I asked about this several years ago. Can the user control the angle of an angled octave line? The angle Dorico produces is not quite right and I am not able to change it in Engrave mode. I also don’t care for the leveling off of the octave line over the last note. I prefer something like this:
You could always create your own line.
Yes, that is what I would be forced to do, and it would require a vertical as well as a horizontal line for each one. But this should not be necessary. There needs to be complete control over octave lines, as with any line.
Incidentally the following example from the Dorico manual of how an octave line might be angled to avoid interference with a slur is unlike anything I have ever seen in printed music:
There are several possible solutions, but the one in the example would not be an acceptable one, in my opinion.
Images in the manual are primarily intended to help demonstrate Dorico’s functionality or the outcomes of doing stuff in the app: this example is indeed “somewhat” contrived, in order to provide an example of adding multiple corners to the same octave line, given that there are two subtly different methods given for how you might go about changing octave line angles in that topic.
If you want to provide a project file set up to demonstrate a better solution, please be my guest and I’ll add it to the documentation considerations list.
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Thanks, Lillie. I understand that the example was to show the capabilities of the Dorico octave line angling, but I think that the capabilities themselves are off-base in terms of the way octave lines are actually engraved. So I would find it very difficult to come up with anything in Dorico.
I would suggest that the team go back to square one on this one, and look at a lot of printed music. You will never see all these angles and elbows. The lines are mainly straight, mostly horizontal and if they angle it is for longish periods and only when absolutely necessary. Sometimes horizontal lines connect by vertical steps. In any case, there are many possibilities and the users need as much leeway as possible to devise their own solutions. They cannot be constrained to certain particular angles by the software.
Postscript. I think that treating octave lines like slurs with control points that can be added and moved might be a better approach.