Suggestion of better UI for Edit Playing Techniques

Dorico
1

Adding a number of playing techniques for lets say strings it would be better if the dialog could remain open until you’re done.

Let’s look at the workflow. We start when you are ready to save the first one and to go on with the next:

Current behavior

  1. clicking OK closes dialog (unfortunately)
  2. select Playing techniques from menu
  3. select Strings from the dialog menu
  4. click on plus sign to start the next

Suggested behaviour

  1. Clicking OK save the new defined playing technique but doesn’t close the dialog
  2. click on plus sign to start the next
  3. When all the new techniques are defined, click on the new button “Close”

Alternative behaviour
Dorico remembers that user was working on Strings, so when dialog opens up again Strings are selected.

I like to add that for me as a composer the task of creating new playing techniques is always done during writing music which means switching from Write Mode to Engraver Mode. Therefore an enhancement of the UI would be much appreciated.

The editor itself is really impressive! One enhancement here would be that when selecting an already used glyph the list of glyphs would switch to that glyph in that font.

Thanks

2

I don’t really understand this.
For me, current behaviour is:

  1. Create a new playing technique (from the + buttons in the bottom left corner of the dialog)
  2. Fill in the blanks, continuation settings etc.
    Repeat steps 1 and 2 to add more new playing techniques.
  3. Hit OK to confirm all of them and close the dialog.
3

The only thing which I find illogical and I know has confused quite a few is that this dialog is in the Engrave menu. After all, many will initiate p.t’s from Write mode so why does it then call the Edit Playing Techniques from Engrave mode to actually do the setup? It is in fact a Create and Edit playing techniques dialog. Glyph editing, which is perfectly logically in the Engrave menu, has its own dialog.

Once actually there then I do as Leo and see no reason why you should need to save the first one before continuing.

4

You can call up the dialog from the right panel of Write mode, if you like…

5

which is exactly what I meant and indeed what I tend to do.

6

I wonder if the appearance of the Edit Playing Techniques dialog on the Engrave menu might have something to do with the Elements/SE restrictions. It’s not a consideration that’s necessarily relevant to Dorico Pro users, but it strikes me as a logical development choice. Same goes for the Line editors and Chord Diagrams editor.