The page following the one shown has an explicit frame break, but there are no other frame breaks in the flow before this page. Essentially what I’m wanting from the settings is for pages to justify systems when they are about 70% full, and for pages that are NOT that full to have systems spaced something similar to how they appear when justified. That’s why I have the minimum gap set at 5 spaces. I also have these settings, if they matter:
The Page fullness is 104%. Are you sure there are no Frame Breaks?
The “Minimum Inter-system gap with content” is set to 5 spaces. So Dorico will try to put that between the last item (e.g. that low-hanging forte) and the next system.
But I think it’s struggling to meet both the 5 spaces between things and 10 spaces between systems for that number of systems on the page.
I did end up putting a manual frame break at 126 which does solve the problem, and it’s not a difficult thing to work around. I’m really just wondering what Dorico is doing to create the issue. If it’s struggling to meet the spacing requirements, then I would expect it to move the bottom system to the following page automatically. Maybe the settings I’m asking for are somehow in conflict and what I want to do cannot be done constantly and automatically. Again, not a big deal, but this feels like a small bug, if not just an occasional anomaly.
OK, but then do I understand correctly that a last page in a flow that has, say, only three remaining systems will have their spacing very tight, and will require manually spreading those systems apart to mirror the spacing on other pages?
Given that it’s easier to compress spacing than expand it (which is not possible across multiple staves at once, of course), I figure I’m better off keeping the spacing wide and adjusting the anomalies rather than trying to stretch the last page apart.
And yeah, I’m sure that’s the engraver’s trick, among others, but I’m no engraver, just a lowly composer!
That’s not how I’d characterise spacing in Dorico, which automatically adds extra space on top of staves for protruding notes, dynamics, text etc.
I’m giving you my best advice as Dorico’s documentation writer, a Dorico user, and a Dorico engraver: keep the spacing values small, and let Dorico justify etc on top of that. If I were you, I’d take this advice… especially if you don’t like how overfull (ie above 100% vertical fullness) pages look.
If you need a short page (ie not completely full but with wider system spacing than your unjustified minimums produce), resize your music frame: either as a local page override, or as a page template that you can reuse whenever parts need a similarly short page.
I have complete faith in your recommendations! I just wonder why Dorico would not automatically bump the last system of the second page onto the third. Why does it prefer to fill a page to over 100% when it is not otherwise forced, via frame breaks, to do so?
I feel like I’ve caused some offense and I don’t mean to. I am legitimately trying to understand the processing here so that I can make informed decisions.
No offense at all, @jjm_335 – just wanting to make sure you don’t convince yourself to follow an approach that’s more likely to require manual adjustments, when getting the sense of how these values can work under your skin can allow you to get really good spacing results with no manual work, simply tweaking some values!
The bigger your minimum values, the more likely you are to run into overfull pages and collisions.
