dead horse

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Anders Hedelin
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:43 pm

John Ruggero wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:18 pm
I have concluded that Dorico is not yet for those who do intricate, non-standard things with music notation and want more control over every aspect of it, rather than less. Such engravers will need Finale until Dorico is more mature, and hopefully Finale will still be viable until that happens.
I tried to say pretty much the same, but you put it more succinctly. So, the argument that there have been produced good scores also with other programs than Finale is rather beside the mark.
Last edited by Anders Hedelin on Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by RMK » Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:44 pm

Michel R E wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 1:44 pm
No, not wrong.

There is no feature at all in Dorico that brings you automatically to the top of the subsequent page, [...]
And there is in Finale? I just tried this with Finale 27 and, at least on my set-up, it works the same as Dorico.

Maybe I don't understand what you are referring to.

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Michel R E
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Post by Michel R E » Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:52 pm

John Ruggero wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:18 pm
...but also to defend why it is necessary to fix it.
THIS has been annoying. There have been many great people responding with helpful suggestions or comments, but there appears to be a rather stridently "anti-change" sub-group who react as though every criticism of Dorico is a personal affront.

Thankfully, the Dorico staff themselves appear to be open to getting word to their higher-ups and seeing what can be done about potential changes.

My issue with the naming of the two violin staves in an orchestral score (house style requires that the name "violin" appears between the staves, and that each staff is itself only numbered) has been brought to the attention of the programmers, and apparently a fix for that will be in the next version of Dorico. (though I DID have to "defend" the reason I needed this to those anti-change people, which was tremendously annoying.)
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Michel R E
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Post by Michel R E » Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:55 pm

RMK wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:44 pm
And there is in Finale? I just tried this with Finale 27 and, at least on my set-up, it works the same as Dorico.

Maybe I don't understand what you are referring to.
In Finale, ctrl+page down brings you to the next page, ctrl+page up brings you to the previous page.

I posted a bit higher that there is a bug of sorts regarding Dorico's ability to move from one page to the next, linked to some function of the size of the thumb on the scroll bar. It's definitely a bug, because it only affects the horizontal scroll (and its linked keyboard shortcut), and not the vertical scroll bar.
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Post by Jay Emmes » Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:22 pm

Michel R E wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:52 pm
There have been many great people responding with helpful suggestions or comments, but there appears to be a rather stridently "anti-change" sub-group who react as though every criticism of Dorico is a personal affront.
This is also exactly what happens here and happened over on the old MM forum regarding Finale, isn't it?
I suppose it's an all too human reaction to defend what is in some way important or close to you, to maintain the legitimacy of your world order. Read past that; it -after all- only shows that for both sides of the medal there are defendable arguments.
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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Sep 21, 2021 10:00 pm

Do not PageUp and PageDown go to the previous and next page on Dorico? An odd oversight if not.

In Scroll View on Finale they are less than ideal, by the way. They go forward and back, all right, but a forward followed by a back will not always take you back exactly to where you started (in fact, usually not). Sometimes I'm flipping through and something catches my eye right before I hit PageDown; if I back up with PageUp, though, it's in a different place on the screen, if it's there at all. The snafu has to do with measures not fully fitting on the page, but that's not an insurmountable problem.

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Post by RMK » Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:12 pm

motet wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 10:00 pm
Do not PageUp and PageDown go to the previous and next page on Dorico? An odd oversight if not.
No, they scroll up and down the page.

Home and end scroll backwards and forwards, respectively.

However, if you are in the print module, PageUp and PageDown do scroll as expected.

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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:38 pm

I wonder why Michel thought differently.

I actually have Dorico; just haven't used it. I just opened a Rameau demo file with it and can confirm that you are right: Home and End are like Finale's Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown (only easier since they're unshifted!). It does seem backwards; I would have made Home and End scroll up and down the page, and PageUp and PageDown page though the file.

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Michel R E
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Post by Michel R E » Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:29 am

ok, since there are some Dorico users here, or dabblers at least, can someone explain to me what this means?
I looked up "violin harmonic" in Dorico's help file, and this paragraph came up:
Artificial harmonics represent the second partial by default. They are shown with a diamond notehead indicating the touched pitch an octave above the selected notes.
Since when are artificial harmonics a touched tone an octave up from the stopped tone?
They're a 4th up, aren't they? (or on cello and double base a 3rd or a 5th)

is this because they are explaining something using terminology that doesn't fit in with my understanding of musical grammar? I'd think after 55 years...
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Post by motet » Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:34 am

Yeah, that doesn't make sense. I wonder why the last word is plural. The sound is two octaves above the stopped note, right? Maybe that's somehow what they meant.

