Hi
I use the font PetaChords for my jazz sheets. It’s a very nice font and I find it highly readable. But there is a minor problem with the default distance between the chord symbol and the altered bass when it is placed using diagonal arrangement, which I kind of like - I think!
Take a look at this and tell me if you know how to make the distance between the Dbmajor7 and the Ab smaller. And it’s not a solution to do it in engrave mode, because I then will have to do it for ALL chords!!
This recently came up on the Dorico FB group and I couldn’t figure out a global solution there either. Do you have the Notation Express templates? Do they automatically fix it with an included doricolib file? It looks good in their preview pic, although they may have manually adjusted that in Engrave:
I think the kerning pairs are set in the chordSymbolComponentKerningPairs.xml file. Obviously there’s no setting for PetaChords. I’m not sure if it’s possible to create entries for the PetaChord comp.bass.slashdiagonal IDs with a doricolib file or not, but that’s the only idea I have, as there’s no global setting to adjust this poor spacing. It’s possible this spacing is simply hardwired in and there’s just no way to adjust it globally at all. Obviously you can create overrides in Project Default Appearances, but that’s hours and hours of work just to account for the most common possibilities.
I know @pianoleo was involved in creating these templates, so perhaps he’ll know if the Am/C symbol from the image above was manually edited or if they figured a way to fix the spacing globally for PetaChords.
I’m afraid the preview pic is actually taken from the Sibelius version of the Scoring Express templates, and in the Dorico version we opted to use ordinary linear positioning for altered bass notes, like so:
…on account of the fact that Dorico doesn’t give good control over this spacing.
Sorry!
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I played around with this a bit more, but gave up. If there’s an editable setting that controls this, I haven’t figured out how to access it. It seems like there just needs to be Engraving Options settings to control this.
deleted as I’m trying something different …
Does this have a solution, yet?
No I don’t think so.
No, indeed, there is no good way to handle this at present. In future, it will be possible to adjust the kerning between different components in chord symbols, including the slash for altered bass notes and the components to either side of it.
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That would be lovely!
If you reduce the size of the slash, it also reduces the size of the gap. I created a doricolib file to control this and gave a walkthrough here:
It’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement at least.
Thanks a lot for your interest. I think I’ll wait for “the future” as Daniel mentioned.
I truly hope the Dorico team finds this post. For jazz and pop music writers, this is such a huge problem. I have to manually adjust every single slash chord in my arrangement because of it. They should include the option “Apply to all slash chords” in the Library > Chord Symbols > Project Default Appearances dialog box. It would be so simple to do. I guess we all just have to mention it until they finally implement it.
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Did you read the whole thread, @Thomas_Gunther? If so, you will see that I replied to the thread a few posts back.
In any case, you can be certain that we (I) read every post here on the forum, even if I do not reply.
I apologize if I offended you in any way. I wasn’t aware that you are a Dorico programmer. I just wanted to express my hope that this issue will be brought to the attention of the Dorico developer team, and that they will address it swiftly.
Cheers!
He’s the head of the Team, no less 
Product Manager, I think it’s the title.