Why all those abbreviations?

As mentioned in another thread, I’m trying to create a text frame on a page. No success yet. Looking at the manual, I just learned that one needs top drag the frame, and not just click on it, but that didn’t work either. In this process I realise that there are many situations with Dorico where I don’t find a simple way to do things, but also that even if I look around in menus or look in the manual, I’m still confused.
Right now I’m looking at a mini-menu called “LC”. But I have noe idea what LC means. Clicking on it, I see two new options: MA and LC. There’s lots of vacant space to write something more descriptive in that area, but that hasn’t been done, and there’s no extra info if I hold the mouse over MA or LC either. So among other things, I try to google dorico and MA and LC, and find a text which says “In the layout music frame or in the master page music frame, open Frame Chain (followed by a picture of a popup menu called MH), and select…” But what’s MH? I found a popup menu with LC as the header, but clicking on that one does nothing.

When explanations are needed to get things done, and when things doesn’t happen when I click on something or try to drag something, and the needed areas are hard to find + the language is based around concepts like MA and LC and MH, it’s not only easy to get lost, but also to give up. Why not write something more understandable than MA and MH? Is there anything to gain at all by using these abbreviations? Also, if I eg. need to so something else before I can insert a text frame or similar, it would IMO be a lot better if Dorico would give me a message about this when I try. Or info in a popover.

This is the third time I try to get started with Dorico, but again the process stops up because there simply are to many things that needs to be explained. Luckily, Daniel S, and other are very helpful on this forum - and I really appreciate that - but I also find myself thinking that Dorcio should have been designed up in a way where things wouldn’t need to be explained as much. I have used music software for 30+ years and and also written software reviews and been teaching music software, but unfortunately I find many of the Dorico solutions to be implemented in the way things were done a couple pf decades ago, back when easy-of-use and removing ‘workflow stoppers’ didn’t have as much focus as it has lately.

You’ve ventured into the more advanced areas of Dorico’s page layout functionality. We certainly want to make the software easy to understand, but there is a lot of power and sophistication in this area of the program. It will definitely help when there is more detailed documentation available, and my colleague Anthony is also working on a new series of videos focused on the page layout features of the program, which will be available after the next update (he’s working on videos related to the new features of the update at the moment).

The abbreviations in the frame chains are a bit opaque, but they’re easy enough to understand once you know what they are abbreviations for. The first letter, L or M, refers to whether or not the frame chain is unique to the layout (hence L) or whether it comes from the master page template (hence M). The second letter is an identifier for the chain of frames: you can think of it like a number (though we don’t use a number because you can have multiple frames in the same chain on the same page, in which case they are numbered 1 to 3 or whatever). So MA means a frame chain that comes from the master page, while MH means another frame chain that comes from the master page, and LI means yet a third frame chain, but this one comes from a page in the layout.

Each music frame you create is automatically made to be the first frame in a new frame chain. If you want to make a music frame to be part of an existing frame chain, that’s what the menu at the top left-hand corner of the frame chain is for.

Looking forward to that video series. The Engraving Mode is still a part that I need to wrap my head around even after watching all the videos, which have been very useful.

Thanks for the feedback and help, as always! Regarding manuals and sophistication… of course D. is a complex and deep program, but again; that’s exactly why I think using mouse dragging, pop-over info and contextual menus as much as possible needed is so essential.

"The first letter, L or M, refers to whether or not the frame chain is unique to the layout (hence L) or whether it comes from the master page template (hence M).

The second letter is an identifier for the chain of frames: you can think of it like a number (though we don’t use a number because you can have multiple frames in the same chain on the same page, in which case they are numbered 1 to 3 or whatever). So MA means a frame chain that comes from the master page, while MH means another frame chain that comes from the master page, and LI means yet a third frame chain, but this one comes from a page in the layout."

Thanks again. I still would prefer an easier solution.
Regarding “MH means another frame chain that comes from the master page” - why not just use #h if numbers aren’t to be used and “h” is the number (instead of “8”)?
And if “M” is a reference to “Master”, why not just writer “Master” or something even more descriptive? “L” could also, IMHO as usual, be replaced by “Layout” or something more descriptive.

Regarding: “LI means yet a third frame chain, but this one comes from a page in the layout”, if “I” is the number, and

[/quote]Each music frame you create is automatically made to be the first frame in a new frame chain. If you want to make a music frame to be part of an existing frame chain, that’s what the menu at the top left-hand corner of the frame chain is for.[/quote]
Thanks.

We are using abbreviations in order to keep the size of the menus in the corner of the frame to a minimum. Once you understand what they mean (which you hopefully now do) there is no need for them to be spelled out in long-hand: that would simply cause them to occupy more room and obscure more of the music.

I hope this doesn’t sound too off, as I admit I haven’t even been checking the manual, but I would suggest that the team makes everything available online as they power through the task of writing it, instead of trying to deliver a complete result. I would assume no one in the community would object to that, and it would be rather helpful to some.

Of course, the plan is to publish updates to the documentation as often as possible, once we have got somebody on the job.