Dorico overfilling the page by itself?

[PjotrB]

In attached project (intended as a preferably compact performance score for practical use in an ensemble I play in, not for an official edition or whatever), Dorico overfills page 2 for no reason I can discover.

I’m a fairly experienced Dorico user by now (user from day 1), so I very well know the usual suspects for pages with systems crammed too tight together.
To sum up:

• There is not a single system or frame break anywhere
• I didn’t adjust anything vertically or horizontally in Engrave Mode
• I only used general Notation, Layout and/or Engraving options
• I did tweak note spacings and minimum vertical gaps, but nothing egregious
• I used condensing for the two violin parts (defined as single player on purpose)
• The bass line has figured bass (I know the notations aren’t complete and consistent, but I copied them from an old edition I found on IMSLP; they’re more than adequate for my experienced harpsichordist, and the music isn’t that complicated anyway)

My question is: why does Dorico overfill page 2 for no apparent reason? Is there an option I mysteriously missed (I really doubt it TBH), or is this just an edge case?
Stizzoso.dorico (1.0 MB)

[asherber]

I admit I haven’t looked at your score to see if there’s a specific cause, but sometimes Dorico just gets it wrong.

„Resolve the collision..” strange behavior

The problem here is that Dorico does not know exactly how much vertical space the music is going to occupy until it has cast it off, but it cannot know exactly how to cast it off until it knows the height of the music, so this is an inherently circular problem. When the 'Automatically resolve collisions between adjacent staves and systems’ option is on, then Dorico makes an estimate of what it thinks the height of the system(s) is likely to be prior to casting it off, so that it can decide when…

[PjotrB]

The weird thing is, of course, that Dorico knows it’s overfilling the page, as it diligently displays the 104.7% in a red box…

[benwiggy]

Solved with a Frame Break at 55.

I’m grateful for Dorico’s help 99% of the time, to allow me good grace to help it the 1%.

[hrnbouma]

Every time this issue gets reported (in the dozens by now) the exact same cause can be identified: some form of collision avoidance is making the systems much taller than expected, throwing off the rough estimate which is step 1 in Dorico’s spacing algorithm.

In this case it’s bars 48–50 with the up-stem violin notes having a stand-off with the adjacent line of lyrics, as well as the dynamics in bars 43, 51 and 59. If there are multiple of these events happening in a single frame and your vertical spacing settings are tight to begin with, overfilling can happen.

This is a sacrificial edge case in order to keep the software usable in larger scores, instead of grinding to a recursive halt.

[Santiago_Galan]

Hi Ben,

With a Frame break at measure 55 I get this result, do you get the same?

[MarcLarcher]

A little bit out of topic: have you tried to set your second value in Layout options>vertical spacing>justification at 90 or 95%? Themusic would be elegantly spread over the page vertically, the space between the systems would be more consistent from page to page. I reckon this is up to personal taste, of course, and you are free to hate it. I 'd rather like it, and if you hadn’t tried it, it would be a good idea (and a very easy one to correct if you want to revert to the previous value!)

[benwiggy]

@Santiago_Galan

With a Frame break at measure 55 I get this result, do you get the same?

I’m sure I would. So now you have to work out what to do about the extra system. Probably put it on the last page, so use another Frame Break.

I’d also change the vertical justification, so that the staves are a little more spread out, instead of having massive gaps between systems.

[jesele]

With staff to staff default 6. 60% and 90% for the justification.

Jesper

Stizzoso.dorico (1.0 MB)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Santiago_Galan]

Thanks Ben!

Yes, the new Frame Break solved the 4 staves page.

Now every page has 3 very spread systems, so I applied the @MarcLarcher suggestion of changing the “Justify distance only…” parameter to 90 or 95%, but the result is this, what do you think?

[charles_piano]

@Santiago_Galan

I applied the @MarcLarcher suggestion of changing the “Justify distance only…” parameter to 90 or 95%,

Set the value just above to 60 or so.

[Santiago_Galan]

Thanks Charles, @benwiggy @jesele and @MarcLarcher

That worked all right. Now I must figure out why, but it is OK!!

Thank you all.

[charles_piano]

@Santiago_Galan

Now I must figure out why

Have a look at @benwiggy’s indispensable guide on vertical justifications

PDF version:

Vertical Justification settings.pdf (561,1 Ko)

And also the manual:

Changing the vertical justification of staves/systems - Dorico Pro - 6.2

[benwiggy]

The default distance between systems (the 2nd %) is set to 80%, which means that it stops spreading staves out when the frame is between 80% and 100%. This can look weird if you’ve got one page 78% full and one 82% full; but also can still produce “over-big” spaces between systems.

[MarcLarcher]

I usually have those settings to 50 and 95, and seldom have to modify them ^^

[Santiago_Galan]

Thanks, I will read this carefully.

[PjotrB]

Thanks everybody for your replies. Of course, I know how to apply a frame break at bar 55, and how to set the various values for vertical justification. Let’s hope this discussion may help other, less experienced users, who encounter this phenomenon. My son Hugo @hrnbouma is right (as always ): there will always be edge cases where Dorico sacrifices the last 1% recursion needed to keep the programme running reasonably fast.
I was just curious if Dorico couldn’t do just a little better at figuring it out on its own, given that it detected the overfill anyway…