Dorico drives me nuts. More often than not. I am attempting to write a crescendo sign, a hairpin, underneath the lowest stave in a score. Dorico then pulls all staves apart so that I can´t see the lowest stave anymore, an I cannot retrieve it since the click-box for doing that is then outside the shown page. There is no reason Dorico should do that!!! How can I stop it from doing so???
Dorico really shouldn’t ever allow the staves to disappear off the bottom of the page. Can you attach the project you’re working on, so we can see what you’re dealing with?
You might find it helpful to try working in galley view, where the page height will be automatically determined by the number of staves in the ensemble. If you find galley view still a bit cramped vertically, you can give things a bit more breathing room by increasing the value of In galley view, expand ideal stave gaps by to a larger percentage.
If you’ve previously moved staves vertically when the page was not automatically vertically justified (that is, automatically spreading staves across the full height of the page), then add notations that takes the page above the threshold for vertical justification, Dorico will still keep your staff spacing offsets but this might mean the staves end up further away than you wanted.
Try selecting something on the offending pages and resetting staff spacing overrides (using the Engrave menu options mentioned at the bottom, they allow you to reset a whole page without having to select individual handles).
You may also want to look at your vertical spacing settings for the layout, as most of the time, tweaking these will get you a great result without manual intervention. Take a look at this Discover Dorico session by John on staff spacing:
Thank you dspreadbury! I attached the spot and it shows the lowest stave on the left page disappearing from the page when I write a piano sign, as you can see in bar 6 in the Cor Anglaise. I tried galley view but the problem remains when I switch back to page view.
Thank you Lillie_Harris, I “kind of” solved the problem with the help you gave me. I deleted the stave markings (don´t know if this is the correct term) in Engrave mode, vertikal adjustment, in short, turned the read marks to blue by pressing delete. I then wrote a piano sign. Dorico still enlargened the system, unreasonably in my understanding, but it now fits my purpose. It did not stay in the original position, but went to where I wanted it to be. Seems like “never touch vertikal spacing until you´re finished with everything else” is a serious advice!!!
Certainly I would agree that you shouldn’t adjust vertical spacing until the end of the process of preparing your performance materials.
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Yes exactly, the system is enlargening because pre-piano, it’s below the vertical justification threshold; post-piano, it’s above.
For an ensemble of this size, you could also try using a smaller staff size but fitting 2 systems per page, that might produce a more pleasing result (more bars per system, and staves not so widely spaced within a system).
Or, if you’re happy with the non-justified results produced by the music and your ideal (minimum) gaps between staves, either increase the vertical justification threshold (so the page has to be a lot fuller before it justifies vertically), or perhaps increase your music frame margins - so the music has bigger gaps at the top and bottom, between the outermost staves and the page margins.
On a side note, Dorico provides alternative versions of instruments, including a bass clarinet that automatically shows a bass clef in the full score but treble clef in the part. If your bass clarinet part is consistently a few ledger lines below the treble staff, that might be a better option.
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I am puzzled. Why are the top (Flute) staves not aligned on the two pages? (Is there no header on the right-hand page or a different header on the left?) This gives an exaggerated impression of the difference.
Clearly the first page is the first page of the flow (see bar numbers, arranger info text etc. )
It either uses the First Page Template or the Default Page Template but with a Flow Heading; either way, the music needs to make room for the text at the top of the page.
The second page is a continuation of the same flow (again, look at the bar numbers) so the music can start pretty much immediately under any running header.