[Elements] Text facilities and constraints

Some would say the only point! Nearly every “Lite” version is a gateway drug to the full product. The limitations are always arbitrary, and when you hit the limits, your only choice is to move up to the Pro product.

From the original post:

In fact, you can: in the Preferences dialog you can choose the default text font for new projects, so if you change that before you start a new project, all of the text both in frames and more generally around the score will use the text font family you choose there.

To the extent that these things would require the addition of Engrave mode to Dorico Elements, the answer is no: but it may become possible to do some of the other things that you mention (e.g. adding carriage returns in the various fields in Project Info) in the future.

Good call. It appears Elements retains most if not all of the filters of Dorico.


Yes, useful suggestion, and something I already do when sending out manuals for professional printing.


This is true, but one must set the typeface before starting the new project; once under way, there seems no way to choose something different for that project. This will bite people, as it’s not the expected behaviour for editor software.


I appreciate your need for product differentiation.

However, Elements allows extensive typeface attribute selection for Staff and System text. I wonder if this facility could be leveraged? As these items presumably have location coordinates in their underlying data structures, my thought is that permitted items from the Project Info dialog (such as title, etc) could be treated as a type of System text object albeit with unique private virtual location identifiers. Their uniqueness would allow for them to be painted at specific places only; their privacy would ensure an end-user couldn’t hijack them to simulate Big Dorico’s text flows; and their virtuality (?) would distinguish them to the layout engine.

I think we probably are being unnecessarily restrictive in preventing you from simply double-clicking on the text items in the fixed frames for title, composer, lyricist and copyright and not allowing you to edit these directly, even if you can’t create new frames or move the current ones around. So I will look at allowing this kind of editing in Write mode in the next little bug fix update, which will be coming relatively soon.

Hey Daniel, honestly that would not be luxury, those limitations seems a bit frustrating to me but thank you anyway for taking part to the discussion and thinking about it.

I’m not suggesting it would be luxury, but Dorico Elements is not meant to be a luxury product! However, with that change you will at least be able to have total control over what text appears in the key areas of the page (the title area, the header/footer, and the upper left/right areas for composer, lyricist, and so on).

Can I have Elements use Petaluma Text for the music font instead of Bravura Text?

**Leigh

Not at the moment, because I believe the Music Fonts dialog is not currently included in Elements (it’s in the Engrave menu, which is not included in Elements, obviously enough), but we are thinking about making the Music Fonts dialog available in e.g. the Edit menu so that you can change between Bravura and Petaluma easily in Elements.

Does this mean that for now in Elements we can’t change or add any texts or chords symbols ??

No, you can still add text with Shift+X, system text with Shift+Alt+X, and chord symbols with Shift+Q, just like you can in Dorico Pro.

Thanks Daniel for letting me know.
Could you please tell me how can I switch from a D# to a E? I have loaded a melody from one of my Cubase project to first try Dorico, added the key signature, Gmin, but still all Eb and Gb notes are shown as D# and F#, I can’t figure how to select and simply move the sharp notes one step up on the staff ??
Thanks

There are controls to rewrite the enharmonic. It should br Alt+[whatever key you press to make # or b].
To move the pitch in Dorico it’s as easy as pressing alt-arrow (up or down)

Couldn’t figure how to rewirte enharmonic with Alt+Shift+the key but I moved the notes with Alt-arrow.
Merci Marc!

Sorry, I think there’s no sift key involved. I edit my post :wink:

It is really a small detail but when adding Chord symbol, e.g. Gmin/A, it automatically converts it to Gm/A, is it possible anyway to show Gmin/A ??

I have a little issue, I have loaded an organ melody in midi file from a Cubase project, in some measures like measure 17 (see attachment), in the treble clef, the upper D is missing and when adding it manually in Write mode it insert the note but replaces the D below ?? I hope my explanation make sense?

I am only working on making beautiful score sheet but until now I really appraciate the Elements version.


Dear Vendimion,
If you want Fmin to appear, you have to pick the right option in Engraving options > Chord symbols !

If you want to have multiple notes on a single voice, you need to engage the chord mode (q without shift), you’ll see you can add the high D over the other.
I recommend that you watch carefully all the videos from Anthony Hughes for the Youtube channel, you will lear MANY useful things :wink:
Capture d’écran 2018-07-12 à 18.36.59.png

Alright Marc, I’ll do for sure!
Thanks.

Because you’re using Elements, Vendimion, you don’t have access to the Engraving Options dialog, so you can’t change the default appearance of chord symbols in your project. Sorry.

If by “appearance” one means typographic appearance, rather than a particular style of chord symbol representation, then some user choice is possible at present. You can select a default text typeface and font (weight), which is then used for chord symbols. You can also (from the Bottom Panel) set a custom scaling for any selected chord symbols in the score - equivalent (near enough) to selecting font size.

But I look forward to the Elements update Daniel mentioned above to ease some of the typographic restrictions on commonly used text items.

Me too. I just wanna be able to add some basic project info to a score before I print it, more than just the title of the piece. I will definitely pay the $350 extra for Pro when I have the funds and when I’m ready to write my symphony (more than 12 players). But for now, I think getting just the basics of “who’s the composer?” “who’s the arranger?” “who holds the copyright?” shouldn’t require me to starve for a month… :wink:
Thanks :smiley: