One of the main dangers of the manual staff visibility menu that I have suffered the consequences of in previous projects, is to inadvertently mask an instrument staff even if it contains music.
The advantages of this feature is of course to LOCALLY change (on a system by system basis) the visibility of certain staves compared to the general option of masking ALL empty staves at once (in layout options), however this feature continues to take effect on all subsequent sytems unless, you actively âresetâ it. Which makes room, in very large projects, to quite dangerous erros of inadvertently masking staves that contained music.
It would be best to either :
Make any change apply only to the specific system break in which staff visibility was modified
Or
Add in the menu, next to the options âResetâ, âShowâ, Hide" a âHide only if emptyâ option.
I was thinking a pop-up warning âthe staff/staves you are attempting to hide contain music, do you wish to continue?â, but I like your âHide only if emptyâ choice FAR better!
Consider taking the opposite approach. Use your Layout > Visibility to Hide Empty Staves and then use Manual Staff Visibility to show the empty staves you wish to retain?
You donât even need manual staff visibility for that. Just add a chord symbol region to any of the bars in the system where you want an empty staff to show.
Actually the âhide empty stavesâ in Layout options can be easily overwritten with the staff visibilty menu, as when you modify the visibility of a staff on a system break the effect will last until you âresetâ the visibilty (to regain the default hide empty staves option), if in order to hide the empty stave again you click âhideâ instead of âresetâ you will hide that staff even if it contains music and even if you had âhide empty stavesâ option ticked in layout options. So the main problem for me is that the staff visibility menuâs scope goes beyond a local system break which can lead to various errors.
I use that workaround for features that dorico doesnât yet offer (like controlling where a change of instrument appears in the score), but that workaround has its own obvious problems as it would prevent multi-rest consolidation in the parts in that region.
Because âhiding empty stavesâ is not a one brush paints all kind of tool. It is subject to many external factors like page layout balance, context, anticipating an entry, symmetry between facing pagesâŚetc. Itâs used to optimize vertical spacing when needed and not as âget rid of all those who donât playâ brute tactic.
Below is some examples cited by Gould as to when showing some empty staves is needed.
As for the teamâs intentions, of course the feature is working as they intended, this is not a bug report. My aim however as a user is to make the team reconsider their intentions based on the intentions and needs of the users of their product.
Yes, completely agree. I run into the same issues often. Starting with âhide empty stavesâ works perfectly well of course, but if you make a frame or system break change after a manual visibility change then it can easily mess things up and normally you want to work from the start of a flow going forward rather than backwards⌠Obviously not an easy problem to solve and the program does offer great flexibility, but I have often thought when quickly putting together a custom layout that something like âhide only if emptyâ as originally suggested, would be most useful.
Maybe a possible solution (just an idea) for future implementation/functionality could be:
select the bar rests (of the staff where no music is present) and choose the manual visibility option to hide, and Dorico would ideally put a manual staff visibility-hide at the beginning and a manual staff visibility-reset at the end of the selected bar rests.
This would be the same as for example clef changes: when you change the clef, and you select a passage where you want the new clef, Dorico puts automatically the old clef at the end of the passage: very comfortable.
The same could be applied/implemented to note spacing changes: I have now to put manually the reset of the note spacing change at the end of the passage where I want the different note spacing, before putting the desired note spacing change at the beginning of the passage, otherwise Dorico applies the new spacing till the end of the flow.
Since the âstaff visibility menuâ is designed to be applied to system breaks what you suggest would be great to add for making cutaway scores, selecting bars and hiding the staff for the span of the selected bars. (so even when they are in the middle of a system).
