Wish list for comments

Dorico
#1

I use comments a LOT, because I’m engraving a historical handwritten score that’s never been engraved before, so it’s important to me to track every questionable thing in it for later consultation with experts. There’s a few things about comments that I would REALLY like to see:

  1. As far as I can tell, they can only be attached to notes, not other things. I just looked at a smudged tempo marking in the original manuscript (q = 80 or 90), so I created the tempo marking in Dorico, then added a comment to it saying “get a second opinion on whether this handwriting says 80 or 90” then when I clicked OK, my text disappeared and was never attached to the metronome marking. First, this is unacceptable that Dorico would lose my writing and just toss it into the ether, without even telling me I did something wrong. Second, it would be great if comments could be attached to anything in the score, not just notes.

  2. I would love it if the right-side comments list was sortable by both bar number and also by time created. I created several comments during my work session tonight, but they span across hundreds of bars of music, so I found myself wanting to sort them by date added, but this doesn’t appear to be possible.

  3. Seems obvious, but: if I click on a comment in the right sidebar, could Dorico auto-scroll to the location in the score that that comment is attached to? Again, I’ve got dozens and dozens of comments, and for each of them, I have to manually read their location then manually scroll to it. This is something that computers could do automatically really, really well. :slight_smile:

  4. The ability to search comments. (When I learn a new trick on the forum that applies to my score, the easiest way for me to find where in the score I struggled with the issue is by searching the comments!)

  5. If a stave containing a comment is selected, then cut, then pasted to a different stave, I wish the comment would move with it. Right now it stays anchored to its original position.

  6. If I double-click a comment from the list of comments on the right sidebar, its popup box comes up with its text. Great. But the only options are OK and Cancel. What if I want to delete the comment? Now I have to go and manually locate it in the score (see request #3 above), THEN I can manually delete it. Any reason the popup dialog box couldn’t also have an option to delete it, to save the unnecessary manual steps?

#2

I expect comments cannot be linked to system objects since they need to be attached to a specific staff.

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#3

I think comments are attached to individual stave grid positions.

#4

My suggestions:

  1. Comments are exported as comments in PDF
  2. To be able to set up folders in the comments pane to categorize the comments. (Folders are however not supported in PDF’s comment list but the colour is, so a folder could be assigned a colour, like layers are in InDesign or Illustrator.)
  3. CSV and TAB separated export of comments. HTML is fine, but difficult to post-process.
  4. Batch processing a folder of Dorico files when exporting comments.
#5

It would be also great to have a conversation per comment, similar to how Google Docs is handling comments, as well as the ability to „accept“ a comment rather than deleting it, which archives it but still makes it invisible.

#6

It is already the case that clicking on a comment in the panel on the right-hand side will navigate to the comment in the music.

Thanks for the other suggestions about this functional area, which we’ll consider next time we’re thinking about making improvements here.

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