Dorico System Margin Adjustment

Dorico
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Another Dorico improvement suggestion, after working with it for 1 month:

In the horizontal adjustments section of the Engraving workspace, there should be a place to enter a value for the horizontal adjustments of the system margins. I have situations in which I want to center a narrower-width system on the page, not left-justify it. So I have to manually click-and-count 100, 150, 200 individual keyboard nudges inward on the left and right margins to do this. Oh. My. Goodness. The bottom panel would be a great place to have an entry field for mm/inches (ie “0.5 inches” or “2 inches”) or something to move a system’s margins (after selecting the handle on the marginal barline). Seems pretty basic?

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Adding one or more of the modifier keys (shift, alt/opt. ctrl, cmd) will change the amount of movement of selected objects. For example, adding the cmd key (on a Mac) will move the selected object/edit handle by sigificantly larger increments.

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Thanks for the reply and suggestion. I was actually aware of that (but appreciate the reply). If you’re trying to adjust the margin by an inch or 2, that’s still 50+ keystroke nudges using the biggest nudge-factor I can find in Dorico.

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Point acknowledged regarding being able to specify a value, but rather than pressing that key combination 50 (or more) separate times, if you hold it down the OS’s key-repeat feature should kick in after the delay specified in your System settings.

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Thanks again for the reply/suggestion. I’m pretty picky about my scores and I want those systems really centered - not just eye-balled while holding down a key-repeat drag on each side margin. Unless OS has a feature that shuts off the key-repeat after a predetermined number of repeats (like 100) - I’m not aware of it, though. That’s still quite a clunky workaround for what I think should be a feature within Dorico (not saying you don’t agree). I did a quick web search for auto-shut-off-key-repeats and don’t see that as an OS option. If you know of a way to do that, I would be super grateful. Thanks again!

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BTW, I’m slowly piecing together a Stream Deck profile for Dorico. I have a hotkey button for those margin drags. It’ll key-repeat when held down, but I just want more precision than eye-balling it.

I’m manually creating the icons for this as I go, but I’ll share it once I get something made for all the shortcuts (in appreciation for all the help the board has given me).

image
image4032Ă—3024 2.75 MB

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Joseph, you are talking about a Layout change. Have you thought of applying this via a Page Template change?
Set up a new Page Template with the music frame beginning in the middle of the page.
This Page Template you can then apply for one or more pages of your Layout in Engrave Mode.

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I was thinking about this—adjusting the frame (either via template or directly on the affected page) would work if there’s only one system on the page. But if he’s adjusting just one system out of several on the page, then it won’t work.

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Could you create a separate Frame for the centred bit, using the Co-ordinates in the Properties panel to get it correctly in the middle?

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It could be made to work by creating two music frames on the page, in the same frame chain, and making one of them narrower.

That way the music would flow properly from one music frame to the next.

If the pattern of which systems are narrower is consistent, creating a new page template would be the way to go.

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Thanks all! I like these ideas as workarounds. Hoping the developers will ultimately give me/us something like the entry-field for nudging individual systems by inch units.

To the workaround: will creating different frames or applying different templates affect Dorico’s automatic vertical spacing between systems? I’m assuming I’d be spelling out the specific vertical location on the page/layout where the new frame or template starts. Or would Dorico reposition it to keep it in spacing rhythm with the other systems?