I was watching the discover Dorico stream today and was wondering if there was a particular reason creating rests is a mode rather than a function. I do understand the philosophy of positioning the caret to create notes and letting Dorico manage the rests but the use case of inserting a rest in existing music was highlighted in the stream.
Pressing a hotkey to enter a mode and then pressing any other note hotkey to create a rest rather than just having the initial hotkey add the rest seems strange. You already have the duration selected outside this mode and I can’t think of any other parameters you can vary inside the mode.
This is a good idea! Clicking the rest button makes a rest, without having to type in an arbitrary pitch afterwards. Simple and direct. Your contrast of mode vs. function is perceptive.
I guess one reason not to have the rest button make a rest, is that it could turn an existing note into a rest; but actually, I spent quite a bit of time at first trying to get Dorico to do just that.
One of the reasons I have used the rest mode in the past was to (say) add a sixteenth/semi-quaver rest before three subsequent sixteenth notes, since the starting sixteenth was between the standard eighth hashmarks accessible by pressing the arrow key. I noticed when I watched the Discover Dorico video that, by choosing the sixteenth value first and then pressing space, I no longer had to add the rest separately. That alone was worth watching the video. Kudos to John for doing this!