…the bar should automatically recognize the anacrusis value without the user specifying it
Hmmm… Interesting and now that you bring it up, even desirable. Seeing that no notation app has this functionality currently, we may have to wait for the promised AI features of MuseScore 5 to show us all how this should be done.
I confess that Encore 5’s ability to specify anacrusis without jumping through a number of hoops is one of my favorite features (ahem, MuseScore, Finale, Sibelius…). I haven’t played with Dorico 6 yet to see if there’s any improvement from Yamaha/Steinberg but none has been announced.