I’ve experimented with all the Engraving options for rehearsal letters, but no matter what I do, I’m consistently noticing that they don’t seem to adequately take into account boxed system text, resulting in a tremendous amount of wasted time having re-adjust positions manually in each and every orchestral part:
What I would LOVE Dorico to do is automatically make the rehearsal letters move closer to the bar line and to the top of the staff, instead of by default getting out of the way of the System Text and being consistently too high:
Again, no matter what I’ve tried in settings, nothing seems to affect the need for me to manually adjust each and every rehearsal letter that’s near boxed system text, and I was therefore wondering if Dorico IS programmed to “move rehearsal letters adequately out of the way” when they encounter System Text (and, if not, if this could potentially be addressed down the line?) It’s the single biggest factor slowing me down just before printing …
Are you moving your system text right to keep out of the way of the rehearsal mark? If so, why not attach the system text to the second eighth of the bar, rather than the downbeat?
That’s an excellent suggestion - I’ll definitely try it (thanks)! Having said that, I’d still also be curious to know: if both a rehearsal letter and boxed system text ARE attached to the start of the same bar (which is where Dorico users would presumably think to put both items, by default), can a better way be found to ensure the boxed letter remains close the staff (perhaps “in the fullness of time”/future update, etc.?) I should add that the other issue with how things seem to work in their current state is that the automatic spacing also inserts extra space between staves, such that I not only need to re-adjust the positioning of the letters and text, but then also manually the staff spacing as well (to close the gap that was created to accommodate the overly-highly-positioned rehearsal letter)…
I was thinking off the top of my head, before you’d successfully attached your “what I’d like to see” image.
The problem with my suggestion is that it breaks multirests.
I think, fundamentally, there’s some missing stuff in Engraving Options. At the point that the “Text” section was constructed, there was no such thing as “System Text” in Dorico. If you compare that section to the section for “Tempo” you’ll see that it’s very bare indeed. The “Tempo” section has, for example, options for Horizontal Position > Position of tempo changes relative to coincident rehearsal marks.
Basically, if your system text was a tempo it’d be handled automatically, by default, by the rules in the “Tempo” part of Engraving Options (not the rules in the “Rehearsal Marks” part of Engraving Options". I think some of those options need to be adapted and added to the “Text” part of Engraving Options, or perhaps a new “System Text” section needs to be added.
edit:
Actually I can save you some time here, though you’ll still have to do it in every part. Turn off Collision Avoidance and the spacing resets.
Thanks - I’ll take a look! I have to add that this manual manipulation is also very fussy (though perhaps “Avoid collisions” will help in this regard) - I forgot to make the score “atonal” (vs. “c major”) and that one change caused me another hour’s worth of time going back and having to re-manually tweak all of the relationships between the boxed rehearsal letters, the system text, and then the too-big gaps caused when I re-adjusted, to all of my orchestral parts (with a deadline passing). It was a holy mess. I do hope there’s a way to automate this in the near future (it was bringing back bad “previous notation program” micro-tweaking memories in what is otherwise such a far superior, and infinitely more elegant program!)…
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