Format problems

I am realizing that formatting can be very complicated and quirky. (Dor 5)

I am trying to fix problems where randomly the program just messes up the vertical spacing in the full score. I try to go into layout options and it really does not fix the problem. I fix the individual system where the problem occurs but then it moves the problem to another staff. Then when I tried to hide unused staves, wow it decides to make a huge gape between systems and puts in a blank page.

Any suggestions, please?

Thanks

Ken

It’s very hard to diagnose things from a general description. Can you upload your project file here, so someone can take a look? If it’s too large, you can go to Play > Playback Template and apply the Silence template, then save as a new file.

thanks asberber

Ok I will send, but I think I need to restart the computer and look agani.

Best

Ken

I am sending you the fle, but a new problem is occurring.

Besides the formatting morass, the last page of the score is missing the staves for the piano part. They are in the part, but have disappeared from the score.

Strange, don’t you think?

Thanks for your aid.

Ken

SlipperySlopes-dor-REFORMAT.dorico (1.4 MB)

I reset the layout, removed all overrides, removed all system breaks removed the system dividers. Reduced the space size from 7mm to 6.5mm and removed staff labels in Layout Options.

Everything sits happily on 3 systems per page…
SlipperySlopes-dor-reset.dorico (2.2 MB)

Dorico’s Options really do work without much intervention!

5 Likes

I’ll try to explain some of what I see, and hopefully that will get you back on track. I’m looking at the full score layout.

On the first page, it looks like you have manually edited the page to insert your title and subtitle. This causes a page override (red triangle in the right-hand panel), which means that this page will no longer respond to changes to the underlying template. A better way to solve this is to open up File > Project Info and fill out the fields there as desired, so that the templates can pick them up automatically. You’ll have to right-click on p.1 in the Pages panel and choose Remove Page Overrides to get this to work.

You’re actually using the flow heading to display the subtitle, so you should edit the flow heading template by double-clicking it in the right-hand panel and changing the tokens there to {@projectSubtitle@}. (In many cases, you’d want instead to edit the First page template and add the subtitle token there, but if you have just the one flow, this is an okay way to handle things.)

I can see that on several pages you have have manually adjusted the space between systems. I would suggest doing Engrave > Staff Spacing > Reset Layout to get rid of those manual adjustments.

By default, Dorico will then justify (space out) your staves and systems to fill the page. I can see that on some pages, like p.10, this puts too much space between the clarinet and piano. One way around this is to go to Layout Options > Vertical Spacing > Vertical Justification and change the second number, currently 60, to 80. That will basically tell Dorico that when the page is more than 60% full, you do want it to justify, but you only want to add space between systems, not between staves within a system.

As for your missing piano part, if you turn on signposts (View > Signposts), you’ll see a signpost that says “SYS BRK + STAFF VIS”. And if you double-click that, you’ll see that you’ve set the piano staves to hide. Turn off those two toggles and click OK, and your piano staves are back.

Finally, the music from the beginning is now duplicated on p.18. In the Pages panel, there’s another red triangle on that page. Right-click and remove page overrides, and everything is back to normal.

If you don’t like how Dorico has spaced the two systems on the last page, then go back to Vertical Justification and set both values to 65. Now this page doesn’t trigger justification (because it’s only 62.5% full, according to the indicator in the lower left corner), so the two systems stay in their default positions.

SlipperySlopes-dor-REFORMAT edited.dorico (2.2 MB)

Edit: @Janus has done some other things as well to improve the look beyond just getting it back to baseline.

6 Likes

Thanks Janus…I guess it was an easy fix.

Very helpful! I will try to improve my formatting skills.

Ken

Thanks Asherber

I will study your feed back.

So I guess I am just doing several things the wrong way and need to study formatting more carefully (formatting never was a strong point, even in Word!)

Take care

Ken

The important thing is to realize that this is different from Finale. In Dorico, rather than pushing things around until they look right, you’re much better off adjusting the appropriate options and letting Dorico do the work for you. In most cases, you will need only a few small adjustments, at the end of the process.

6 Likes

I think my advice is to get to know the big settings first (particularly Layout Options: Space size, Note Spacing and Vertical Spacing) before worrying about details. Manually dragging staves in Engrave often leads to unforeseen problems.

I took the liberty of changing some options to suit the usual layout for this type of score (Staff labels are not needed, nor are system dividers. They just take up space). Also, if you want to present your full score to the Pianist (as is traditional), you could reduce the size of the Clarinet staff (to 75%) which would allow 4 systems per page.

Hope this helps.

5 Likes

Thanks and I will try to get better as I make my way!

Good luck!

Ken

Yes, it is different all right.

Thank you for your help once again!

Ken

Hi Janus

When you write “reduced the note size”, Where does one find those options?
Thanks
Ken

One way to reduce note size is to reduce the space/staff/rastral size in Layout.

Another way is to replace the larger Bravura font that is the Dorico standard with the (ironically named) Default version of Bravura, which has smaller note heads.

1 Like

If you’re talking about @Janus’s suggestion to reduce the size of the clarinet staff in the full score, you can do that by right-clicking on the staff and choosing Staff Size > 75%.

If you want to make the size of all the staves smaller, as @Derrek indicates, that’s in Layout Options > Page Setup > Space Size.

2 Likes

Thanks again for your help.

I will try to get formatting under my belt in the future.

Best

Ken

Hi Derrek

I will try that!

Thank you for your help.

Ken