Dorico…to be or not.

[OCTO]

Thanks!

And if you were a Finale user, there is a very favourable cross-grade price.

Yes, both Finale and Sibelius.  Actually, I already submitted the crossgrade information, but I forgot to check the status.  It was approved, but then cancelled because I didn't respond within 30 days or so.

If I decide to go with Dorico, I will go all in, no demo or tryout.  That is usually how I do things.

[benwiggy]

Plethora.

To start with - who is in the most stable position in the long run? Not I who went for Finale. Those who mastered open source stuff (Lilypond, MusiXTeX, Frescobaldi etc.). Nothing has changed for them, and won't change, unless they decide so. No unwanted "transition", conversion, re-editing. Everything always where left, with output potentially second to none.

Open source software still needs to be supported by someone else, unless you're doing it yourself. There are plenty of abandoned Open source projects. It's not impossible that Lilypond will grind to a halt, 20 years down the road. And it's currently a lot harder to get data out of Lilypond than other notation apps.
So that seems a pretty poor argument for choosing the right tool for getting your work done now.

By the time anyone needs to move away from either Dorico or Lilypond, 30 years from now, we'll likely have much better tools for migration anyway.

[John Ruggero]

Thank you for the compliment, OCTO! You are clearly very able to adapt different notation software to your needs and would probably have much less trouble than most doing the same with Dorico.

[OCTO]

How about quick copy/paste between different instruments, moving phrases around (left/right, as with Sibelius CMD+ALT+arrow), quickly copying and pasting specific elements from one instrument to another (slurs, hairpins, etc.), filtering specific elements within a selected measure, etc.?

What I mean by "quick" is to execute the command in a shortest possible time by using shortcuts and without any screen-delay.

These are the things I find very effective in Sibelius, as Word processor, even though the final output is not near what Finale can achieve.

[MichelRE]

copying and pasting works very well.
you can set up little macros that will select things for you as well, only notes, only articulations, only slurs.

Dorico does some fun things too, for example, enter all 8th notes, then select the measures (ie: all of the notes, and simply press "." (the period key) and it will transform the whole passage into dotted 8th - 16th note patterns.

Dorico works better when you know the keyboard shortcuts, unlike Finale which was a bit more menu-driven.
I use a MIDI keyboard for note entry, and I can really fly through entering notes. The only time it really slows down - and it's mostly from a lack of experience on my part - is if the rhythms become particularly complex (which rarely happens in my particular musical language.)

[benwiggy]

How about quick copy/paste between different instruments, moving phrases around (left/right, as with Sibelius CMD+ALT+arrow), quickly copying and pasting specific elements from one instrument to another (slurs, hairpins, etc.), filtering specific elements within a selected measure, etc.?

You can Alt-click to copy/paste a selection to a new location, just as in Finale.

Moving a selection of material is done with Alt Left/Right. The music is moved along a "rhythmic grid", whose duration you can set. So you might choose 8ths for 6/8, and then move Alt-Right 3 times to move it one beat. (Or set the grid to a dotted quarter, and move it once.)

Dorico will also sort out beaming and note groups as you move notes across beats.

All music items are treated in a similar way, so anything you select can be duplicated to the staff below, or alt-clicked. (Slurs, lyrics, etc.)

There is a filter for types of notation. I've configured a sequence of key shortcuts to use it, so it's very quick.