I would love the option to be able to specify system object positions with more flexibility. Case in point: the opera I’m currently engraving, with the following score order:
Voices
Woodwinds (5 pl.)
Brass (5 pl.)
Percussion (2 pl., both on pitched as well as unpitched instruments)
Harp
Guitar
Accordion
The last 3 instruments here function as a kind of string section, and consequently I would like to have system objects appear above the harp. With the current setup this is impossible to achieve consistently, as for some reason it’s classified as “pitched percussion” and sometimes a marimba appears in the percussion section. I’ve resorted to checking “Keyboards” and dragging everything up from the accordion staff. In a 340-page score…
Surely others can think of further examples as well of mixed-instrument grouping and unorthodox score orders where Dorico’s current system is too rigid.
Don’t get me wrong, I know why the current, semantic, intelligent system is in place. But please, would it be possible to add a (possibly semi-hidden) layout option to ditch this intelligence and just put system objects above a specific player (or player group), regardless of instrument types or bracketing?
Or, for bonus points: the ability to specify a position between two players, with the guarantee that the system objects always show up in that spot even if those specific staves are hidden.
Regarding your problem at hand (independent from the feature request), it might be feasible (especially since we are only talking about three instruments) to hack the user library file to contain three custom instruments that trick Dorico into thinking they are “strings”, while keeping more or less all of the remaining original properties (including playback). Caveat – it might prove impossible to have a camouflage harp that also keeps its connection to Dorico’s dedicated harp features; and since this whole problem hinges on the harp specifically, this might prove an insurmountable hurdle, after all.
If you are interested in looking further down that road but are unsure how to begin, let me know.
I am also having this issue. I am working on a very large marching band score and need to have the system objects displayed above the Drum Line—as well as the Front Ensembles. Right now I get it above the front ensembles, but for whatever reason I cannot also get it above the Drum Line. Am I doing something wrong or is this just a limitation of the current system as described above? (I’ve attached a file in case someone can figure it out). System Object Example Score.dorico (1.8 MB)
Please forgive this egregious bumping. With yesterday’s 5.1 update, at least the specific case I outlined in the OP is achievable by creating a custom family for the bottom 3 instruments.
(btw: any reason why this custom instrument family doesn’t subsequently show up in the score order editor?)
However, I can already envision a simple variant that is still “unsolved”: take the above scenario but swap the guitar and the harp. Since the guitar is a single-staff instrument, it doesn’t get a bracket when grouped together with the grand-staff instruments, and for some nebulous reason, that means system objects can never appear directly above it.
Another scenario that custom families won’t solve: what if you have, for example, two antiphonal wind quintets, where you want system objects to appear above both groups? Surely someone will suggest messing with the instrument definitions but I hope you’ll agree that that’s an ugly hack when Player Groups are right there.
My fear is that now the developers have “solved” a large number of specific cases (albeit in a very roundabout, overly-semantic way that AFAIK no-one was asking for) that they’ll now continue to ignore the general, naive case of just being able to define a score order, bracketing and system object positioning scheme MANUALLY, without the layer of faff that is Instrument Families.
The above feature request, therefore, still stands.
It won’t show up there if the Instrument is also in a Factory Defined Family. It must be only in the custom family.
It seems that this works only when using a Bracket Change in Engrave Mode. I would also like to see this work with Player Groups as that is how I typically custom bracket because it seems more stable to me.
It’s the biggest caveat I always add when discussing the merits of Dorico compared to other scorewriters:
As long as your requirements are reasonably ‘mainstream’, the semantic-oriented design makes a lot of things much more efficient. But when you encounter any sort of edge case, the developers’ reluctance to include ‘unintelligent’ manual overrides means you have to laboriously trick the software into doing what you want.
In this case, the fact that you have to take this entire semantic detour through Instrument Families still feels very much like tricking the software. Especially since I could already think of multiple scenarios in which that wouldn’t work because the semantics are actively in the way.
That being said, the number of use cases accounted for does, in fact, still grow with every update. There’s even a dumb little button to hide cautionary key signatures now! It only took about seven years of people requesting exactly that with no added semantics.
Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t consider the addition of editable instrument families to be a solution to the requirement for more flexibility in determining system item positions. But I don’t want to get in the way of you having a good old snark, if it makes you feel better, so snark away.
Since Dorico v1.0 people writing exercises have been grumbling that separate flows shouldn’t be required for each exercise. Hiding cautionary key signatures and time signatures makes this possible.
In a sense I’m relieved to read that, and I’ll withdraw at least some of my snark. But seeing this new feature announced, my impression was that influencing bracketing and system object positions is mainly what it’s for, so if that’s not the case, what is its intended use?
Bracketing is the primary use case, which of course does influence system item positions, but as I say, we don’t consider the requirements for more flexible system item positions to be met by the ability to edit instrument families.
I think you are confusing “Groups” with “Families” @hrnbouma …
Anyway if I understand your issue with system objects, I found out that the new Instrument Families functionality resolves it:
Just go in the Instrument Families Editor (in Library menu), click on one family that appears in both Groups of your Setup (for this example Woodwinds), click New from selection, rename it as ww2 for example (you can also activate the little star icon to have this in all projects).
Then in Layout options/Staves and Systems/System Objects check both Woodwinds and ww2 families.
In this way the System Objects will appear on the top of both Groups (the “two antiphonal wind quintets”) (or better said on top of both Families, since now the woodwinds and their doubles belong to both Families: the default Woodwinds and the ww2).
