Is it possible to do this in any clean/automated way?
E.g. have seperate Flute 1, Flute 2 parts, but a combined “2 Flutes” stave in the full score?
As a corollary to this question: does Dorico understand the difference between two voices on e.g. a guitar staff (representing a single part with rhythmic complexity to be performed by a single player) and two voices on e.g. a flute staff (representing two different parts played by different players)?
If so, how do I take advantage of this? For instance, is it possible to separate instruments out as TylerE asks? Also, is it possible to begin a flow with the two parts on a single staff (e.g. choral music in short score) and then open out later in the flow (e.g. choral music in open score)?
I have a vague recollection of reading, months ago, that support for this was an aspiration for Dorico. Has it made it into 1.0? If not, then fair enough – nor does the program I previously used, so no biggie, and I can see how it would be a very complex challenge.
The short answer to this is “not yet”. TylerE, this is the other part of the divisi thing you were just asking about a few minutes ago.
Very good. So can I check that, for now, the best way to approach this kind of thing is to do it similarly to how I might in Sibelius – create a different “player” for each configuration, and show and hide staves at different points in the flow to simulate what I’m after?
Wait… is it even possible to hide empty staves on a system-by-system basis in Dorico?
Dorico can hide empty staves automatically, using the options on the Vertical Spacing page of Layout Options, but I would suggest basically not trying to fake up condensed scores in Dorico in the meantime. The workarounds for producing these layouts are just as painful in Dorico as it stands as they are in other scoring programs, but with the disadvantage that you will eventually have to painstakingly undo them all again when Dorico’s full functionality in this area is unlocked, as Dorico won’t be able to convert a manually condensed score into an automatically condensed one.
How high up the very long shopping list is this? My interest is its usefulness in choral music. An allied question is whether Dorico supports split/merge arrows at the end of systems (apologies if this is obvious; my copy of Dorico hasn’t arrived yet).
Dorico does not yet support split/merge arrows at the ends of systems, though they can be faked up with text items created via Shift+X.