Hello all,
I’m unsure if this is a bug or if it’s user error, but I’m currently running into an issue where my desired stem lengths, beam angles, and concave beam settings are overriding the “Snap to staff line positions” setting, specifically as it applies to hanging on down stems and sitting on up stems (excerpts from a current project pictured below).
I think part of what’s happening is that I disabled stem shortening for note groups where a middle note was closer to the beam than outer notes, but I was still getting sitting/hanging in the wrong direction with that setting engaged (unfortunately not in any of the excerpts I included in the screenshot and project file) and it appeared to me to be shortening the stems too aggressively; it seems that despite my setting to start shortening stems at position -1, stem shortening on concave note groupings is occurring regardless of the note’s position on the staff.
With factory engraving options, this is the result:
And with manual editing of the beam placements this is close to what I’d like:
Is there a way to get something close to my “ideal” stem length for horizontally-beamed notes with notes hanging from/sitting on the staff in the correct direction (as described by Ross and Gould) in the Engraving Options as-is, or will there have to be manual tweaking regardless of my settings?
I’ve also attached a sample project with these excerpts and my current beam and stem settings.
Beam issues.dorico (1.4 MB)
Bumping this thread, I’ve done a little more testing and I think I can identify a couple more behaviors:
It appears that when “snap to staff line positions” is enabled for horizontal beams, it only applies to beams that lie within the staff: as soon as the beam is outside the staff, even if it’s sitting on the top line or hanging from the bottom line, “snap to staff line positions” no longer affects those beams.
Also, when “snap to staff line positions” is enabled, for convex beams the stems are shortened so that it’s no longer sitting/hanging in the wrong direction, but for concave beams the stems are lengthened, which is what creates the unnecessarily long beam on m. 2 beat 4. When any beam is snapped to a staff line position, I’m of the opinion that it should universally shorten the stems by 1/4 of a space so that the line bisects the beam rather than sometimes shortening the stems by 1/4 of a space and sometimes lengthening the stems by 1/2 a space.
Here are both phenomena pictured (these are taken from a current project, not from the sample project I attached to the OP) with the first screenshot showing natural stem lengths and the second one showing snapped beams:
This is a bit of a separate issue, but it also appears that when shortening the stems for beamed notes, the shortened stem length specified in Engraving Options > Notes > Stems for 1/8 notes and 1/16 notes is setting the overall minimum stem length for beamed notes, not just the shortened stem length. For me this is somewhat problematic because when I don’t want stem shortening applied I would like a minimum stem length of 3 spaces for beamed notes, but when a beamed group reaches the point at which stem shortening rules apply I want a minimum stem length of 2.5 spaces (as described in the Book of Gould p. 27).
