This is a minor request, but it would be helpful.
When I import songs with lyrics from XML, the extender lines for melismas are often wrong. The easiest way to fix this is to spacebar through the entire vocal line, which resets the correct extenders.
But spacebar also removes hyphens. It would be nice to have a way to globally reset all extender lines. Especially since extender lines sometimes get missed if I enter a lyric and press enter instead of spacebar.
We’ve had an issue reported to us where the extender lines in Finale-exported MusicXML can be out by one note, but only in the first line of lyrics. We’re looking into it.
Another situation where this would be useful is when lyrics are entered natively in Dorico, and then the meter is changed such that a lyric extender ceases to be necessary, as per the attached images. Of course, in this situation it could be even better for Dorico to make the adjustment automatically, but the addition of the ‘reset’ feature would be a useful halfway house.
I’m been working a lot this morning with lyrics that add extenders, and I’ve been sometimes going back and changing the rhythm, which often adds the need for an extender, or should remove one that’s already there.
In this example below, shortening the note by an eighth also automatically shortened the extender to be the correct length, which I hadn’t seen before. Sometimes the extenders seem to update correctly, and sometimes I have to manually correct them.
Here’s an example where changing a rhythm did not automatically update the lyric extender correctly.
Not sure why some update automatically and some don’t, but just posting it here FYI.
EDIT: I have noticed several times that the extender updates automatically when the note in question crosses the barline. Not sure if that is significant.
I’ve just been experimenting with your two examples. I surmise the following:
Dorico can automatically adjust existing extender lines, and generally does so remarkably well.
BUT
When a lyric is initially entered, Dorico decides whether an extender line is needed or not. If the note value changes, Dorico doesn’t recalculate this. If the lyric started off with an extender line then (unless you re-enter the lyric) Dorico will keep the extender line. If the lyric started off without an extender line then (unless you re-enter the lyric) Dorico won’t add an extender line.
Has there been any progress with resetting lyric extenders from Finale XML files? A composer has asked me to make a piano reduction of a rather large vocal work I did for him in Finale a few years ago to help with vocal rehearsals as there are several performances coming up. There are quite a lot of these errant extenders that are incorrect and are not in the original Finale file. The piece is 16 movements so it would save me a bunch of time if there is a way to batch select everything and reset extenders, rather than doing them each individually. Any way to do that? Or should I just use Dan’s method and spacebar through the errant extenders?
You might be quicker selecting all lyrics, cutting, then selecting the first note, typing Shift-L and pasting back in a syllable at a time. This functionality certainly didn’t exist in November 2018.
This is also a problem when copying a syllable with a WE to a place where no WE is needed. In my experience, this always requires manual adjustment, and it has nothing to do with XML import. Another [perhaps only obliquely related] problem has to do with hyphenated words whose syllables are separated from each other by rests, as one sometimes sees in opera to express breathlessness. Dorico left-aligns these, as though they were melismas, so they also need manual adjustment. I’m still grateful to you, pianoleo, for your advice in altering the JSON file, thereby creating shortcuts for left-aligning, centring and right-aligning syllables. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t be necessary.