML files.
Example:
Bildschirmfoto 2019-07-24 um 09.24.33.png
Bildschirmfoto 2019-07-24 um 09.24.26.png

Yes, that’s what I thought, too. That would be a perfect solution !

I have a long note of 40 bars in the strings…my question:
are the only 2 ways to enter a decrescendo the last 2 bars to change to note input in the first bar, navigate my caret to bar 38 and then enter a decrescendo?
or un-tie all 40 bars, enter my decrescendo and tie all 40 bars again?
I hope there’s an easier way, cause that’s one of the reasons why I struggle so much with the way Dorico handles ties…

Assuming someone else in the score is playing untied notes at this point, select something in bar 38 on their stave, invoke the caret and use the up/down arrows to take you to the string staves.

In the unlikely event that absolutely nothing else is happening for the last 40 bars, you can always select the final barline of the flow, then invoke the caret, then use the up/down keys to get to the correct stave, then take it back a couple of bars using the Ctrl/Cmd+Left twice.

Yes !!! Great tips again…thanx a lot Leo !!! :slight_smile:

Come to think of it, if there’s stuff going on in other staves in bar 38-40, you could place a hairpin on one of those staves and then use the Move To Stave Above/Below command to get it to the string staves.