Version 3.0 documentation published (EN)

Lillie did say in her initial post in this thread:

…and not all screenshots have been updated…

Please bear with us while the documentation is completed. The Version History provides complete documentation for all of the new features and changes brought to Dorico 3 in the meantime.

Standing Ovation…

Great - looking forward to diving into it!

Excellent. Many thanks.

Quick note from me to say I’ve just published an update to the Dorico 3 manuals for both Pro and Elements.

Big new chunks in this update are:

  • Chord diagrams - new chapter in Notation reference, just after chord symbols
  • Guitar bends - new chapter in Notation reference, info about inputting them in Write mode
  • Playing technique continuation lines and groups of playing techniques - in the existing Playing techniques chapter in Notation reference, with updated inputting info in Write mode
  • Playback templates/custom endpoint configurations - I’ve overhauled these bits of Play mode to match changes in v3, including updating the Expression/Percussion maps references
  • Dorico concepts - thanks to this coming up either here or in the facebook group recently, I realised there was some scope for additions & improvements in this early chapter - do read through the updated ‘children’ of this linked topic!
  • Page formatting (Pro manual) - what was previously “Page layouts” within Engrave mode now has its own chapter, now called “page formatting” (as after deliberation I realised “page layouts” could be construed as another type of layout, which was not what I meant). This new chapter contains an updated introduction, which hopefully serves as a better pointer for where to go next, and an initial list of tasks: these should get you most of the way to correctly/well-formatted layouts. After these tasks are subsections for reference, with further information and more detailed tasks, like moving individual staves/notes in Engrave mode. (In the Elements manual, this is still in the “Layout and formatting” chapter but is also called “Page formatting”)

In typical fashion, going through the manual to get all the links together has given me a few ideas for more small improvements, which I will endeavour to publish lickity-spit. Hopefully along with the remaining bits of v3 that need documentation/updating! Ever onwards, folks :slight_smile:

Thank you Lillie, these updates are great.

–L3B

Are these updated PDF manuals available via the SDA, or does one need to download the manuals from the Steinberg site?
(I didn’t see a link for the complete revised manuals in Lillie’s post.)

You can find them online, where you will always find the most up-to-date manuals - Dorico Pro PDF, Dorico Pro webhelp | Dorico Elements PDF, Dorico Elements webhelp

(The document in the SDA is the Version History)

Many thanks to you and the team for this. I realise just what an enormous task this was and it will be incredibly helpful!

Happy Sunday all :slight_smile:

A brief note from me to say that the current EN online manuals for Dorico 3 have been updated with some general improvements and a small number of new additions (although not a huge amount at this time).

Highlights:

Translation for the Dorico 3 manual is ongoing - we’ve already done a number of large chunks for the entirely new features; next we will tackle the smaller changes that are more widespread throughout the manual, which would then allow us to publish accurate localised docs.

Thanks to you, Lillie, and the translation team! This is very much appreciated!

Lillie, we’re so glad you’re on the manuals project. Thanks for all your work.

Suggestion:

I’m probably missing something that’s already there, but it would be helpful if the current PDF manual showed a revision date so one could be sure what version of the manual they are consulting. I see a Dorico version number, but not a manual version number.

We agreed with the manuals team that we could use the date shown on page 2 in the manual (currently “Dorico_3.0.0_en-US_2019-12-06”) to refer to the “documentation’s last-change” date, as for Dorico this was/is changing fairly frequently. It might be worth me bringing this up again and seeing whether it would be useful to have two dates - the date of the app’s release, and the date of the last revision to the documentation, so I’ll do that.

As long as we know where to find the date (as we now do) that lets me tell which is the latest version without referring to the OS’s file date, which can be different.

Thank you, Lillie.

Lillie :slight_smile: you know how much I appreciate this :exclamation:
I check the three versions every day, but only today I spotted your post! Thanks again!

1280 pages 6.12.2019 :exclamation:

Thanks, Lillie!

My main concern is to quickly and easily verify that I have the most up-to-date version. In the middle of all the other complexities of working with Dorico and VSTs quick and easy is a good thing. Especially when I have a mind like a steel colander. :smiley:

Hi Lillie–
I found myself in a bit of pickle today and went to reference the manual. It turns out the manual doesn’t use the word “propagate” even one time even though there are at least two commands that have that in their name. I couldn’t, for the life of me, find where “propagate part layouts” was nested (I expected it in engrave mode, not setup, since I’ve never used it before). It took digging around the forum before I discovered the answer. I tried using both the online and PDF versions of the D3.0 documentation but that word simply wasn’t in there.
Thanks!

I see four results here: Search Results - Dorico Help

I ummed and ahhed over this a little bit when I was originally documenting it - my ultimate conclusion/suspicion was that unless users were already familiar with the term “propagate” for this context (either from discussions in the Facebook group or here, or from reading the version history), they would be less likely to search for “propagate” than something like “copy settings” or “copy layout”. What nudged me over to that direction was that the strings for the commands “Propagate Part Formatting” and “Propagate Properties” would still be there in the body, and searchable. So I thought that would be the best of both worlds: the exact string there for users in-the-know, but the terminology in the rest of the body generic enough to come up for everyone else.

(I just loaded the PDF from the online help and although it takes a few seconds for the generic search in a web browser to scan the whole document - it’s long, I’m sorry - once it does you do get a bunch of relevant results. Admittedly not for “propagate part layouts” because the command string is “Propagate Part Formatting”, so I’ll add that phrase to the metadata.)

Well, that’s terribly odd, Leo. I wonder if I accidentally pulled up old documentation and didn’t notice it. I definitely searched and nothing popped up. The other option is Lillie’s suggestion that perhaps I didn’t wait long enough for the hole document to be scanned. Oh well. Thanks, all.