Daniel, sorry to re-open this. I have several more examples, but the previous thread got out of hand and was locked. Feel free to conflate the two threads if that’s better. Or just delete this post entirely…
This video shows 4 examples of jumping when the selection changes. These are just from about 10 minutes of work.
In the first three, the view jumps so that the selection is at the far left of the screen. It’s understandable, but still extremely disorienting. And the jump is unnecessary, since the selection would have remained well within the viewing area.
In the 4th example, the selection jumps entirely off-screen. The selection is clicked at bar 44, but the viewing window jumps to be centered on bar 83. Presumably it’s because bar 83 was the previous selection, as indicated in the status window at the bottom left.
I’d be happy to produce more disorienting examples along the lines of #4 if that would be helpful. Unfortunately I’m not able to reproduce any of these behaviors. They seem to occur at random times, although when they happen, I can at least understand why the jump happened.
I don’t think it’s unique to the project, but I’m posting the project here anyways, in case it can be useful. Kyrie eleison (It Is Finished) (2).zip (746 KB)
Dan, that IS extremely disorienting. I’ve never had it do anything like that to me (that I can remember anyway). I suppose it’s shifted once or twice, but nothing like what you show here.
A example of this disorienting jump happens to me when I copy music from one spot to another and the destination is not visible from the source location. I alt-click the destination but because of either the tight spacing of the music or perhaps because I have the grid density set unfavourably or perhaps even because I click on the wrong staff, the music gets copied to the wrong place. Sure, I could try to move the music to the right location, but often I prefer to undo the action and try again. Unfortunately the undo causes a jump back to the source location which I find disorienting, and it often takes me awhile to find the destination spot again.
I object to the term “whack-a-mole”, and I’ve edited the thread title accordingly.
Regarding the score moving when you undo/redo, there is at least in theory a preference for this, in the ‘Editing’ section of the ‘Note Input & Editing’ page of Preferences. You might prefer to switch that off.
The revised title suggests the problem is rather narrow. I think the concern is that there are all sorts of disorienting, unexpected movements, and they are not all related to the current selection or redo/undo processing. Some certainly are. Others appear related to the program’s inclination to center the focus. That would be reasonable except that it sometimes happens unexpectedly and unnecessarily. Other movements appear rather random, and not connected to centering, the current selection, or the desire to center the material.
Beyond that, there are other behaviors that are probably intended, but disruptive. For example, if I have 6 flows and am editing in the 5th flow, the program sometimes throws me back to the very beginning of the first flow. I’m sure there are good reasons to explain that, but it really limits the practicality of working with multiple flows.
The important thing is having the problem addressed, not what one calls it. There seems no need to use a term that bothers the very people who are trying to solve the problem–not that they wouldn’t be working on it regardless, but common courtesy is little enough to ask of us.
off topic, but it seems there is a little bug in the forum software where the title didn’t change on the previous replies…
on topic… I’ve also seen this behavior as part of the playback mechanism. after the playback stops and you move to another page, you sometimes get this sudden jump when you click somewhere. Can’t discern the cause though.
As the person who first used the term, I apologize if that hurt any feelings. That was not my intention. I was just trying to express how that behavior makes me feel. It makes me feel tense, like playing said arcade game. But I am happy to use a more neutral term.
An observation that might be relevant to Dan’s “random” jumps:
Working on a large project where autosave takes several seconds and locks the UI while doing so, I sometimes notice that after I navigate somewhere in the score, the display jumps slightly without any user interaction apparently when the autosave finishes.
I’m guessing that “something” to do with updating the display gets blocked when the autosave starts, and doesn’t complete till after the autosave ends. Maybe the user can sneak in and apparently click on something while the display is in the inconsistent state - some part of the program thinks the display is up to date after the move, but that’s not what the user sees on the screen.
This isn’t reproducible to order, but it does happen regularly (maybe once an hour).
I’ll try switching autosave off for a day, and see what happens…
I see something similar when ending a playback that was started and stopped using the “P” key. That is happening less frequently than it used to. I don’t know if the program has been improved or I am just subconsciously learning how not to get into trouble.
That latter thing is the bane of software developers, especially when complex UIs are involved. The developers know what they want to see and they tend to interact in a way that works. There are some great testers out there who have developed the skill to not follow the most heavily used path and to approach testing like a very unfamiliar user. That is a rare skill. When I was developing software commercially, there was one person I knew who could break anything. I always dreaded asking her to test the software, which I 'knew" to be perfection. She invariably crashed it within 5 minutes.
I’ve just experienced a jump when entering lyrics. I was in galley view and had moved the next note (and indeed a few notes after that) well within view but Dorico decided it didn’t like where I scrolled and moved me accordingly lol. It was very odd and caught me off guard. Due to my small scores I typically don’t experience this which is what it made it stand out to me.
Something I’ve noticed in recent weeks that I hadn’t before is if I have something selected on another page/frame and am reading music on my instrument from the Dorico score (something I do a lot almost every day), it will sometimes make a jump after a few minutes, to the page with the selection, as if it really wants me to pay attention to it. No, I don’t.
I couldn’t say how consistent it is though, nor if the delay before the jump is the same each time.j
I re-open this with fear and trembling…
In an orchestral score, I’m trying to write a horn part whilst looking at the lower woodwind. I can fit this nicely on the screen, so I see the horn at the bottom and the WW at the top. However, when I enter a note the screen jumps so that the horn is at the top (reminds me of the James Last joke…).
Rinse and repeat…
It would be good in this instance to turn off automatic jumping altogether.
If such a thing were possible and that simple, I would have thought it would have been done a long time ago, considering how disruptive this behavior is. I have to believe the behavior is the result of unintended consequences and not part of a conscious design.
I seem to be down to one of these pull-out-what-remains-of-my-hair vents every 15 minutes or so. I don’t know if the software is getting better or if I am subconsciously learning how to avoid some of the triggers.
And to be fair to Steinberg, I recently needed to work in Finale, after having not touched it for 4 months. Within a few minutes, I found myself in a near rage with some of its 25-year-old behaviors. On balance, Dorico is far more intuitive than the others, but it can still improve in this area of jumpiness.
They seem to occur at random times, although when they happen, I can at least understand why the jump happened.