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Post by Michel R E » Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:42 pm

I eventually figured it out... it's the PROGRAM that sets the 2nd partial "by default", and not a music theory concept.

if you look at the harmonics function in the program itself, you just choose 2nd, 3rd, 4th, whatever, as the harmonic you want (and it does automatically make the 4th partial the default one when entering a violin harmonic).

One thing about Dorico is just getting used to the number of keyboard shortcuts. Obviously Finale has a ton of them as well, and after 30-some years you do them instinctively.

I don't know if it's my lack of familiarity (to be fair, it most likely is) with Dorico, but I'm finding the keyboard shortcuts and very basic musical functions seem a bit more arcane in the way they are set up.

For example, to enter a tuplet in Speedy with Finale, I can just press ctrl+(a number) to start inputting that tuplet.
In Dorico I press a key that launches a small window into which I enter my tuplet value, then press enter and then continue my note entry, then need to toggle OFF the tuplet entry feature to enter regular notes (although being able to enter a series of tuplets quickly IS a very nice touch, but it's annoying when it's just one here or there).

I also have to force Dorico to accept what it considers "wrong" notation by invoking a feature that overrides normal engraving rules as set out by Dorico.
For example, in 4/4 I had a quarter note on beat 1, that was tied to the same note as a half note BUT with a touch 4th artificial harmonic above it.
Dorico wouldn't let me tie the two together without consolidating the initial quarter with half the subsequent half notes.
(it wrote it out as quarter tied to quarter tied to quarter, when the desired notation was quarter tied to half)

Again, growing pains, learning new shortcuts, breaking 30 years of Finale habits (I doubt I'll be able to compose fast in Dorico the way I do with pencil+paper+Finale any time soon).
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Wed Sep 22, 2021 1:02 pm

Referring to Michel's last post, and others.

Could it be that Finale, this old, but not quite dead horse still is the more intuitive one? It might be just an effect of being used to what you know, of course, but I get an impression that Dorico is this kind of - Apple-inspired - application which "does it all for you" - "just sit back and we'll sort it out for you". ("And don't bother yourself asking how we made it.") Please prove me wrong.

More specifically, if it takes an effort to step outside the defaults of Finale, would that be even more trying in Dorico?
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Wed Sep 22, 2021 1:37 pm

One more remark, referring to Michel's next to last post.

Dorico's team obviously do not have the theory right with harmonics. As far as I can recall I haven't been able to fault the Finale program-and-manual makers on any theoretic issue through all these years. Maybe there was a single one - perhaps - but it has slipped my mind.

I remember being quite surprised in the beginning. How could these 'computer people' of Finale's be so accurate on music theory? I mean they are a completely different kind of nerds than music theorists!
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Post by Michel R E » Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:28 pm

oh! one thing I absolutely love about Dorico, though I'm not at that point in the piece I'm transcribing yet, is the ability to write a completely measure-free cadenza without clunky workarounds, hidden barlines and time signatures, etc...

gotta balance a few good points with the "less good" ones.
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Post by John Ruggero » Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:29 pm

First, thanks for the compliment back a few posts, Anders. We are so often on the same page.

Second, my impression is that the developer's goal is for Dorico to do as much as it can automatically. They use a "semantic approach" and are trying to hardwire in the "rules" of "proper" music notation as if they were parsing a language. Users who do "improper" things have their work cut out for them using Dorico. Of course, we know that the so-called rules have changed over the years and continue to change, so the designers have their work cut out for them to make it practical for all users.

Thirdly, your comment about music and computer nerds is something that has often occurred to me also. As you said, Finale is remarkable in how much it gets right about music notation and at the same time, how much room it gives musicians, so that a virtuoso like Wess can engrave the most amazing things within Finale. With Dorico, I get the feeling that the computer side is more in control and that the orientation, at least from my perspective, is a little off.
Last edited by John Ruggero on Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by motet » Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:36 pm

Of course you want a program that both gives reasonable results by default, but is also flexible if you want to stray from those defaults. I believe it's possible to have both. I think the Dorico crew is wise to focus on the former, since that's what most users want. Hopefully their design will allow them to expand the latter at some point.

