My two cents is that one should not confuse “engraving present in professional settings” with “professional engraving”. They are very different monsters.
Scripting and Plugins?
If one knows Finale, one can achieve pro class looking score sheets too. That’s why publishers use use it. But that’s not the point. Dorico (to the expent it has been realized so far) does many things Finale (or I expect Sibelius or Overture) can do within a framework that makes many tasks faster or more consistent with less overall tinkering.
I expected Dorico to have a learning curve. That’s why I bought into it as soon as it came out.
That is not to say some fine suggestions may not be implemented down the line, but I expect what is coming in 3.0 has already been decided and may by now be mostly implemented and going into a testing phase. At least, from the perspective of seeing the software before to long, I hope so.
(And Daniel, please forgive my “Kremlinology.” I promise there is no Russian collusion involved. 
)
As Derrek has hinted, a) this thread has gone off at a tangent and seems to be nothing to do with what people are expecting in Dorico v3. Daniel has been confirming details about certain upcoming features over the past week or so, which would indicate that the new feature set for v3 is already set, if not entirely implemented.
b) For me, and presumably for a substantial proportion of notation software users, efficiency of workflow is the thing. Notation software has to be complicated to achieve a professional result, so a learning curve is to be expected (and 2 hours is a drop in the ocean, particularly if you’ve spent years working with other notation software). For those of us that sometimes use the software for 12+ hours per day, intuitiveness in the first two hours of use is simply irrelevant. To a new user I consider Dorico to be considerably more intuitive than Sibelius or Finale, and I can confirm categorically that for preparing works for publication, Dorico’s workflow is much quicker than Sibelius or Finale once the initial (steep) learning curve is out of the way. (No, I don’t want to get into an argument about graphic scoring or guitar notation - of course Finale and/or Sibelius are quicker/better for that, currently)
I tried it once, and it crashed about every 5 minutes on average. I uninstalled it as a waste of disk space after about half an hour.
Maybe I’m not smart enough to see how wonderful it really is 
I would agree with that. Nonetheless, it is really overwhelming because:
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Dorico is already a very full-featured product – and that comprehensiveness necessarily adds complexity.
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Dorico’s underlying concepts (rule basis etc) are superior but unlike conventional programs. This is not necessarily easy for many folks to absorb.
I have not used Overture. But if there are aspects of its first impressions that lead users more directly to a good result, those ought to be given consideration.
And one of the things I found tedious was the fact that a great many of the help pages simply defined the title of the help page in more detail but didn’t actually offer any useful guidance about how to perform the function of interest. I think that may be evolving a bit but really, if I am looking for how to handle slurs, I don’t need a definition of what a slur is. I need step-by-step instructions of how to do the slur operations.
I just picked “slurs” out of thin air and didn’t look to see the current state of that help. It is just for illustration purposes.
Re: Overture.
One key factor is one-man operations, though more flexible, are inherently risky. If you invest time and money in a one-man product and that one man gets run over by a bus you’re simply out of luck for the future.
One sincerely wishes than nothing happen to Daniel or to Don, but there would be a team to carry on in Daniel’s stead.
Maybe it would be a good idea to run a short private closed-group-of-trusted-non-idiotic-power-user beta trial of 3?
Just a thought. It is always extremely difficult to test a very large number of cases, and IME users always find the problem cases pretty soon after release.
When we beta test the software, we use a private, closed group of trusted, non-idiotic power users.
Point taken. ROFL
Do vertically challenged non-idiots make better testers than just non-idiots? 
Has there been any mention of or list of all the improvements in the Play Mode. for instance the completion of Expression Maps functionality? I understand the MIDI editing will also be greatly updated…
Cheers, Paul
awesome
short in this case referring to the duration of the beta period rather than the stature of the non-idiots.
Well I must wholeheartedly disagree. Whilst I do agree that Overture is slightly more intuitive, this is negligible next to the fact that it doesn’t do anything well, when it even works. I went from 15 years on Sibelius and Cubase to Overture, and considering that the program crashes every 5 minutes, as others have said, I managed to only do one project that was mainly playback. It took me about three months mostly because of the crashes, when I finished I realised the score was an absolute mess and as soon as I started adjusting things it started crashing again!!! I couldn’t be bothered continuing.
Dorico on the other hand allowed me to get to work almost immediately, mostly because I could import XMLs and the score was pretty much ready, and full projects like the one I did in Overture in about 4 months.
Out of the box Dorico is far superior, it performs nicer (although I do miss the tempo humaniser of Overture) and in 75% of the cases the score is ready for printing without any adjustments and fiddling. In terms of features yes, Overture vastly outdoes Dorico, but what is the point if it doesn’t work? I stuck with it for a year and only got one work out of it, I’ve been with Dorico for a year and I’ve gotten dozens of works ranging from pure highly programmed playback to a full out concerto for trumpet and orchestra!
And let’s not even mention that insufferable man…! Give me Daniel and his team any day! When something went wrong with Overture half the time the imbecile would just delete the post without even addressing it. The only time I had anything not working in Dorico, I spent a week on private emails with a lovely Steinberg staff member who stuck with me until we found the problem. I’m sorry, you just can’t compare.
I’d strongly suggest including at least a few idiots in the beta tester pool, since only they will be able to anticipate the mistakes that I’ll make using the software… 
B.
If any of them are reading this thread, they are now going to wonder why exactly they were asked to participate.
I suspect the current beta-testers are primarily from the group that volunteered to beta test the program before its initial release. Although they are almost certainly sworn to secrecy about their identities, I have my theories about some of them based on who were immediately helpful on this forum from the start.
(But I am keeping my suspicions to myself.)
Whoever they are, they have done a commendable job so far. Thanks are in order.
And maybe a few who aren’t trustworthy, just to make the testing more realistic.