I work with a Swiss keyboard layout and have had the problem for some time that certain keys such as ¨, ^, ! or § cannot be used as shortcuts in Dorico. This particularly affects the articulations, such as staccato, which are located on the ¨ key in the standard mapping. These keys are either not recognized at all or do not trigger any action, although they otherwise function perfectly on the system.
Unfortunately, manually changing the shortcut keys in Dorico does not help, as these keys cannot be reliably recognized or saved in the shortcut editor. Workarounds such as switching to a German keyboard layout are also not practical for everyday use, as they lead to problems in other programs.
I would therefore like to see official support for Swiss keyboard layouts in Dorico so that all keys can be recognized correctly and used as shortcuts - without having to make system-wide changes or using third-party tools.
Has anyone found a working solution - perhaps an official statement from Steinberg or a planned fix?
I would like to see this problem addressed in a future update.
Honestly, I 've been working for eight years with Dorico and some keys (and combinations) cannot be used, they depend on the keyboard layout and you can’t expect the (limited) Team to test every key and every combination in every keyboard layout that exists. As a general rule, you cannot use diacritics keys to work as shortcut keys, as they need two strokes to work. Then some combinations are problematic and need to be changed or work without (I remember there’s something off with ctrl B in German, which is really been a problem for years and as far as I know, no solution was found).
I’ve been sharing my shortcuts freely with the fellow French users (as we have a specific thing with numbers and shift key) maybe some swiss powerusers could share their solutions?
Thank you for your assessment - of course I understand that the Dorico team cannot test every combination on all layouts. Nevertheless, I think that there should be a certain basic compatibility with widespread layouts such as Swiss QWERTZ. Especially when system-relevant keys such as ¨, ! or ^ cannot be used permanently as shortcuts, this is not just a minor issue, but makes daily work much more difficult.
I absolutely agree that users can be creative themselves - e.g. with alternative assignments. But:
→ Diacritical keys should at least be recognized by the shortcut editor, even if they are not directly assignable in a meaningful way.
→ And there should be a way to redirect shortcuts within Dorico without having to resort to system tools.
I hope that other Swiss Dorico users will get in touch here and share their solutions or workarounds. Maybe we can create a kind of best practice collection for Swiss keyboards together. In any case, I would be very interested in working shortcut sets that don’t change the whole system.
Not a Swiss user but as a Swedish, one faces many of these problems as well. My solution has been to always run an AHK script like this one –
¨::] ;staccato
´::} ;staccatissimo
– this is just a part of it, but this defines the staccato and staccatissimo as two of the diacritical keys on a swedish keyboard. If you are on Mac there are other options, Autohotkey is for Windows only.
I opted out from changing keyboard settings system wide / switching keyboard language, because it creates many other discomforts for what I am doing.
A working solution for the problem with the Swiss keyboard in Dorico
I was able to find a working solution for using Dorico with the German keyboard layout without permanently changing the entire system. Perhaps this will help others who have had similar problems with shortcuts and certain keys:
⸻
This is how it works (macOS):
in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text input > Edit input sources
→ I have added the German keyboard there in addition to the Swiss keyboard.
2. a language switch (e.g. CH/DE) then appears at the top of the menu bar (next to battery indicator etc.).
→ When I work with Dorico, I manually switch to DE there.
3. a setting must also be adjusted in Dorico itself:
Menu: Dorico > Settings > Keyboard shortcuts
Set the keyboard language to German at the top right
Then click on Apply and close the window
⸻
From this point on, all shortcuts have worked as expected for me - even the known problem keys such as ¨ or !
Thank you all for your input - it was very helpful on the way to the solution.
I think this method could also work with other language layouts - and perhaps also on Windows, if you adjust the input language there accordingly.
Good luck to everyone who is still at this point - and keep enjoying working with Dorico!
This is how it works (macOS):
From this point on, all shortcuts have worked as expected for me - even the known problem keys such as ¨ or !