Hi, I have been encountering a strange engraving mode behavior. Firstly, Dorico automatically adds sub-bracket to divisi for strings but never does it for violins. Violins being already sub-bracketed might be a reason, but I don’t know if there should still be automation to add sub-sub-bracket in this situation.
Either way, I have no problem if I just need to add sub-sub-brackets manually. But in some cases, manually adjusting brackets, no matter whether adding one or deleting one, makes other brackets disappear. I wonder if it is a bug or a wrong setting? Please help.
Before manual adjustment, except violins need sub-sub-bracket everything else are bracketed correctly.
As soon as adding the sub-sub-bracket to violin I, many brackets on the next page and pages after goes missing, including automatically generated sub-brackets for viola divisi and the square bracket for brass section. Now it needs an enormous effort to manually add them back because of the different numbers of hidden empty staves in each system.
The problem with bracket and brace changes is that they refer to specific staves, rather than at the more abstract level of players or divisi sections. Staves in Dorico are quite transitory and can change significantly from system to system as a consequence of condensing, empty staves being hidden, manual staff visibility changes, and divisi. So a bracket and brace change on one system may well not apply well on the following system, because the staves are no longer present. As such, you may need another bracketing change on the next system – and I would recommend only adding these changes at the end of the working process, where possible, to avoid unnecessary rework.
There is certainly more that we need to do in this area. In particular, we plan to add a means of determining a custom bracketing setup for the layout based at the more semantic level of instruments and divisi sections, which should eliminate the need for manual bracketing changes on a per-system basis almost entirely.
There haven’t been any changes in the way brackets and braces are handled recently. Perhaps you can say a bit more about the specific situation you’re running into?
I’m a musical theatre lyricist (and sometimes composer). I arrange my Piano/Vocal scores to have each singer on their own staff, instead of staff merging.
However, if I have a musical number where one singer starts the song, another joins in, but either drops back, then re-joins, I have to manually re-bracket each of them. I’d prefer that staves adhere to the brackets assigned at the top of the movement.
If you temporarily turn off staff hiding for the first system in Layout Options, you can set custom bracketing once at the beginning and it will stay for the entire flow, even as staves come in and out.
I’m curious to see what bracketing you want, that isn’t among the choices in Layout Options > Brackets and Braces. It would certainly be better to set it there than have to do it manually for every flow.
Unfortunately that wouldn’t work because we keep all characters active in all flows, in the event as we’re developing a character gets added to the number.
And I’m sure you an appreciate that it wouldn’t be ideal to have 10 staves visible at the top of the flow.
Oh, then, yes, I’ve done that. However, once music is inserted, the brackets are lost or mangled as soon as the staff appearance (a new staff appears) changes. And I end up have to automatically add them back on those subsequent staves.
If that’s just the way it is for now (as I believe @dspreadbury was saying above, correct me if I’m wrong), then I’ll contend with manually engraving in those scenarios.
As a feature request @dspreadbury perhaps you could consider providing “reset default brackets” flag in engraving mode, so that after manually adjusting brackets for one system we can put this flag at the next system and still enjoy the automatic default for the subsequent systems.
I think the current frustration is that once a manual adjustment occur, the rest of the flow stays in manual. And manual adjustments fall apart when number of stave changes. Users can only add more manual adjustments after but no option to reset it. I end up manually adjusting each system to the end or it just becomes a mess.
Perhaps a reset flag is fairly easy to realize in the current Dorico architecture, since it’s not even a new feature, and it would be a very workable solution for us.
I thought soloists were customarily left unbracketed. I know that’s how I do it in my show scores. I’ll have to check some published music I have in my cabinet (once I am more fully awake).
Not that others should not have the ability to bracket how they wish and that it should be as convenient as possible.
It would be so, so helpful if you could post a cut-down project – you could even delete all the music and all but two flows – so we can see what the settings are. I want to find a way that you don’t have to mess with bracket changes at all.
That’s the way Emily Grishman tends to engrave. There are a few of us that like the brackets, especially when necessary for Vocal Books and Ensembles in P/Vs and P/Cs.
I’m still not quite sure exactly what the problem is here. A short example that shows the problem would be a huge help. Is the issue that you don’t want the staff to be bracketed when only one is visible, but you do want it to be bracketed when more than one is visible? Or something else?
No, I have the setting set to keep the bracket. But as soon as there’s a staff appearance change (Singer 1 is empty and hidden), and it’s just the piano for 1-2 systems. Then, Singer 1 and/or Singer 2 starts singing in the next system, all brackets in the original bracketed group at the beginning of the flow is lost, and has to be added back manually to that system.
