Continuation ottavas are different size from normal ottavas

[connoramckenna]

Hi, I set all my ottava symbols to 80% size in the Music Symbols menu, but when the ottava symbol is continued to the next system automatically, it shows up at 100% size. I can’t find place to edit the character for “continuation ottavas,” or whatever you’d call them. Any way around this? Thanks!

[charles_piano]

This issue has been reported several times, and I’m afraid it’s not yet fixed.

@dspreadbury

The problem is that the processor that draws octave lines makes an assumption that it will be able to draw the sequence of characters that make up the label at the start of the line using a single font style as a single string. It therefore disregards the scale factor defined in the Music Symbols editor and uses the font style size instead. It would be quite involved to change this, unfortunately, so I think that what we will look to do in future is consider adding a dedicated font style for octave lines, so that you can set the size of the glyphs it chooses to use by editing the size of that font

[charles_piano]

@connoramckenna

Any way around this?

You could create a line (but playback will be wrong).

Here a line with 8 symbols set to 80%:

8va line with reduced symbol.dorico (1.4 MB)

[connoramckenna]

Ah I see, thanks for this! I don’t care too much about playback, but I guess I could create an invisible 8va to adjust if need be.

[Janus]

@connoramckenna

but I guess I could create an invisible 8va to adjust if need be.

I think not. If you hide an 8va the notated pitches will move up the octave to the sounding pitch.

If you want the effect of an 8va whilst using a line to notate it, you could add the sounding pitches on an added staff (which you then remove) and suppress playback of the original notes.

[Christian_R]

@connoramckenna

I can’t find place to edit the character for “continuation ottavas,”

Hi @connoramckenna, I just found out that if you scale the Left and Right parenthesis for octave signs [edit: actually and very interestingly it is enough to scale just the Left one], as well as the 8va symbol (Ottava Alta in the dialogue) in Edit Music Symbols, it will scale the continuation symbol as desired. Not sure why, but it seems to work (I didn’t check if this brings undesired results elsewhere):

Scale (to 50 in my example):

Result:

Dorico file example:
scale 8va continuation symbol.dorico (1.5 MB)

[charles_piano]

You can forget about the custom line and follow @Christian_R’s solution, which is much better!

[connoramckenna]

Thanks a lot!