In Engraving Options, a value of >100% for “Height of parentheses relative to chord symbol” is triggered not only by accidentals but by the slash character as well. Should that be the default behavior? It’s really visually awkward next to non-slashed chords.
Sorry for the long delay in replying to this thread. I’m not sure I’m quite understanding the problem here – I’ve attached an example with a few chord symbols and their transposed equivalents, where the transposed chord symbols are parenthesised, and things look OK. I guess you must be thinking of another situation? Perhaps you could modify this simple example project to demonstrate the problem you’re describing?
capo-chord-symbols.dorico (547.0 KB)
Thank you, Daniel. These chords do indeed look fine in Academico; when I switch them off to Minion Pro, however, the proportion of letters and other glyphs (slashes, parentheses) is noticeably off, as is the vertical placement of the capo chords (see example here). So… it seems the effect of this Engraving Options setting may be dramatically different from font to font. The vertical spacing issue is particularly problematic in that chords and their capos move as a group.
I don’t think it’s font-dependent, is it? Simply put, the slash makes the chord taller no matter which font you’re using, and so the parentheses will be taller. At the moment, Dorico doesn’t “know” which actual characters or symbols (which could be anything, given the flexibility of how you can define any component of any chord symbol to be any kind of music symbol, even an imported graphic) are included in the chord symbol, so it doesn’t “know” that the slash is the reason the chord symbol is taller than it might otherwise be. This would consequently be quite difficult to change.
It would be helpful then to have the option to disable the proportion shift, i.e., choosing to keep parentheses at the same type size regardless of slashes. Or perhaps this setting could only apply to stacked chords (e.g., the third chord). The first and second chords are really unappealing in a finished score if they’re going to look so uneven and staggered… at present, I’d have to pull this into Illustrator and re-adjust all the capos and parentheses manually. I also think this situation makes a case for independent vertical adjustments from main to capo.