I am new to Dorico having recently purchased it. The paradigm Dorico follows is very appealing and I hope the software becomes a huge success. As should be expected with a software of this magnitude and newness, many necessary features are in process to be included over time.
One feature I am either missing or may not yet be implemented (or is even planned to be implemented) is a score versioning feature a la Sibelius. This is something I rely on with many arrangements I do for school and personal projects. For example, I may take a J.S. Bach piece, engrave it as Urtext and then make different arrangements keeping all the different versions in one file instead of many.
I don’t see the Project/Flow method being effective in this scenario. Is there any chance of score versioning becoming a part of Dorico if it is not already?
Hmmm. I’ve been using versions in Sibelius as a way of keeping a history of my work. Once you create a new version of a score, the old versions are read only (locked) unless you explicitly make them active. This way I can go back and say (for example) “What was the cello doing in the read thru back in January”?
You can sort of do this in Dorico with flows and layouts - but it seems a bit kludgy to me. Having dated and labeled versions is cleaner and more intuitive:
Version 1: 2017/01/13 Preliminary read thru
Version 2: 2017/02/05 Second read thru with revised ending
Version 3: 2017/03/27 Added new section after m 120, removed the slow part, revised cello part in opening
etc
etc
My 2 cents? It would be very cool if you could do versions on a flow by flow basis.
You can import/export selected flows from/to a different project.
Probably the “ultimate” version control for now would be to use those options, and use a VCS like git to keep track of the exported files. Of course there might be some manual work required to reconstruct a complete “score version” from the exported flows, depending how flexible you want the version control to be.
Derrek - Using the file system for version control is (at least for me) not an improvement over using Dorico flows - you lose the explanatory detail as in my example.
Rob - I am familiar with VCS packages - I use SVN in my day job - that’s the one that pays the bills - but this is way overkill for my needs.
Derrek & Rob - Thanks for your suggestions, but both of these ideas get in the way of work flow - you have to go outside of Dorico to manage things. So far this is one of the very few features that I miss from Sibelius.
I am currently preparing a performance of a piece in sibelius. We have very little rehearsal time. I record the rehearsal, then review and make changes to the dynamics. The players all use forScore, tied to dropbox, to get the latest versions. The review feature in sibelius is great for summarizing the changes between versions of the score, and parts. This saves enormous amounts of time in rehearsal.
Once this performance is done I’ll transfer to dorico since it’s much better! I can’t believe the amount of tweaking necessary in sibelius when changing dynamics, slurs, minor changes to notes, rythmns. I used it for years (10+), switched to dorico about 5 years ago. I’d forgotten how to use it…But this review, version control item is a feature that really needs to appear in dorico.
(but no versions as D stands)