NOTATIO

Then there are also all kind of settings for:
Endpoint Positioning
Tied Notes
Avoiding collisions (a lot of settings!)
Grace Notes

Thanks teacue for showing this. It looks as if Dorico has thought it out well. Not having tried the program I couldn't tell if it works better than Finale or not, but it looks promising.

Dorico seems to have only "short slurs" as a class, like Finale. What is needed is a special category for two-note slurs, since their behavior, as seen in the examples I showed in the OP, is different from short slurs the encompass three or more notes.

Anders, there has been a lot of discussion of Dorico's slurs because the default inherent slur shape (as opposed to the varying contours of the slurs as used in all the different situations) is quite different from Finale's. However, with setting changes, Dorico can achieve slurs that are comparable to those in Finale. I personally find Finale's inherent shape much better "out of the box" than Dorico's.

John Ruggero wrote: ↑27 May 2020, 22:18 Anders, there has been a lot of discussion of Dorico's slurs because the default inherent slur shape (as opposed to the varying contours of the slurs as used in all the different situations) is quite different from Finale's. However, with setting changes, Dorico can achieve slurs that are comparable to those in Finale. I personally find Finale's inherent shape much better "out of the box" than Dorico's.

I haven't followed the discussions about Dorico very carefully, because I never seriously contemplated abandoning Finale. I agree with your opinion on the slurs, of course.

I seem to recall discussions, either here or on Finale forum, that Finale's default slurs were not that great, and like many other settings, needed adjustment to achieve optimal results.

Traditionally, any default is always the wrong choice, and the important thing is that they can be changed to one's liking.

I've found Finale's Slurs settings (in three separate dialogs) rather hard to understand, and I've largely just blindly copied numbers from forum posts to improve things. Dorico's settings are much more understandable and consequently controllable.

benwiggy wrote: ↑28 May 2020, 09:44 Traditionally, any default is always the wrong choice, and the important thing is that they can be changed to one's liking.

I've found Finale's Slurs settings (in three separate dialogs) rather hard to understand, and I've largely just blindly copied numbers from forum posts to improve things. Dorico's settings are much more understandable and consequently controllable.

On the first point I agree completely.
On the second, I can't say anything about Dorico, but I find Finale's settings useful, up to the point where the inevitable manual tweaking has to take over. I'm so used to this tweaking that I have grown to consider it as an integral part of engraving as such. It could even offer a certain satisfaction drawing 'your own picture of music'. I realise that it could be an issue if you had to produce a large score - with parts and cues - next Monday. But then the look of slurs couldn't be allowed to matter very much.

benwiggy wrote: ↑28 May 2020, 09:44 I seem to recall discussions, either here or on Finale forum, that Finale's default slurs were not that great, and like many other settings, needed adjustment to achieve optimal results

I was making a distinction between "inherent slur shape", i.e. thickness, the degree of taper etc. as opposed the various contours that one might adjust for each individual slur. So I prefer Finale's "inherent slur shape" to Dorico's without adjusting the defaults. While it is true that Finale's slur tips have to be modified to achieve the best results, Dorico's default settings need much more adjusting to achieve the inherent shape I prefer. The latest version of Dorico has apparently made changes to the slur defaults settings, but the results that I have seen are not what I would use. The designers of Dorico seem to prefer a much thicker-looking slur than what I see in engraving from publishers like Henle, Wiener Urtext etc.

As far as the contour, I am not sure which does a better job using the default settings, since I have so little experience with Dorico.

So, I'm quite happy with what I've got. The old program.

Well, perhaps I should have said rather happy, not quite happy. What really annoys me with Finale's slurs is this default behaviour: How does Dorico do this, per default?

I would be surprised if this hasn't been addressed before in this forum, but when I tried to search for it, I didn't find it. It is touched upon earlier in this thread, but not really discussed.

It has the following choices. This was just introduced in 3.5, and the default is the left hand one.