Timeline?

Dorico
1

I find myself wanting to go to a particular section of a large piece, but I don’t know exactly where it is.

In Sibelius you can look at the Timeline, “see” the whole piece and simply click on the desired rehearsal mark or bar to navigate.

Is there any equivalent functionality in Dorico? that I’m overlooking? Right now I simply scroll back or forward - which is OK but a bit clumsy.

“Go To Bar” is not a solution since you need to have pretty much memorized what bar #s start each section of the piece.

2

If your piece is multi-movement, you can click on each flow in Setup mode to go directly to the first bar of that flow. Otherwise, on Mac I use the fn key with forward/backward arrows to quickly go from page to page - it’s fast.

For what it’s worth I rarely used the Sibelius Timeline (or Navigator in earlier versions) - for me it’s faster to use keyboard shortcuts, and that keeps more of the screen visible for your score.

3

Hate to revive a year old thread, but… I was wondering if there are any plans to implement a better navigation system, like for example the timeline mentioned by the OP? I’m working on a score with 500 bars and 39 instruments and it’s just too difficult to find places… i.e. specific sections, movements, rehearsal marks, etc.

Regards,

4

You can always assign key commands to Go To > Next Flow / Previous Flow, which would allow quick moving through Flows.

5

Thank you benwiggy, that is exactly what I’ve been doing and keeping a yellow sticky pad with bar numbers for events i.e. key changes, movements, rehearsal markers, etc. and using the CTRL+G to navigate. But like the OP I miss having that kind of tool, I’m happy with any alternative the team can come up with.

The timeline in Sibelius allowed you to see everything from density of music, rehearsal marks, system text to key and time signature changes. It’s very useful when you’re writing huge complicated music and you need to quickly reference another part and you haven’t learned your structure yet because it’s a work in progress…

I’d just like to know if the team has thought about this and if there are any plans for a sophisticated navigation system.

Regards,

6

There are no concrete plans, but we designed and implemented the Timeline in Sibelius (though it was slightly butchered after our departure and before it saw the light of day), so it’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that something similar might find its way into Dorico in the future. I’m not wedded to that particular kind of approach but we would certainly like to enrich the navigational possibilities of the software in future.