request for custom lines (solid, dashed, dotted, etc.)

First of all, I want to applaud the Dorico team for an amazing job. I’ve been dedicating my current commission to learning the program and so far it’s been a blast. (The ability to enter notes and rhythms on the fly without worrying about barring and beaming has been my favorite aspect so far, and has been something I had always dreamed a notation program could do).

The ONE thing that I see that might hold me back from fully realizing my compositions in Dorico is the lack of custom lines, such as with the following parameters:

-solid, dotted, dashed
-forced horizontal, vertical, or allowed to float diagonally
-with beginning, middle, or ending text
-with bracket (hook) endpoints, or arrowheads
-“attached” to noteheads or other notational element on either end

For example, these would be used to show the transition from one playing technique to another (with a solid line and arrow), to bracket a feathered beaming group and show its total duration (this was even mentioned in the Dorico guide, so I was puzzled when I couldn’t find how to do it), to point out moments of vertical synchronicity in a senza misura passage (with a dashed vertical line), and so on.

Since the hairpin, pedal, 8va, gliss, and similar markings function so well in Dorico, my guess would be that such custom lines could be beautifully integrated.

Again, thank you, and I look forward to continuing to enjoy Dorico!

I’m sure I’ve heard that they’re coming. I use 1:1 tuplet brackets for quite a lot of things, sometimes with opaque hard spaces whiting out bits of them.

Thank you - I searched the forum but couldn’t seem to find anything like this specifically addressed (there was one thread about the dashed lines used in piano music).

Hi Daniel and all:

Adding my vote for this, or at least just a dotted line tool that behaves roughly like the gliss. I have a lot of situations in piano music where this would be really helpful (image attached).

Many thanks for the fantastic work! I look forward to each update!

Steve

We definitely plan to get to lines soon. I’m afraid they’re not included in the coming update, but there are many, many goodies in there. (One of our beta testers told me that he thought we could call it version 3.0…)

That sounds interesting (tempting, etc.)
Look forward to see what John Baron talks about in next Wednesday Discover Dorico.