Ties to dotted notes: once again into the breach

Dorico
1

I’m curious if there’s been any movement toward the middle on this divisive topic. Or maybe Dorico 6 has already put the issue to rest. If so, I’ll happily buy it. Forgive me if I missed something, but at the risk of beating a very dead horse, I’ll humbly plea my case again:

(I’m using Dorico 5.1.81.2225, and I work in Pitch Before Duration mode.)

In 4/4 time, say I want to write a whole note tied to a dotted half.

So I enter: 8 t 7 . (That’s a dot there, not the end of my sentence.)

The result is a whole note in the first measure followed by nothing in the second; no tie, no dotted half. It catches me off guard every time.
My solution has been to enter the whole note, enter the dotted half and then apply the tie with a couple of mouse clicks, taking myself out of Note Entry mode in the process. This disrupts my zen-like flow, disturbs my chi and doesn’t do much for the alignment of my chakras.
After reading the various forum threads on this issue, I know there are work-arounds, some involving higher math. And I understand Dorico is working as designed and it would be best if I altered my process and thinking and just accept it. But I’m hoping we can (or maybe we already have) come up with a better solution.

As always, please forgive me my shortcomings, which are legion.

2

Try Enter8t7.Enter.
Without the last Enter it won’t work.

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3

Yeah, dots with pitch-first input have never really worked correctly. It would be great if dots just modified the last input duration in the tie chain, but they don’t. 8t7 then Opt+Shift+arrow 2x (with the grid at eighth notes) will do what you want though and won’t take you out of note entry.

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Thanks for both those replies. The @k_b solution didn’t work for me, but the @FredGUnn solution did. That’ll take some getting used to. I’d like to think that eventually the will of the people will prevail and we’ll get a modification. Until then, I’m gonna Opt+Shift+arrow 2x the heck out of this thing!

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5

The problem for Dorico is that you are creating a double-dotted whole, so adding single dots won’t work.

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