This might be a bit more fringe of a question - I’m coming over from Finale and I’ve done extensive modifications to time signature displays. Is there a way (or is there one planned) to be able to move the entire default position for a time signature? For example, this is what I’ve been able to replicate:
It’s basically dead on, except the offset is wrong. I need to move the entire time signature down (so the serif of the 4 numerator is just below the mid-line).
Right now, the time signature is for a single staff - maybe there’s a better way to do it?
First, I went to Library > Engraving Options > Time Signatures > Gaps > Vertical Gaps and set the Gap between numerator and denominator for time signatures on every staff to -1/2 space. Then I went to Library > Music Symbols, searched for Time signature 4, deleted the existing glyph, added a space character (U+20), changed the Font to Academico and the Style to Bold, added the digit 4 (U+34), and changed the digit’s Y-Offset to -24 and the Y-Scale to 200.
@dspreadbury Thanks for letting me know that it isn’t a built in. Is there a feature request / issue logging page? I’m sure I’m going to have a bunch of these small little settings, for example, I was caught off guard with time signature adjustment - it doesn’t conform to the preferred unit of measurement setting.
Excited to use the software - been keeping an eye on it for quite some time and I’m spending some time really trying to understand it. The manual is extremely helpful.
@johnkprice This is great! Very close. I will be playing with this. I actually use the Sibelius title font for my time signatures since it’s the level of bold that I like. Thanks for taking the time to try and create a work around for me! I appreciate it!
By posting about it here, you have put the issue on our radar. That doesn’t mean we are going to implement it, mind you, but it does at least mean that we know there is one human on the planet who would benefit from more configurability in this area.
Roger that! For small other things, I’ll continue to post (in appropriate threads) in hopes that it’s helpful (I won’t create a post for the measurement inconsistency).
When you choose a unit in Preferences > General, that only applies to items which have an absolute measurement, like page size and page margins. Many things in Dorico have a measurement which is relative to the size of your staff, and those items are specified in spaces (i.e., 1/4 of the height of a 5-line staff).
For the time signature gap measurements, you wouldn’t want the same absolute gap on a small staff as you would on a large one – you’d want the gap to size proportionally to the staff (and the time signature characters), which is why it’s specified in spaces.
Totally get that - thanks for the clarification. I see that in the documentation now, but missed it originally!
That label in the settings may be a bit misleading for those who missed that line in the docs (like me). Even changing that label in general to “Preferred unit of absolute measurement” maybe would add the qualification that is needed to trigger someone to read the docs / not misunderstand the point of that setting.
I was incorrectly assuming that if a staff is scaled to 87.25%, then the measurement would scale similarly, retaining proportions at the scaled measurement (100mm becomes 87.25mm).
This is something to get used to, coming from Finale. In Finale, a staff is 24 pts and a space is (a fixed measurement of) 6 pts; when you want to make the staff bigger or smaller, you do it with percentages and most things attached to it scale.
In Dorico, you say directly how big you want a space to be (or the whole staff, if you’re using a defined rastral size), and then everything which is defined in spaces scales appropriately.
(BTW, it’s sometimes helpful to know that Dorico uses a reference staff size of 20 pts, so when you define a font or paragraph style of staff-relative 10 pts, that font will only actually be 10 points when your staff is 20 pts, or just a hair bigger than rastral 3. I imagine that the reasons that font sizes aren’t in spaces include (a) we’re all used to points for fonts and (b) it might be confusing if you specified spaces for staff-relative font styles but points for absolute font styles.)
Edit: With regard to fonts, the fact that Finale and Dorico use difference reference staff sizes also means that you need to change your staff-relative font sizes when you’re recreating templates and such in Dorico. A 12pt staff-relative font in Finale should be a 10pt staff-relative font in Dorico – basically, multiply your font sizes by 0.833.
Just wanna say, your time signature recipe you’ve got in your Finale example there looks great. Really easy to read, with how you lined it up so that the staff lines don’t muddy it up visually.
Did you ever get closer to replicating this in Dorico?
Thank you! It took A LOT of work to get it to look like that in Finale - I was doing a piece for my quintet and I wanted to control how long pauses were, so it was basically a new time signature every measure!
(As you can see) I got maybe 90% of the way there in Dorico, but moving the entire time signature down doesn’t seem to be possible at this time (according to info in this thread). Hopefully soon!
I described the method in post #4 of this topic. The exact values for the gap between numerator and denominator and the digit’s Y-Offset and Y-Scale will vary depending on the font used for the digit. Note that this method does not work correctly if the numerator or denominator has more than one digit.