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Post by dankreider » Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:20 am

Michel R E wrote:
Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:42 pm
For example, to enter a tuplet in Speedy with Finale, I can just press ctrl+(a number) to start inputting that tuplet.
In Dorico I press a key that launches a small window into which I enter my tuplet value, then press enter and then continue my note entry, then need to toggle OFF the tuplet entry feature to enter regular notes (although being able to enter a series of tuplets quickly IS a very nice touch, but it's annoying when it's just one here or there).
Two comments regarding the tuplet function in Dorico. First: the reason for the “double step” of triggering tuplets is to make it easier to input any combination of note values. For example, a 5-tuplet made up of 16ths, but the first note is an 8th. I agree that a simple 3:2 or 2:3 would be nice to be able to assign to a key command. I’ve come to vastly prefer how Dorico handles all sorts of tuplet combinations, which is very powerful and… can I use this word… intuitive.

And regarding sticky tuplets: the easy way to break the tuplet is to move the caret: once to the left, once to the right. Here again I agree that tuplets shouldn’t be sticky by default, or at least the ability to turn that off.
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Fri Sep 24, 2021 2:48 pm

It seems that Dorico has some nice tuplet features which are not found in Finale.
However, and FWIW, Finale can do 'sticky tuplets' too. If you are using a keyboard and Speedy, Press Caps lock, enter a number for the note value, and Ctr (Cmd on Mac?) + number for tuplet. Then, just by playing on the keyboard, you can go on writing tuplets till you fall asleep. It's very fast, so maybe you won't risk falling asleep.
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Post by dankreider » Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:19 am

Ah yes… it’s coming back to me now! Fringes of recollection…
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Post by Michel R E » Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:24 pm

I found a... "bug"?... in Dorico.
And this is the problem with programmers thinking they know better than the people who will use the program they are designing.

I was going to print out a PDF of the first page of my violin concerto. The standard size my publisher uses for orchestral scores is, generally, 11" x 14".

Well, it seems that Dorico will not allow me to export a PDF file with those dimensions. It insists on exporting it at the "next closest size" which would be A4. Completely unacceptable as the page is now narrower (this the music has been scaled down to fit the width), and there is now a large blank space at both top and bottom of the page.

I found some comments by Daniel Spreadbury about how Dorico used "standard" paper sizes. Except if the composer - the end user of this product - requires a non-standard paper size, and has access to a printer that will do the work in that size (I can easily imagine some very large and unwieldy scores requiring specific non-standard paper sizes), then the software should... nay MUST allow the user to generate exactly as they need.


EDIT*************************************

This issue has been dealt with. But I have to say that "Dorico does not play well with 3rd party PDF printers" isn't really a good look.

Apparently, rather than export as PDF to my usual PDF printer, one has to use Dorico's own proprietary "graphics" printer. It then generates the PDF properly.
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Post by motet » Mon Sep 27, 2021 3:24 am

I was able to print an 11" x 14" page from Dorico using CutePDF, without using Dorico's graphics printer. Are you sure you've got that page size defined in the Windows printer properties? This article tells how:

https://www.win2pdf.com/doc/pdf-custom- ... ws-10.html

Of course, I know less about Dorico that even you do, so maybe I'm not understanding.
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Post by ebiggs1 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 1:58 pm

I think the printing section of Finale is one of its weakness points but you can print any size you want. The problem then becomes, do you have a printer that will print that size. I do all my concert stuff in 9x12 Concert size. Not very many printers on the market in a reasonable price range will let you print 9x12. I have a Brother MFC-J6545DW large format printer that will and does. I make 'press ready' print outs to help save money before I send it to the actual print shop.

Another issue not related to either Dorico or Sibelius or even Finale is finding 9x12 paper.
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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:11 pm

Looks like you can print any size you want in Dorico, too, so I'm curious why Michel had trouble.

I haven't seen 9 x 12 paper sold in reams. You can get 12 x 18 in reams, though usually not at big box stores like Office Depot or Staples. Of course, you need some way of cutting it in half.

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Post by ebiggs1 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:19 pm

I have it cut by the print shop. I usually ask for something around 60lb white bond because it goes through my printer easily.
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Michel R E
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Post by Michel R E » Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:35 pm

Yes, my Adobe Acrobat has every paper size I use programmed into it.
My 11x14 is called "large score" and works from any program I want.

When I am looking at the print interface as in the image above, for "page setup" I have A4 only, I can't even change it to anything else. The only option I have other than "Graphics" (at the top of the print dialogue) is "PDF", not "Adobe, not Acrobat, just "PDF". There is no drop down for other choices, the same for "page setup".


By the way, I don't need to have a physical printer for my work. I just send it to the publisher, who have all the required pre-cut papers and printers capable of handling those sizes as well as preparing the covers and bindings (where necessary).
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