Select items with rectangle (see first image). Copy (cmd-C). Edit Mode. Move cursor to start of next bar. Paste (cmd-V). Result: Dorico jumps unexpectedly forward ~10 bars and pastes there (see last image) instead of the next bar where expected.
Undo clears the mess but repeated attempts do the exact same thing.
Workaround 1:
Selecting all musical items individually (not using Rectangle) works as expected.
Workaround 2:
Selecting with Rectangle, then manually unselecting the bar numbers under the staff (cmd-click the 90 and then 91), works as expected.
Yes, as mentioned in the other thread, the problem is that the bar number ends up being included in the selection, and bar numbers are created by the prevailing time signature so this ends up selecting the time signature as well.
We’ve had specific requests (I think on this board) to include barlines such as repeat barlines in the selection when making a marquee selection, and in order to do this we had to include bar numbers as well - from Dorico’s perspective they’re the same sort of thing.
An alternative handy selection method is to click somewhere on the staff in one bar, but not on any notes/notations – that selects the whole bar, including notes, slurs, dynamics etc. Then Shift-click somewhere in the other bar, to extend the selection to the whole of that bar too.
This method quickly selects whole bars on one staff, without including system-attached items like chord symbols, time signatures, etc.
I have a different suggestion. This problem actually occurs because Copy-Paste has been overloaded with independent features.
There is also a ‘paste bug’ where System Text (even non-selected) will annoyingly be destroyed by Pasting over it. I consider this a bug because it destroys user information without warning. I often lose System Text because of this (when I forget about this odd behavior) and have to work around it in various ways…
There could be these, which separates the functionality:
(cmd-C) Simple Copy
(cmd-V) Simple Paste
(shift-cmd-C) Copy-All
(shift-cmd-V) Advanced Paste
where:
Simple Copy perform the action on musical items (not time sig, bar lines, etc, but does also include System Texts)
Simple Paste just pastes as normal.
Copy-All performs the action you’ve described: everything selected (even non-musical items) is put in copy list.
Advanced Paste presents a checkbox window. User selects which types of items they want to paste: Musical items (ie. notes), Chords, Rehearsal Marks, Time sigs, etc etc. This would still result in this “paste jumps forward because of pasting the bar number” behavior, but, it would separate the advanced pasting functionality from the normal simple paste functionality.
Having multiple types of copy/paste is actually how Guitar Pro solves the problem of only wanting to copy or paste specific types of items. Advanced Paste presents a menu of items desired to paste (it remembers the last selections) and additionally allows the user to specify the Number Of Pastes to perform (i.e. it will repeatedly insert, which can be very handy).
