Hi All. Having a blast getting my first major work ready for publication with Dorico. I’ve stumbled across one thing that I can’t find a solution for, though. In keyboard music, it is not uncommon to use dashed or dotted lines to indicate where the left hand might change to the upper staff or vice versa (sample image attached).
I haven’t found a way to do this sort of thing in Dorico yet, nor can I find a topic here on the subject. Does it exist? If not, I’d suggest that it would be a useful addition.
I agree this would definitely be a useful addition and it’s something we will add in due course. For the time being, if you can live with the line not being dotted, you can use a glissando line with its text hidden.
There hasn’t been an update to this issue, but there have been literally hundreds of updates to other issues - see the Version History. Lines will get their time, I’m sure, but in the meantime you’ll need to patient or find workarounds.
For drawing any kinds of lines - solid, dashed, or dotted - there an excellent (in my opinion) workaround that Marc Larcher suggested: using crescendo hairpin with ‘0’ aperture. You can modify the line’s length, direction, and style any way you need.
IB
Thank you, IgorBorodin for your tip.
Indeed, dashed lines is an expected feature, mostly for publishing of scores of contrapuntal keyboard music.
A glissando dashed line should be the solution, but adding the possibility to start the line or to end the line from our till a rest. See attached file.
Thanks by forehand to the Dorico staff.
As of Dorico 3 you can do this with Playing Techniques. Here, I’ve set up a Playing Technique that uses the following text: " " - yes, that’s simply a blank space.
It has a continuation line and duration line: “Dashed line (short) with terminal line)”
Then, having placed the Playing Technique, I’ve gone into Engrave mode and set the following properties:
If there’s a separate part layout you’ll certainly need to Edit > Propagate Properties from within Engrave mode, and there may be a little extra tweaking to do if the layout in the part is different to the score. That shouldn’t apply in contrapuntal keyboard music though!
Many thanks for this - the MS I’m working on is chock-full of these lines, and your instructions are a godsend! The one problem I’m having (bearing in mind that I’m using the Playing Techniques Editor for the first time) is that the popover command only worked once. Each time since, the command is ignored, although I’m selecting the correct text from the popover dropdown. Where could I have gone wrong? (Luckily, I can copy and paste the original as much as I like, so I’m not completely hamstrung.)
You’re reading information that’s 15 months old. Assuming you’re in 3.5, use Lines! Vastly preferable to Playing Techniques as you can set them to attach to noteheads.
