Marc,
I no longer have problems getting a pitch at an alternate octave; I was still a kid when the incident I described happened, and had the choimaster thought to tell me the pitch was an octave higher than it gave the impression of being, I’m pretty sure I would have had no trouble.
k_b,
I agree that having the tenor-G clef and the regular G clef give the same pitch for any given line seems counter-intuitive to me, but that is the way the Dorico/HALion setup works, so I try to adapt. Granted this causes problems when combining tenors and basses on the same staff of a hymn arrangement. Fortunately I do not have to face the prospect of assigning a pre-transposed tenor voice to a C clef. I can see how that would also cause problems. Fortunately the HALion player–and IIRC some expression maps–will allow one to transpose the tenor (or similar instruments pre-transposed at the octave) into the range one expects.