Are there by any chance plans to make Dorico files viewable from the Finder using something like QuickLook? This would be handy, although I can imagine it not being very high in the list of priorities.
There are indeed plans to do this, but itās not imminent, Iām afraid.
QuickLook and Spotlight metadata are two things I miss from Finale**, though I appreciate that they are platform-specific, and so unfair to lavish resources on at this point.
There is a third-party Mac app that supplies InDesign previews: you need the InDesign app for it to work. I donāt know whether some bright spark would be able to āleverageā QL support in a similar way somehow.
** when they worked.
+1 for this, but itās not a high priority. Also, the performance of QuickLook for Sibelius files is so sluggish that it is almost always faster to open the file than wait for the OS to render the preview.
The same would most likely be true of a Dorico implementation - these viewer plugins are basically a read-only version of the application. However, weāve left the Dorico file bundle format open so that in the future we might be able to easily embed a preview thumbnail instead.
1 Like
Liked the idea of the thumbnail!
What I usually need from a quick look at a file is actually only the beginning, almost invariably just the first page. I know that QuickLook is rendering the entire document as read-only and that this is what takes the time, but a preview of only the first page would be quick and still helpful. Anyone else agree with this? I have no idea how feasible it would be to program thisā¦
1 Like
Yes, a preview image would be fine for me.
FWIW that is what I had already proposed to the team: when we save, weād write out the first few pages of the full score layout as graphics into the score bundle, and the QuickLook previewer would show them while it was churning away in the background rendering the project for real.
1 Like
Best of both worlds! Not a priority (for me personally) but nice-to-have.
YES! Some way to see an thumbnail of the first few bars, either from Windows or from the Hub, would be wonderful.
This is still on our backlog and we hope to be able to add Quick Look support in the next major release, all being well.
1 Like
the thing I miss about Dorico is quick look, itās my only regret but it will make my life easier 
Just want to show my support for this, too. Everything else has already been said, as far as I can read, a combination of Thumbnails and BG-Deep-Render would be great, so Iām just looking forward to the ānext major releaseā.
1 Like
Obviously an easy workaround would be to capture a graphic slice of the first page along side the file with the same filename, for Pro users, Finder/File explorer will auto display PNGās. And I think graphic slices automatically update the output or something? I donāt use them much at any rate.
Graphic Slices donāt do anything automatically. The details (dimensions, position, file name, path, format, resolution) are stored within the project, though, which makes it easy for you to manually export revised versions of the same graphic slice.
I sincerely hope this goes according to plan for D4. There are various projects Iāve done that have gone straight to print, and then I came back to those folders a year later and was irked with myself for not exporting a pdf to preview the file (and provide a ābackupā of sorts). I learned my lesson and try to always export a graphic just for the purpose of previewing a file (and for easier printing).
Always a good idea to keep a graphic file, and indeed, not only for preview purposesā¦ I learned this the hard way from using Finale. The program changed a lot from 1993 when I started using it and around 2017 when I definitively stopped, and sometimes a PDF was the only way to tell what a newer version of the program had left out or altered in an old file. Even with Dorico Iāve changed preferences a number of times in my search for good settings (Iām still not completely there) and letting new settings loose on an old file can screw things up royally if you donāt have a graphic file to check.
1 Like