"Erase background" incomplete for text

Any ideas what to do here? I can deal with the bar rests (though I wish they would be erased), but the key signature… make it independent C major through the entire flow? Is there an easier way?

EDIT: darn it, time sigs too. I can’t get rid of these entirely, because the Narrator’s part will have extensive cues in every bar to assist him.

Setting the background color as white almost works…

Any suggestions?

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Edit: I did end up making an independent key signature, which worked easily enough. The time signature was problematic. I ended up having to use manual note spacing to force the time signature behind the text block.

I’d suggest that a full-fledged “Erase background” would be a better option for text blocks down the road.

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But can’t time signatures be hidden via the properties panel — you might need to make it independent too? I understand it’s a lot of additional steps to make what you want to do. But why hide the staff? That’s the thing I don’t understand.

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Ahhh… why didn’t I think about simply hiding the time signature? Thanks Marc.

The client wants it to look like this in the score. So… it shall be done.

Edit… of course “Hide time signature” works perfectly… excellent.

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You can expand the “erased” background by adding extra spaces at the end of each line. It appears that only the text background is erased, not the background of the enclosed text box.

I, too, wish the entire box could be opaque, as well as have the option to match the background color of the part or score if they are different.

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Will the narrator be following along in the score? Or have their own part? Depending on how you are setting it up, a 0-line staff could work well too. Below I just used an invisible clef and an independent open time signature.

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The narrator part layout has cues filling every bar, so I need it to be a standard 5-line staff.

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Love your Latin!

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LOL, Dan was the one who showed me the Bacon Ipsum site a while ago:

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Any solution for clefs in this regard? They keep popping up in between the lines (the left orange circle). I am joining Dan in a wish to have a full erase background function here…

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Related to this, in TAB notation (for Dulcimer) Dorico does not recognize some fret positions. Where that is the case I can add a plus sign to the 6 with a text box. But where Dorico does not recognize a fingering/fret, it adds a red question mark.

This is great for proofing, but I cannot overwrite the question mark manually with SHIFT+X text because erase background on the text field will not overwrite TAB items.

When the Development Team next visits this area, could you please configure SHIFT+X text to be able to erase the background in these situations?

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Sorry to revive this old thread. I also wish that erase background for text could erase more things (knowing the complexity of erasing different items, from a programming point of view): as a text frame with white background does (but creating the text frame gives you an override on the page)

Some aspects that I encountered, in the self explanatory picture (in particular nr. 2):
-in bar 2 a staff text with no erase background (as expected so no problem here)

  1. in bar 3-4 erase background as expected except the fermatas (they need to be dragged outside the page, maybe one day will be possible to hide individual fermatas…), instead of the bar rest I created a whole note with hidden notehead.
  2. in bar 5-8 staff text with erase background: the dots of the repetitions stay visible :frowning:
  3. in bar 9-12 i made a text frame instead, with white background: it covers everything :slight_smile: (fermatas, bar rests, dots of repetitions) but creates an override :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

Any suggestions how to hide the repetition dots without the need of a text frame (with it’s override)?

erase background problems.dorico (712.5 KB)

Create a Paragraph Style with the Background Color set to white.

When applied to your text it will hide rests, fermatas, and dots. There are a few little drawing artifacts where the rests are that I circled in red. I’m guessing the fact that these show is just a bug, as they don’t seem to export with the PDF. You can always use Remove Rests on them too.

In any case, that Paragraph Style will take care of the repeat dots so you don’t need a page override. It will hide meters and key sigs as well, but I don’t think hides rhythmic dots for some reason.

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Thank you @FredGUnn for your reply. I had tried also with white background for the created paragraph style of the staff text for Narrator : but didn’t work (the white background didn’t cover the dots or fermatas etc…). (In the paragraph style I only activated the border and the white background and putted the font to 9points absolute).

But after you show that was working for you, I tried again and found that the border in paragraph style may have a bug:

As soon as I activate the border in the paragraph style, the white background doesn’t act as is should (no covering). The "white background"does only shows his effects if border in paragraph style is deactivated, (and to have the the border I have to activate it in property panel/text , which is not so practical as I wish the border to be integrated in the paragraph style)

Can you try on your example erase2 to deactivate the border property in engrave mode/property panel/text and activate the border in the paragraph style Default Text (Erase Background) ? And confirm that in this case the covering of the white background is not as expected? Thank you

Seems to work ok without any border (or a Properties border) …

… but if I use a Paragraph Styles border, then some of the notation elements show through.

No idea if that’s working as designed or not, but it certainly doesn’t seem like desirable behavior.

Thank you @FredGUnn for confirming this behavior.

Maybe @dspreadbury or @Lillie_Harris can tell us more about this.

But for the time being I will use the paragraph style without border but with white background, and activate the border in the properties. Thank you very much: through
your contribution I found this possibility (and no need to drag the fermatas outside the page) :slight_smile:

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