Cross staff stems separation

Hi,
Does anybody know a way to automatically make the separation of the stems equal in a cross staff situation like this?:
Captura
Thanks in advanced!

I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m pretty sure that is correct as displayed. The note heads are equally spaced, not the stems.

You could use the note spacing tool and command click to select alternating notes, and adjust them fairly easily.

Thank you dankraider, I was aware that the headnotes seem to be equally spaced, but I have the feeling that this spacing is not visually satisfying… Probably the solution would not be to equally spacing the stems, but to find a compromise between the two. This problem is clearer when the spacing is tight:
Captura2
As there is enough space, I think it would be better to space like this:
Captura3
I can do it manually, but I have lots of figures like this and it is very time-consuming…
Thanks again!

AFAIK Dorico does not currently have an override of any kind to automagically space by stem vs. notehead, so the only alternative is to manually nudge the notes in Engrave mode…

…or to make sure you have plenty of space for these occurrences—which is what I tend to do.

That said, I too believe it would be nice to have an option to override the default handling and end up with something more akin to your second example.

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There’s an option for this :slight_smile: it’s called “optical cross-staff beam spacing”

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Wow, that was certainly a good answer :smiley:
You saved me a lot of time :wink:
Thank you very much!

By the way, this program is amazing…

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Cross staff beaming is usually spaced so the stems are even instead of the noteheads when the grand staff is alone (solo piano for example). It is not done when other instruments are also playing as it distorts their spacing.

@Lillie_Harris optical staff spacing affects note spacing?

I know my name isn’t Lillie, but sure. If you space optically so that the stems are more equidistant instead of the notes, the actual note spacing will be deformed. This usually isn’t a problem with cross-staff keyboard music, but if other instruments are involved, the distortion to the note spacing in those parts would be unacceptable.

It’s called Optical Cross-Staff Beam Spacing. I suppose you could argue that it’s the stems and noteheads that are being spaced, not the beams, if you were pedantically minded :wink:

Oh, @pianoleo, now it makes sense: that’s different from “simple” Optical Staff Spacing… my point being that «Staff Spacing» is the (vertical) space between staves.

Yeah whoops, I massively condensed that phrase in my initial reply - perhaps in my giddy haste to share a Dorico default option for an otherwise finickity-to-achieve notation :wink:

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Dorico’s default abilities have made most of us notation veterans quite giddy at times!

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