I spent a weekend in December trying out Dorico 1.0.10 with a new project and was able to work from setup through to printing; my feedback from this has been split into parts for each section of the application, so here are my thoughts on the Write mode (minus a data loss with lyrics which has already been acknowledged).
Composer formatting
Is there a way to enter a line break in the project info’s composer text? I want to recreate this:
Abridged from a chorale, Treuer Heiland,
by C. KOCHER (1786–1872)
Extra sounds
When I’m inputting notes, each sounds as it goes in. When I change the duration that’s about to be input, it sounds again, which the first few times left me wondering if it had input a note. Does this need to happen on a configuration change?
Number pad (numeric keypad)
I see the logic in the keyboard method for entering notes, but I find it tricky to have to keep context switching my hands to go between note values/modifications and pitches. Can you enable the following key equivalences so that we can use left hand for pitches and right hand for the others, please?
Number pad “.” = Keyboard “.”
Number pad “+” = Keyboard “=”
Number pad “0” = Keyboard “0”
Entering lyrics offscreen
When I’m typing lyrics in galley view, and the text begins to go offscreen, Dorico waits until the start of the popover is outside the music area before moving the view, which makes it impossible to see what you’re typing in that last syllable before the view shifts. Would be better if it moves the view when any of the popover is obscured.
Staff spacing for lyrics
If you enter two lines of lyrics on a staff anywhere in a flow, all systems with that staff get the wider spacing to account for the lyrics, even in only one line of lyrics is used in that system. (This happened to me when entering lyrics for a repeat.) The staves should leave space for only a single line of lyrics on a system if it only has one.
“Is there a way to enter a line break in the project info’s composer text?”
“Not at present, but it’s planned.”
EXCEPT . . . .
When exporting a Sibelius file to XML, if there is a hard return(s) in the composer field (for a 2nd and even 3rd line), these hard returns are kept in Dorico (see attachment).
However, in the Project Info area there are no “special characters” to denote the hard returns, yet they are there in the Dorico score.
What is happening here?
Is there some way of reproducing these hard returns in a native Dorico Score?
I was just surprised to discover that it is actually possible to create text fields containing hard returns if you type the text into a text editor and then copy and paste it into the Score Info dialog in Dorico. However, 3 caveats to note:
If you make any edits to it in the Score Info dialog then the carriage return may be lost
It’s possible that Dorico’s text measurement may not be aware of the extra height and you may have to adjust some of the text frames or text alignment options
There’s no guarantee that the appearance will be preserved in future versions of Dorico (since this is really relying on unexpected behaviour)
