Hello,
I am following the “First Steps Guide” to get familiar with Dorico. I am trying to use the mouse as little as possible and to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible (I am on Windows).
I have a problem. On my staff I have a rhythmic signature, a clef, several bars and some notes. In the guide it says: "
You can select items by clicking them or by using the keyboard. If nothing is selected in the music area, pressing any of the arrow keys selects the first note/rest on the top staff. Right Arrow/Left Arrow move the selection along notes on one staff
" (Adding bars).
I have nothing to select in writing mode, when I press a directional arrow Dorico selects the key signature. If I press the right arrow again it selects the next key signature. I have to use the mouse again to click on the first note.
Maybe it’s a small detail without importance, is it possible to really select a note or a silence with the keyboard when nothing is selected instead of selecting the key signature?
Have you tried Tab? It used to change the nature of the selected object (and arrows keep advancing in the same nature of object). I IRC, this behavior has been changed lately, maybe with Dorico 4.
Yes, I think you’re right that strictly-speaking, when nothing is selected and you press an arrow key, an item that exists at the first rhythmic position (i.e. beat 1) gets selected, not necessarily the note or rest.
It’s possible I was talking fairly specifically about the situation in this project and in Dorico 3.5 (the version this guide was written for), where at this stage in the guide, pressing any arrow key does indeed select the bar rest. But I can see that there’s some imprecision here, so I’ve made a note to review it when I come to update the First Steps guide for version 4.
1 Like
I would like to find a way to address the limitation that you cannot navigate from a system-attached item like a key or time signature or indeed a barline to a staff-attached item like a note with the keyboard. It’s tricky because of course system-attached items apply to all staves, so which staff should you choose to navigate onto? But nevertheless we should come up with a proper way to do this in the future.
5 Likes
oh yes this would be very good, i hope this gets fixed soon. It means that you can’t input or edit time signatures as you do note editing without having to use the mouse to continue note editing… which is laborious if there are lots of time sig changes. I would suggest navigating simply to the next note item on the last selected staff – that seems the most logical, since you presumably had just been editing that staff.