Hey everybody,
The composer whose work I’m engraving has inserted a fair number of dashed barlines in the middle of measures to help distinguish groups of beats in say 7/8 bars. In measures where I insert dashed mid-measure barlines using shift-B+colon, Dorico keeps the measure numbering correct, but splits the measures over system breaks. Is there a way to stop Dorico from splitting measures in this way without having to change every one manually? I think it looks strange.
You can use aggregate time signatures.
Below written as 2/8|4/8 with the combine property set.
Jesper
So is that the only solution? I’d rather not have to go back and re-do all my time signatures. I can’t do what I’ve already done and get a result that doesn’t split over the barline?
I don’t know I’m afraid.
Jesper
Don’t think it helps, but do you have this checked under Preferences->Note Input?
I’m afraid the other option is to manually force all broken bars into the same staff, which is no doubt also a lot of work, if not even more, and error-prone. I think Jesper’s suggestion is the best one, because it repairs the notation in a semantically meaningful way, instead of being a clumsy workaround.
If it helps, remember that you can change one time signature, then Alt/Opt+click it into position elsewhere. I can see from your screenshot above that you have several different types time sigs to fix (5/8, 6/8, 7/8), but using this process for each type will be quicker than actually changing each one.
It’s strange that the “fix” I used is right from the Dorico manual. Why would they offer that at all if another solution is really better? They never tell us “hey, we will automatically decide that your measures will overflow system breaks, and we won’t let you change that except manually doing everyone”.
Thanks everybody for your help.
I guess when you insert a barline, you really create two bars (split). But when the barline is dashed, the bar numbers don’t increase.
Jesper
Yes, but it would be nice for Dorico to give you the option of keeping the whole bars on a single system – if they have a reason for offering this solution of shift-b-colon in the first place.
