It would be very useful to have an option to change the instrument definition arbitrarily, similar to how we can modify the note spacing rules. If this could be combined with the ability to set ‘0’ staff lines in the Instrument Definition dialog, it would solve many issues, such as creating cut-away scores, contemporary notation, etc.
I really think it is important: there are a lot of Finale users who want something like this, and they are deciding between Dorico and Sibelius — and you know how they compare in this particular area.
We’re not going to approach this kind of thing in this way, I’m afraid. It’s at odds with Dorico’s semantic approach. If it means that we lose people to Sibelius in the short term because they can hack their way towards a cutaway score with lots of tedious manual work, so be it.
I know it’s difficult when you can achieve something – albeit through lots of tedious manual work – in one program, and it feels like you should be able to do that same tedious manual work in another program, but that just isn’t how we like to approach things. We want to save you from tedious manual work wherever we can. If that means, in the short term, that you do not even have the option to do that tedious manual work, that’s how it is: we don’t want to have to remove something that we only added as a stopgap before the proper functionality.