A brief note from me to say that the current EN online manuals for Dorico 3 have been updated with some general improvements and a small number of new additions (although not a huge amount at this time).
Navigation - I’ve added a dedicated section in Write mode for different ways of moving either your selection or what’s in view; some topics already existed elsewhere but now find themselves more at home here.
Translation for the Dorico 3 manual is ongoing - we’ve already done a number of large chunks for the entirely new features; next we will tackle the smaller changes that are more widespread throughout the manual, which would then allow us to publish accurate localised docs.
Lillie, we’re so glad you’re on the manuals project. Thanks for all your work.
Suggestion:
I’m probably missing something that’s already there, but it would be helpful if the current PDF manual showed a revision date so one could be sure what version of the manual they are consulting. I see a Dorico version number, but not a manual version number.
We agreed with the manuals team that we could use the date shown on page 2 in the manual (currently “Dorico_3.0.0_en-US_2019-12-06”) to refer to the “documentation’s last-change” date, as for Dorico this was/is changing fairly frequently. It might be worth me bringing this up again and seeing whether it would be useful to have two dates - the date of the app’s release, and the date of the last revision to the documentation, so I’ll do that.
As long as we know where to find the date (as we now do) that lets me tell which is the latest version without referring to the OS’s file date, which can be different.
My main concern is to quickly and easily verify that I have the most up-to-date version. In the middle of all the other complexities of working with Dorico and VSTs quick and easy is a good thing. Especially when I have a mind like a steel colander.
Hi Lillie–
I found myself in a bit of pickle today and went to reference the manual. It turns out the manual doesn’t use the word “propagate” even one time even though there are at least two commands that have that in their name. I couldn’t, for the life of me, find where “propagate part layouts” was nested (I expected it in engrave mode, not setup, since I’ve never used it before). It took digging around the forum before I discovered the answer. I tried using both the online and PDF versions of the D3.0 documentation but that word simply wasn’t in there.
Thanks!
I ummed and ahhed over this a little bit when I was originally documenting it - my ultimate conclusion/suspicion was that unless users were already familiar with the term “propagate” for this context (either from discussions in the Facebook group or here, or from reading the version history), they would be less likely to search for “propagate” than something like “copy settings” or “copy layout”. What nudged me over to that direction was that the strings for the commands “Propagate Part Formatting” and “Propagate Properties” would still be there in the body, and searchable. So I thought that would be the best of both worlds: the exact string there for users in-the-know, but the terminology in the rest of the body generic enough to come up for everyone else.
(I just loaded the PDF from the online help and although it takes a few seconds for the generic search in a web browser to scan the whole document - it’s long, I’m sorry - once it does you do get a bunch of relevant results. Admittedly not for “propagate part layouts” because the command string is “Propagate Part Formatting”, so I’ll add that phrase to the metadata.)
Well, that’s terribly odd, Leo. I wonder if I accidentally pulled up old documentation and didn’t notice it. I definitely searched and nothing popped up. The other option is Lillie’s suggestion that perhaps I didn’t wait long enough for the hole document to be scanned. Oh well. Thanks, all.
Frankly I find still strange that the logo even on the first page has changed (no more red) instead of what you can see over here, and this even on other Steinberg manuals… I wonder if this is the result of globalization!
Last week I published a small update to the Dorico 3.x docs, which are now accurate up to 3.0.10. (Dorico 3.1 documentation will be published as soon as a chunk is prepared, but this won’t be for a few weeks probably, as there are some technical things behind the scenes that need to happen in addition to the authoring part. This is related to translation of the Dorico 3 manual thus far, which we have already done a few chunks of and aim to send out for completion imminently.)
The New features section at the beginning of all the manuals (Pro, Elements, and SE, in both webhelp and PDF) can give you pointers to where the most recent features and changes can be found. There are separate lists for 3.0.0 and 3.0.10 additions. But I’ve also worked on a number of improvements after spending time reading your forum posts and taking in feedback. I hope it’s all helpful! Here are some pointers (as smaller changes are harder to find than big new features):
Play mode, tracks (particularly instrument tracks and their respective lanes) - bit late to the party on this one, but there were some important changes to how tracks function in Play mode between Dorico 2 and 3, which is now correct in the manual. Player tracks are gone, and there’s new functionality in instrument track headers, particularly independent voice playback. Velocity lanes have arrived too.
Custom tonality systems (Pro only) - upon review, it was clear that the existing documentation of the Edit Tonality System dialog, and its child dialogs for accidentals and key signatures, could be more helpful (with thanks to the user who contacted me specifically about this). So, I’ve updated these and also written walkthrough tasks for creating custom tonality systems, custom accidentals, and custom key signatures. Hopefully these changes bring this area of the app a bit more clearly together. (*Edit Tonality System screenshot itself to be updated - that is an ongoing job, please bear with…)
Write mode, Notations input (various) - reviewed descriptions of starting inputting notations that can apply to all/individual staves, to make it clearer what one should select if one intends to input the notation on one staff only, and also simplified some of these instructions.
Print mode - added the helpful tip that someone shared about the Watermark font style, and that watermarks are only exported in Color graphics, not Mono. I also improved the task for exporting graphics, which was missing some relevant steps/tips.
Notations hidden in some layouts by default - cues and harp pedaling are hidden in full scores by default, and after encountering a couple of users asking questions about how to deal with the signposts for harp pedaling, I added mention of this in the linked introductory topics for the relevant chapters.
General, keywords - thank you to everyone who has shared their search phrases and terms that did not produce the documentation they were looking for. Knowing this sort of information is really helpful, as it allows me to add/refine keywords that should improve results.
General, webhelp - now that Dorico SE is available, we’ve changed the Dorico tiles that come up when you navigate directly from the steinberg.help website - now, if you choose Dorico for the product family, you are offered Dorico Pro, Dorico Elements, or Dorico SE tiles. The original Dorico 1 manual (before Pro/Elements were introduced) is under the Dorico Pro tile.
General, index - I’ve been making ongoing refinements to the PDF index, now that our brilliant tech-team has implemented “see x”/“see also x” functionality. Now, there are fewer duplicate “lists” of entries with subentries; instead, there are lots of possible and related terms that point to the main entry - such as “crescendo > see gradual dynamics” and “arco > see playing techniques”. This allows us to have lots of alternative terms in the index, without having unnecessary duplication and hopefully making it cleaner to read. (The eagle-eyed amongst you might even spot something that comes close to a witticism if you go looking for clefs…)
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