Recent Finale refugee. My lead sheet flows often have systems with different numbers of lyric verses underneath, so different systems require different vertical space. By default, it seems that Dorico 5 Pro gives all systems the vertical space, that required to accomodate the most verses. This leaves undesired empty vertical space under systems with fewer verses. I can fix this in Engrave Mode > Staff Spacing by dragging handles up, but this creates a lot of red lines on the screen which I think are telling me that You’re doing it wrong! I’m all for letting Dorico do the work. What is the correct way to collapse the empty space? I’ve looked in Layout Options but don’t see the answer.
I would normally expect Dorico to space things differently by default – which suggests that you’ve changed the “Ideal Gap” settings for inter-system gaps in Layout Options to too large a value.
Dorico will create extra space where needed for those lyrics lines, so you don’t need to compensate for it by setting a large value for the inter-system gap.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with manual Staff Spacing – the red just shows you that a change has been made. But you’re right, that there should be a simpler way.
1 Like
Thank you, benwiggy. I had not touched the Ideal Gap settings in Layout Options. To verify this, I just now did a Reset to Factoryin Layout Options. Result: no change. The Ideal Gaps > Inter-system gap, for all Layouts (instruments) is 10 spaces (alot!) and the *Minimum Gaps" > Minimum inter-system gap with content is 2 spaces… So I just tried reducing the former, and yes it does reduce the extra space in that first system, but also reduces it in the other systems, even past the point of collisions. The attached screenshot shows the result when I reduce it to 4. If I increase it to 4 1/8, then the empty space takes a big jump, from 6.1 to 28.8 mm, which is too much again, not as much as as the 35.9 I had with the default setting of 10 spaces, but still too much. The behavior is quite nonlinear and inexplicable.
Any chance you could upload the file? Maybe make a copy and change all the notes if you don’t want it public.
1 Like
Thanks again, benwiggy. Yes, I shall upload the file but I’ll need to make changes as you suggested since I’m not the copyright owner.
OK, here is a redacted and simplified file which exhibits the problem. Interestingly, after making the edits, the critical change of Ideal Gaps > Inter-system gap which causes the gap under the first system to jump from too little to too much is now different: 4 7/8 to 5.
System-Spacing-Demo.dorico (878.5 KB)
I bet the reason is the vertical justification which kicks in if the page is more than 60% full by default, which you hit above 4 1/2 spaces of vertical spacing.
3 Likes
First up, you can see from the fullness indicator that the page is way too full.
Why it’s not splitting that onto a new page, I have no idea.
Secondly, you’ve deleted the Flow Heading manually on the page, causing an override, instead of in Layout Options.
You’ve also created a blank page for some reason.
Removing the page overrides and setting Flow Headings to “Never” gets me 118% full. I still don’t know why it’s not going onto a new page.
I’ve Reset the Appearance and Position of everything, and we’re down to 106% full ; but everything is still bumping into each other and not going onto a new page.
Very weird.
Reducing the Staff Size gets a better result. Then you’ve got to sort out the Horizontal Spacing issues of the Chords colliding! 
(Again, basically too much stuff on some of the lines, as the spacing indicators will show you.)
Are you trying to match an existing document? If you really want it all on one page, I’d consider reducing the top and bottom margins, getting another system in, and maybe taking the staff size down another notch.
System-Spacing-Demo rev.dorico (818.5 KB)
1 Like
Thank you, klafkid. I’ve not tested your theory but I remember seeing that setting. It makes sense and I shall keep this in mind the next time I see a nonlinearity like this.
I’ve reset my overrides and learned the correct way to hide those pesky Flow Name Headings.
Reducing the Ideal Gap settings for Inter-system gaps in Layout Options from the default of 10 down to 4 indeed solves the problem stated in the title of this thread, so if I cannot figure out a simple explanation of why this exposes another problem (collisions and Dorico not making another page), I shall start a new thread.
To answer your last question, benwiggy, although this particular example comes from a musicxml export of a Sibelius file someone else created and gave me, I am not trying to match its layout – two pages would be fine.
At the very least, you can always push stuff onto a new page with a Frame Break.
Well, benwiggy, if I were still using Finale, I would add that to my long list of kludgey workarounds and move on. But, as a virgin Dorico user, I want to stay in Dorico Wonderland. Dorico has no bugs.
I have to say, I’ve never seen a page that behaves like yours, since Dorico v1…!!
There are bugs, of course: the difference being that they will be acknowledged, and usually fixed within short order.
I’ve been having a quick look at this project, and I think this represents something of a pathological case for the estimation process that Dorico uses when it tries to determine how many systems should fit within a frame.
Because Dorico can’t in general know exactly how the music will be spaced and thus exactly which bars will end up on the same system until it is actually spacing and casting off the music, it has to make some assumptions about what material will appear on each system, and it uses heuristics based on the presence of certain notations, e.g. dynamics, chord symbols, lyrics, rehearsal marks, tempos, etc., to build up a crude idea of the expected height of each staff in the system.
It uses these estimates to make decisions about how many systems to fit into each frame, and provided those estimates are OK, then generally that works OK. However, in this case, with multiple lines of lyrics, chord symbols on every system, plus repeat endings and tall repeat markings, Dorico’s estimates end up being quite a long way away from the actual heights needed for each system, and consequently the frame ends up overfull.
You can’t directly influence the way Dorico makes these calculations, so the best you can do is intervene by creating a frame break at an opportune point. I would also be tempted to not be quite so extreme with the values on the Vertical Spacing page of Layout Options: in particular, setting the inter-system gap to just 1 space seems like a really bad idea. I would expect it to be at least in the same range as the staff-to-staff gap value.
3 Likes
Hi @jerrykrinock , I made a short video to show my approach to correct your file. No frame breaks needed, no rastral size correction needed: just global adjustments and some little other things. I hope it can be helpful:
Dorico file corrected:
DIFFICULT SPACINGS.dorico (765.2 KB)
4 Likes
The video by @Christian_R was helpful; thank you.
The way Dorico does vertical layouts seems to be quite novel. I do not yet understand enough to judge whether it is genius, or weird and over-engineered. So I shall reserve any further comments for a future date and maybe a different thread. Anyhow, thanks to all of you for being so helpful.
Well surely it is revolutionary and, once you grasps its power, it will save you a laaarge amount of time 