Reusable Custom Accidentals

Hello @johnkprice! Me again on the legacy baroque key signatures. :slight_smile: .

I continued to work on it. I wanted to have full size sharps, positionned for standard Treble Clef, and have them someplace where they could be reused.
I created a project from scratch, edited the tonality system, and managed to build the Accidental, though the Music Editor is not my friend:
atlast
Now I wanted to capture that in a small doricolib file that would reside in the DefaultLibraryAdditions folder. I have already done that with (apparent?) success for the 4 flats CustomKeySignatures, but in that case part of the doricolib had been provided to me.
This time, it doesn’t seem to work. Here is the library:
twonormalsharps.zip (1.6 KB)
Even with it residing in the DefaultLibraryAdditions folder, if I create a new project from scratch, the Accidental is not available in the Tonality editor. It may be some typo in the doricolib, though I checked throughly, or perhaps, the library loading does not work like I think. Wwould you take a look, the doricolib is not too large.
At one moment, looking for another avenue, I noticed that in the Tonality Editor there was a “Save as Default” button. I tried it, but everytime I did, that was a sure way to throw Dorico in “Not Responding” mode, without userlibrary.xml ever being updated. Did you try this button?

Sorry, I don’t have any experience creating .doricolib files. Forum user @FredGUnn does. Perhaps he can help you.

You are right, I remember now, he was one of the members who attached doricolibs in his posts. Thanks for the Tip.
@FredGUnn, can you help me?

With regard to Dorico hanging when you try to do Save as Default in the Edit Tonality System dialog, please attach both the original project in which your custom tonality system resides.

I just edited your file to allow for an “Octave Sharps” option, and saved the custom key sig in the doricolib file. Edit as needed.
OctaveSharps.zip (1.5 KB)

Here’s a gif:
doubleF#

I just realized I didn’t actually test playback, LOL, but the display works at least.

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Hi where is this?

thanks

I updated (correctly, I hope!) these for Dorico 5:

Actually, it is not a custom tonality system. I am just experimenting with adding to the default system custom accidentals and custom key signatures. The minimum scenario is simple: I ask for a new project from the web, without adding any players, I switch to write mode, open the tonality system panel, I open the tonality system editor and I hit the Save as Default button (originally I did that after creating a new accidental, but it happens the same). After some seconds the mouse pointer becomes hanging, the editor is the first to display “Not Responding”, and some seconds later, the Dorico hub also displays it. I have not even saved the project yet. It happens also with a saved project. Currently I have the small doricolib attached to this topic in the DefaultLibraryAdditions folder. I think it happened even without it.
Thanks for looking into it. Actually I was not sure what to expect, initially I wanted to see whether my custom accidentals would happen up in the userlibrary.xml, it was just kind of an extra experiment. It is not blocking me, but I thought it worth reporting.

not in my folder (windows 10)

mysterious

If memory serves, you might have to manually create one.

Thanks Fred. I see you added the Custom Key Signature, and also the custom accidental entityId is now accidental.12t.western… instead of accidental.user.… I thought all custom entities should be recognizable as .user.?
Generally this means you validated my doricolib syntax. So the remaining problem is that I expected that once in DefaultLibraryAdditions, it would be automatically be available to any new projects, but this does not happen, when I open a new project and edit the tonality system, neither custom accidental or custom key signature are there. Am i misunderstanding the use of DefaultLibraryAdditions?

Ah, you’re right. I was working without my userlibrary.xml file installed. The doricolib works fine if you start without the userlibrary.xml file, but isn’t working right with it active. There must be something in conflict. Sorry, I’m getting ready to leave and won’t have time to look at this until tonight, but something is going on with that. If you move your userlibrary.xml out of the folder, then restart Dorico with the doricolib installed, it should work. (At least it does for me.) Just need to sleuth out where the conflict is with the userlibrary.xml.

Do you mean it is legit to move the userlibrary out of the Dorico5 folder? Wow! I never evenn thought of it. It is clear that the process of loading settings from the Factory Defaults to the various user overrides demands comprehension :slight_smile: .
No hurry on this, they are experiments.

Yeah, I’ll often remove my userlibrary.xml when I’m trying to create a doricolib file. If you remove it, then as soon as you hit Save as Default for whatever you’re working on, Dorico will create a new userlibrary.xml file with only the edit you just made in it. You can then peek into the file and see what Dorico actually just did when you hit Save as Default. Obviously, you’ll need to restart and restore your “real” userlibrary.xml file before doing actual work.

I had removed mine to check what Dorico was doing with the double F# key sig. The doricolib was working fine, but I forgot to check it with my userlibrary.xml restored, so there’s obviously some conflict there.

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Well I’ll remember that tip: to remove the userlibrary to create a doricolib. That is what of the thins I was missing, without that I would export the project I was in, and try to fish from it what I wanted from, usually, something like 40000 lines of xml! Thank you very much.

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Just to confirm that after removing userlibrary the additional doricolibs are loaded .:slight_smile:

Yeah, anything in DefaultLibraryAdditions will always be loaded.

After following @FredGUnn advice in its #12 and #14 posts in this topic, I was able to do Set as Default without problems. So the particularities with DefaultAdditionalAdditions might be critical in the “Not Responding” problem. Maybe the scenario is
Make sure userlibrary is in place
Make sure that an additional doricolib is in place
Then create a new project and go on with the scenario I originally outlined.

Guys, on Mac at least, please don’t add stuff to the main Library folder, because that doesn’t travel with your user folder. Do it in the user Library. Steps in this post:

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Great reminder, thanks!