The problem where you end up with a middle dot replacing non-breaking spaces in lyrics containing spaces after you leave the Edit Line of Lyrics dialog is of course a bug, and one we will fix in the next update.
Great! Thanks Daniel!
I’m not sure this is a task for Dorico. As a matter of fact, the typographic subtleties that you mention can be dealt with elegantly if both software and fonts support the respective OpenType features. That’s what that technology was built for after all.
I seem to remember that comprehensive OpenType support is on the roadmap…
Dear Florian,
I see this as very good news then!
BTW, I used figurato this week and it works beautifully with Dorico 3 on mac, thanks very much!
That’s great! Thanks for letting me know — positive feedback is always worth a lot.
Marc, it is a rule only in British English (and a relatively recent one at that). It is not at all a rule (it even looks like a mistake) in American English. Moreover, no published full score with which I’m familiar, in either country, follows this procedure. It is always either “periods for all” or “periods for none” when it comes to instrument abbreviations. I just checked several recently published Boosey & Hawkes (UK) scores, and they all use periods for such abbreviated forms.
Really? Because, funnily enough, Boosey’s current style guide did away with most — if not all — periods for abbreviations.
Well, maybe the ones I have weren’t recent enough! I’m always ready to learn more. Can you identify a B&H score that follows that style guide?
And, as I mentioned earlier, the series for which I’m editing a score uses no periods at all, so it’s not that I’m opposed to doing away with them all. It’s the in-between usage that I haven’t encountered in this context.
Dear Rinaldo,
This rule applies in French — but of course I very often see mistakes because obviously not everyone know the rules. I am glad to know it also applies in British English, and I will make sure I check before writing in Italian or Spanish 
… or in US English!
I’m not sure why each engraver doesn’t do what he or she considers proper without wasting a lot of time trying to convince others they are wrong. The arguments are getting repetitive.
I’d like to override some things which are not overridable (can you say so??) in Dorico, and I think some of the restrictions are due to the fact that Dorico not only is an engraving tool but shall playback smoothly as well (dynamics?!). Nonetheless…
German official (yes!) rules for using a period with abbreviations are found here: Duden | Abkürzungen
In typography, there are also different rules for using different lengths of hyphens and their placing (different between english and german); the distance between a period (short stop - I love it!) and the next letter in abbreviations should be smaller than between different words - and so on.
For now, it is more than fully understandable that the Dorico team can not offer all these different rules in every - or even the most important for music engraving - language, but perhaps there is a way not to change typographically fully correct texts if/when you place them in Dorico via copy and paste - as text and not as a picture? I have not tried it till now…
In Germany rules are more important than in other languages (after all, we are Germans, right?) and every publishing house which would not follow these rules e.g./eg in their editorials, lyrics or else would be regarded as highly unprofessional - meaning that Dorico should not override some writing which follows german rules in detail at all - otherwise it always would only be useable in Germany together with a DTP or word editing program! Perhaps something to consider… (The rules are to be found at www.duden.de - the german “bible” for orthography - yet not necessarily for typography). Music engraving is different, though - there are different styles with different publishing houses…
@DSL: Just to be a hypocrite: Puccini uses rit. for ritenuto always - not for ritardando -,-
Just to be explicit, because I don’t know if it the tone could be inferred from my writing, I’m not saying you’re wrong at all, I’m just saying it’s curious. It depends on what you mean by “recent”. Of course a recent printing of an older “plate” will probably be untouched, but their current house style does away with periods for abbreviations. The scores of their contemporary composers have been following that rule, at least.
Thanks so much, @LSalgueiro! I’m always glad to acquire new information like this. The Boosey scores I see are mostly of older composers, and while one publication bears a 2012 date, that’s not exactly up-to-the-minute. I never inferred that you were saying I was wrong, nor have I meant to imply that anyone else was wrong.
There are a lot of standards around, and in the English-speaking world (unlike in German, @wolframd!) none of these is universally mandatory, they are a matter of custom and of house style. (I myself am editing scores for one musical series that requires periods for all instrumental abbreviations, and another that uses none.) So the Dorico defaults will probably need changing (instrument by instrument) for almost everybody.
As DSL and John Ruggero wrote
I do agree about being second-guessed and "corrected " by Dorico. During my trial of Dorico 2, I found it infuriating, time-wasting, and a big minus for the program.
