Pro 3 Condensing Behavior Comments

I begged for, and am ecstatic over the new condensing feature. However it (or I) have a way to go for true happiness, as the following project snippet demonstrates:

  1. Cannot select any object in full score condensed staves for editing (a must have);
  2. Cannot force the Tenor/Bass line to Bass Clef without getting both lines one octave too high (not shown; known bug);
  3. Quarter note triplets fail to be condensed (everywhere);
  4. Bass line at Meas. 7 shows out of range but it is not (see Bass part);
  5. Identical dynamic markings not consolidated Alto + Tenor (Meas. 18-20);
  6. Ibid, “dim. poco a poco” Meas. 21;
  7. Trailing rests in Bass from Meas. 14 need to be automatically hidden/removed.

“Condensing” as it gets more sophisticated probably needs some setup parameters to help it decide when to show a phrase as “a2” versus two voices, though requiring the phrases to be absolutely identical (including all markings) is not unreasonable.

Finally, some of these anomalies (and others related to making full scores more readable) strongly argue for a flag on every object that is “Hide in Score” and/or “Hide in Part”. Just because Sibelius has it doesn’t mean that it is not for Dorico; it’s an expected feature in any notation software, IMHO. The most egregious items for me are dynamic markings and hairpins, which can really clutter up a full score. If the entire string section, for example, is playing strongly-related material, I can sacrifice (in the score, only) all the dynamics except on one of the 5 parts, to get my intent across.

Thanks for a great program! Music in the snippet/project is (c) 2019 All rights reserved.


Dorico Behavior Report #1.zip (424 KB)

It’s called condensing.

  1. Yeah, this is how it works. You can select any object in condensed staves in Engrave mode, of course.
  2. Sure.
  3. Not “everywhere”. For example, delete bar 6 in both tenor and bass, and you get this:

  1. It’s out of the range of the Tenor range. The team have already stated many times that they intend to improve condensing of choral stuff.
  2. They might look identical, but as far as Dorico’s concerned, they’re not identical. They’re grouped differently. Select each dynamic and see which others are highlighted orange/blue. edit: wait a sec. Why should Alto and Tenor dynamics condense? They’re two separate staves! Bearing in mind that this functionality is designed for orchestral stuff and hasn’t yet been fully honed for choral stuff, would you really expect flutes and oboes to share the same dynamics?
  3. Ditto.