I’d like to modify instrument change labels globally so that the descenders on letters such as p, q, g, and y have a little more space between them and the bounding instrument change box, perhaps by reducing the size of the font. The slice below illustrates the issue:
I’ve searched the forum, and Daniel mentions using the Engrave → Paragraph Styles dialog, but I can’t seem to find it. 
It’s under Library->Paragraph Styles
Jesper
Thank you, @jesele.
Increasing the bottom padding to 1 pt works beautifully.
Apologies for this follow-up question.
Increasing the bottom padding solves the issue for instrument change labels that contain descenders which almost touch the bounding box. However, for labels without descenders, the text is no longer centred correctly, presumably because the top and bottom padding values differ.
An obvious solution would be to match the top and bottom values, but as can be seen below, there is then far too much space below “Alice” when the bottom padding is set to 1.5 pt, which works well for “Gilpin”.
The paragraph styles settings used to generate the above slice are shown below:
I’m not sure that’s possible, I’m afraid.
Jesper
That’s a pity, though such small refinements hardly detract from the overall presentation of the score. I suppose the underlying issue is that Dorico would need some additional processing to detect whether a label contains descenders and then take that into account when determining the padding values.
I’d be inclined to tag this as a feature request, but I imagine there are many other, more pressing priorities to be worked on.
I think so.
Jesper
Not to be flippant, but I think not. If Dorico is to be the premier choice for engraving, then there is nothing more important than achieving a beautiful score. An important factor, if not a prerequisite, for beauty in text handling is balance. To achieve proper balance in a visual medium such as printed music, we need control over every aspect of the placement and look of each element on the page, much like the best Engravers used to do by hand.
It’s why some of those old scores can be compared to true art, while most of the digital age is slop. Honestly, I don’t believe any program can achieve this, but the closer we can get, the better.
I am with you all the way @clancyweeks 
Given how responsive the development team is, I feel sure a note will have been made and that a feature request has been added to their ever-growing list of future enhancements.
I am slightly surprised that such functionality doesn’t already exist, given the breadth of options available under Paragraph Styles. Like you, I value balance as much as clarity in the presentation of notated music, and I believe that when the two are in harmony, the results speak for themselves.
Maybe you could create one extra paragraph style for the ones with descender. If you keep the standard one as parent it should work quite well.
Perhaps defining well what a bounding box is, would be a better solution without any workaround…
This sounds like an excellent idea, but I wonder how it would work in practice with Dorico’s automatic instrument change labelling. I can’t see a way in Engrave mode to override the paragraph style for a selected instrument change label, though it’s entirely possible I’m simply not looking in the right place. I’d like to avoid manual intervention where possible, but perhaps this is one of those cases where there’s no alternative. I could manually add instrument change labels, but in my use case (one player holding 20+ voices with a very large number of label changes across c. 110 minutes of music) that would be a significant amount of work and highly prone to user error.
Ah, now I see! No, in that case this is not a solution of course. Maybe just increase the box both up and down then, and leave it at that.
I’d value a second pair of eyes taking a look at this slice. I’ve increased the top and bottom padding to 0.5 pt, and while Gilpin looks entirely satisfactory - illustrating just how close the descender is to the border even with a little extra padding - there seems to be slightly too much space below Alice.
As with many visual details, once noticed it’s difficult not to be drawn to any discrepancy, especially when labels appear close to one another.
Roy, how does it look when you use words or names that do not have ascenders (lowercase L). To my defective eyes, it appears that the “l” is taller than the “A” or “G”. That would give a false impression of how much space or padding is above the word (making the lower space or padding seem inconsistent). The descenders clearly go below the baseline whereas there is not a similar single top line above.
— Jim
The boxes are the same height, which I think is more important.
Indeed, the ascender ‘l’ is taller than the capital letters. This is not unusual.