A similar discussion, which is led here over the periods after abbreviations, also took place with the positioning of tempo indications (Default tempo text placement - #11 by J_Woodtli - Dorico - Steinberg Forums). I was taught that my style of notation does not conform to the “good standard” of music notation, although I have several examples of publishers, who do prefer the same kind of notation. For me, as for DSL and John Ruggero, it is annoying, that I am not allowed to write down, what I would like to and that Dorico dictates me, what good notation should look like. Although I can break the rules with workarounds, those are usually very time consuming. At the core it is not about periods, but about the question how much Dorico should paternalize us all in terms of “good” or “bad” notation and that we should be able to break rules, without tedious workarounds. Because true art breaks rules
I can’t speak for the developers, of course, but I daresay it’s not their intent to “paternalize” their users.
I think it’s all just a matter of time. Every bit of added flexibility complicates the software and comes with a considerable overhead in terms of development, testing and maintenance resources. These things tend to multiply themselves… Give 'em some slack!
I wonder if the simplest way to deal with these issues, at least in the interim, is to enable an “alternate text” pane in the properties panel. Then, regardless of the object, Dorico will semantically know what it means if you put it in “properly” (ie- so the program knows what you want) and then you can change it’s textual appearance to your heart’s content.
I used to look upon the prevailing attitude in the Sibelius world as being patronising (‘we know how it should be done’) and that’s one of the reasons I stuck with Finale for so long, but just to play Devil’s Advocate, there’s nothing intrinsically artistic about actual notation as a tool for communicating art. If one chooses to break rules that have made up performers’ musical training, communication can break down. If I were to write these sentences with the words all intentionally misspelled or with glaringly incorrect grammar, just in an attempt to be artistic, most readers would justifiably just roll their eyes and skip it or give up trying to read it entirely. On the other hand, I’ve occasionally been forced by publishers to notate things in a way I didn’t feel was correct, but I had to bite my tongue and apply the golden rule, ‘He who has the gold makes the rules.’ Having said this, I’ve come to appreciate the philosophy behind Dorico’s trying to understand what is being notated and to accomplish it efficiently and intelligently, as well as according to accepted notational conventions. In addition, the Dorico team’s willingness to try to accommodate all notational contingencies is most encouraging.
You’ve stated very clearly that you’re playing Devil’s advocate, so don’t read this as directed at you, but it seems it needs to be said, yet again: this argument is spectacularly wrong. “Rules” — notational, music theory, what have you — aren’t laws of physics, they’re congealed social relations, and, as such, contigent and socially determined. Their defense often fails to articulate the actual conditions that allowed such relations to stabilize in the first place, and, thus, why we should hold on to them beyond the general tenor placed on the importance of rules in the abstract.
But even before we get into the thorny issue of whether the musical training you yourself mention is or should be complete, it should be reminded this thread started with language rather than music. The abbreviation criteria used by Dorico was programmed to comply with Oxford’s codification of their use. You might want to argue that that criteria should be, in fact, upheld — in English, and that’s mostly fine if you’re a participant in that linguistic community. Forcing it on other languages wholesale, however, is one hell of a value judgment to make.
Of course, as Florian has already said, such a decision can be traced back to contingencies in production as well, and it can be easily understood and excused (and I do). But it’s something that can and should be discussed or reminded.
I actually enjoy such discussions and I agree that it would be exceedingly difficult to create software which can take all contingencies into account, despite the Dorico team’s ongoing efforts to do so, meaning perhaps that Dorico needs to be more flexible in allowing things it doesn’t [yet] understand. It already does this pretty well, although having to alter entries in the Properties Panel can make it slower and more cumbersome to use than it was when using the less-intelligent software many of us are used to.
What I would find particularly helpful is to be able to create different ‘house styles’ or templates to take the varying notation conventions of different publishers or different genres into account. I’ve already created a lot of playing techniques and expressions which are available to all documents, but it would be handy if a specific subset of these could be available when creating a new document. It’s very possible that I’m missing something which would already make this possible, though.
And rules… of course they’re social conventions and, as such, are subject to change. They are, however, necessary when attempting to enable a group of people to live together without killing each other or for the members of an orchestra to play Beethoven’s 6th with some semblance of unity. As far as notational conventions are concerned, I guess I’ve been too often subjected to the creations of composers who ignore these conventions, either out of ignorance or an attempt to be creative, and without regard for those who have to read and perform the works. It has occasionally even gone so far as open indignation of a composer at my reminding him that it’s not realistic to expect a pianist to be able to stretch an octave and a fifth in one hand, or that certain techniques or ranges of notes simply aren’t possible when writing for harpsichord, etc. Following the ‘rules’ doesn’t make them absolute any more than the laws of physics are*, it just makes communication easier, or even possible.
- ‘Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.’ (Einstein)