Hi,
I cannot for the life of me find how to adjust the horizontal distance of divisi staff labels (strings).
The first image shows the Staff Labels correctly aligned.
The second image shoes the Staff Labels for Vln. I & Vla. (div.) way over to the left, and out of alignment.
The third image shows the Staff Labels for Vln. I back to its normal “unison” position, but with the Staff Label for Vla. (div.) way over to the left, and out of alignment.
How can the Staff Label (when divisi with 2 staves) be correctly aligned?
Thanks!
@Lillie_Harris @dspreadbury
This will probably be due to which paragraph style is being used for the staff labels in their different contexts.
How best to fix this will depend on how you’ve set up your divisi, which can’t be presumed from a screenshot alone. Can you share the project file or a cut-down version of it?
Primarily I’m wondering about how you’ve hidden the inner labels on the divided staves: by manually deleting the text, or actually hiding the labels using options?
Hi @Lillie_Harris,
Thanks for your reply and the links to the various options. I’ve looked into what you have suggested and have not managed to resolve the issue.
The piece (a film score) contains 50 flows. If I send you this first flow, could you take a look at the settings and make a suggestion?
Sure, you can send me just the first flow in a private message if you like, and I’ll take a look when I can. (Just check that the issue still occurs in the exported single-flow project!)
Hi @anthonygabriele , you file is missing from the attachment (in the whole Forum there is a max. 4MB limit). Try instead to upload it to a cloud service like WeTransfer, and post the link here (or send it to Lillie).
And I strongly suggest that you don’t post your emails and telephone numbers on a public Forum, as this is like honey for the bots. (reply directly in the forum, and not via email, to avoid your automated signature to be added in your posts)
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Don’t worry Christian, Anthony had in fact managed to send a small file in an earlier PM.
@anthonygabriele – the main culprit seems to be your adjustment in Engraving Options > Staff Labels to “Distance between outer or group staff label and systemic barline”, which you had set to 10 spaces.
Reducing that value lets the staff labels sit more naturally closer to the bracket. I don’t know why you set the value so high for this, but in case it was to accommodate something elsewhere in the project, that might be worth checking.
You had also (as I suspected) hidden the divisi section numbers by deleting their text in the Change Divisi dialog. Might I recommend wherever possible using the available options for hiding divisi numbers/labels, as this ensures Dorico isn’t calculating space for something that doesn’t need it.
I’m curious why your staff labels protrude slightly into the left page margin, but that mystery will have to elude me for now! (Edit: my super-sleuth colleague Richard identified a -25 indent offset in the staff label paragraph styles. If you reset those back to normal, and remove the system indent when staff labels are shown, you’ll get closer to a better result.)
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Hi @Lillie_Harris & @Christian_R,
Thank you both for your assistance.
Everything you suggested has been actioned, and the issues have been successfully resolved!
Best wishes,
Anthony
Hi @Lillie_Harris,
I have a similar question regarding horizontal distance for divisi staff groups labels.
I am trying to get all clarinets (1/2/Bass) in the same bracket. Using individual instruments causes the group label to misalign vertically (it positions automatically between “1” and “2”). Using divisi seems to be a good workaround. The vertical alignment is correct (yay!), however the horizontal spacing does not match the other groups in the score. I tried some of the solutions that worked for Anthony, without luck. Is there some other menu/setting that could be affecting the divisi group label? Thank you!
Although this looks more like what you want in the score, you won’t be able to produce separate parts as easily than if you used separate “single” type players.
The positioning of the “Clarinet” text here is, I presume, accounting for the full width of the “Bass” text.
@Lillie_Harris, thanks for getting back to me. In most cases we work with a copying house/librarian who will make parts from their template, so that would not really be a concern. In scenarios where we do copying in house, we’d make individual “dummy” staves hidden at the bottom of the score. We’ve used this method in Finale too for similar cases (i.e. 6 F horns in a single staff), it’s a good enough workaround.
FWIW, making individual players for each Clarinet, and adding a Bracket would result in this (not very demure):
It looks like abbreviating Bass to Bs moved the “Clarinet” group name closer. It’ll do for now. In the future it would be great to have a bit more flexibility when it comes to vertical and horizontal placing of individual staff group names.
Actually I like that spacing very well, with “Clarinet” between staves, and the same horizontal position as if “Clarinet 1” (or 2) were on the same line. I would use a thin sub-bracket instead of a brace, but either one makes it clear that “Clarinet” applies to all 3 staves – specifically because it is not centered on the middle staff.
To each their own 
In the studio we often work with unorthodox lineups/setups. Coming from Finale, I for one appreciate how “smart” Dorico is, but I am also finding that it tends to constrain the user on certain scenarios. Having more flexibility on simple things like this would allow users to accomodate a wider variety of uses. Just my 2 cents.
