so, i have tried to use engrave mode to resize staves, and such things. what i am currently doing is resizing the first measure of a piece, which i put alone on the first system, so that it is not awkwardly stretched the width of the page. however, i cannot move the handles with the cursor, i can only move them with alt-arrow. this is ludicrously slow, and it took at least a minute of holding down the button to resize this one element.
is there a way to adjust with the cursor, or something i am missing?
otherwise, consider this a feature request.
If you’re asking for a feature request, it may be helpful to further explain (or better, show) the scenario in which such a function is commonly necessary. Otherwise, the team would likely reply that there are other existing ways to accomplish the same thing, or that this use case is an outlier. Just a suggestion!
while i can do it with ctrl-alt-arrow, with a mouse i could do it in half the time.
there are also other times i have wanted to move staves around quickly to see how they look in different spacings, and again it would be twice as fast by mouse as by ctrl-alt-arrow.
furthermore, since ctrl-alt moves by larger intervals, i have to choose between speed and precision, and switch back and forth between large and small intervals. with a mouse, i could move as fast as i want, and as minutely as i want.
If I remember correctly, it’s something to do with responsiveness. You might be able to move your mouse as quickly as you like, but Dorico may not actually be able to keep up with the calculations you’d be asking it to make. The example you’ve given would probably be fine, but if that happened to be an orchestral system with 30 staves…
In this example, does increasing the threshold for horizontal justification to something very high (like 99%) and adjusting the note spacing get you closer to what you want? Assuming that each line is a separate flow, rather than systems within the same flow (otherwise that option won’t apply) - with the barline at the end of the short flows set to “double”, or whatever is required for each flow.
I would like to second this as a feature request, however long the time frame for such a feature may be.
After recently upgrading to Dorico Pro from Dorico SE, I have started using Engrave mode in a couple projects in the last couple weeks. I found making simple spacing adjustments surprisingly counterintuitive. I had assumed I would be able to adjust note spacing with the mouse, so I kept trying to no avail, restarting the program once or twice because I was so sure that this was how it should work. Of course after I checked the documentation I realized that you couldn’t do this with the mouse, but I was truly surprised to learn that. I never even considered that the mouse wouldn’t be an option.
Admittedly, I previously used Sibelius in which you could move almost anything on the page by clicking and dragging, so maybe that’s just a problem with people who are used to that program.
I can appreciate how much more precise Dorico’s method is, but every so often I just need a quick, approximate adjustment that would be a lot faster to just click and drag.
so far, i have not gotten into flows and how they work, but i will definitely try this eventually.
If dragging with the mouse were an option, I dont think responsiveness should be a problem. sure, it would be terrible to calculate translations of 30 staves in real time, but i think it would be fine to just move a red line in real time as i drag, then calculate once when i let go.
Fair, but early in the learning process, it’s crucial to ask, “Am I doing it the correct way?” After you’ve learned the “official” method and tried it for a couple weeks (or whatever length of time), you may be surprised to find that it’s better.
Or the request might still stand. But I always recommend giving it a chance first.
Perhaps what would’ve made my experience better is not actually being able to move objects with the mouse, but instead some clearer indication from the software of how I should be going about that task, if not with the cursor. The fact that I restarted the software, thinking it was a bug, before I even considered looking for the keyboard shortcuts suggests that this system is not intuitive or well explained within the program. So I guess the “feature” I’d request isn’t the ability to adjust note spacing with the mouse, but is instead some clearer signposting within the software to help users new to Engrave Mode get started.
Then again, shame on me for not reading the documentation first, I suppose.
