Trying to remove ALL bar numbers should not be this hard

Dorico
1

I found guidance on hiding bar numbers. One version gives a keystroke shortcut using Ctrl-Shift-L, but it failed to open once. Later I found the way via menus (Library-Layout). Tutorials should always give both methods right away.

A serious problem is the tendency to give verbal instructions and assume everyone knows what each icon looks like and what it does. (We don’t). A new user needs a graphic of that icon!!! Also, it is often vague, simply saying click ‘on the right’… and my display doesn’t always seem to match.

Sometimes I can see the dialogue box, but the choices that I expect to be there are not visible or obvious, and I can’t see how to change or confirm my changes before trying to apply.This is what I experienced today. I got the layout box open, clicked on bar numbers, and do not see an intuitive way to proceed.

(The old Finale method was possible to lookup and do more easily).

Help guides should show the graphics and screen shots…esp because versions of Dorico do not agree. A new person has a tough time knowing if it’s the last version or just me feeling like an idiot.

So … guess what , I had to pull the window so it was bigger horizontally so that the item I needed would display.. So, developers, please make popup or dialogue window open large…that’s why the options were hidden from view, as was apply, close, etc.

2

Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+L should always open the Layout Options dialog; I’ve never seen that not work.

Once you’ve opened that and clicked on Bar Numbers in the left-hand panel, you should see this:

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Set the frequency to None, and all bar numbers in the selected layout(s) will go away.

(Note that Layout Options are specific to certain layouts. You need to make sure that the layout or layouts you want to affect are selected in the right-hand panel of the dialog.)

3

Sorry to hear that the documentation that you read didn’t fully help you on this occasion.

The Layout Options dialog contains a lot of options and is referenced many, many times in the manual. It’s one of the core 5 dialogs that most users will access whilst working on any given project.

It’s accessible in several different ways (not just 2), but mentioning all of those ways every time the manual instructs you to access the dialog becomes disruptive and distracts from the main focus of the task, which is the specific option that you’re being directed to. (I’ve used both ways during my time as Dorico’s manual author, and on balance I think the current method is best.)

However, of course I want to make sure that users know about all the methods available to them at least somewhere, and that’s what the dialog reference page is for: it lists all the ways you can access the dialog, it explains how the dialog functions, and it picks out all the icons and explains what they do. You should find that this reference page is linked to at the bottom of most pages that involve you interacting with Layout Options; if not, you can either tell me where it’s missing and you think it should be added, or search the manual for “layout options” (or whatever part of the app that you want to know more about) and you should be able to find a page with more information.

We have to strike a balance in the help that we provide, between being comprehensive enough to help but not so comprehensive that it either becomes frustrating or simply impossible to maintain. Given the amount of actions that you can do in Dorico, it is unfortunately not possible to provide a screenshot of every step for all of them.

Screenshots of the user interface are also language-specific, meaning that the authors either need to replicate every screenshot for all documentation languages, or expect non-English readers to gain the same benefit from English-language screenshots. (At Steinberg, we don’t localise screenshots but also try to avoid using screenshots as the primary source of information, especially if that information is text-based.)

To support new users get familiar with the key functions of Dorico, and gain confidence in navigating around it themselves, we produced a First Steps guide – this guide has a lot more screenshots than the manual. If you haven’t already worked through it, I recommend it thoroughly.

4

The phrase that comes to mind for me, is that there are no perfect decisions. Okay, there are definitely some really bad and really good decisions in life. But commonly each has some good and not so good.

Thank you Lillie for the thoughtful approach. and extreme work.

I know you are probably going to hate what I say next, but AI is awfully good at customizing the answer to the way a user asks the question in way that’s impossible otherwise given the number of Dorico users. I’m seeing it as you are the vital expert and teacher, Claude will never replace you, but Claude can take some of your annoying sometimes whiney irritating customer questions for you, while you get some work done. :slight_smile:

5

All the while giving answers that cannot be relied on or trusted without checking carefully.

6

One thing Finale went away from, and I wished they’d kept, were the multiple, cross-referenced manuals. Five, in all, and each one dedicated to a different aspect of the program. You could find most of the information in each, but only in a specific format.

My favorite was the Dialog Manual. It had a graphic of every dialog box in the program, indicated whether or not it was modal (important in Windows) and had a detailed description of the various ways to open it and what each option did–all with graphics. I learned most of the program that way.

I think Dorico would benefit from such a manual. The index was astounding, and often referenced the other manuals where necessary. I would imagine you already have an internal document that does much the same for your coders.

7

In this age, that is a wise person’s approach to pretty much all content human OR machine generated IMO, sigh.

8

Absolutely! But I’m finding quite often that AIs are getting so good at pulling information together that it’s quicker to go through the checking process rather than pull it together myself.

I wonder if they will ever stop hallucinating?

9

AI companies themselves have admitted that’s not possible.

10

AMD graphics drivers are notorious for hijacking that key combo. You have to disable it if you want to use it for Dorico.