I am having an issue that I have not encountered before. If I am dividing into 3 staves and one of them has a staff label - the group name seems to get very far away despite there being no staff label in front of it. I can tell that it is providing distance from the top staff label but it should not do this. Bug? or an engraving option I am missing?
It only happens on odd divisions
Hi @bmoriak, it would always be better to upload your Dorico project, so we don’t need to imagine and try to reconstruct your setup and settings, please!
Anyway, I tried two setups. Without knowing exactly what are you aiming for):
Dorico file example:
divisi and groups labels.dorico (1.4 MB)
A.
with a divisi group for the 2 sections (and leaving the solo outside the group): the staff labels are much clearer and nice spaced
B.
with a divisi group for 3 sections, as it looks in your example: Dorico will separate the labels.
This distance follows the Engraving Option Distance between inner and outer staff labels on same staff, which you can set with a negative value:
I don’t know if one of those is what you want. If not, lease share your file, and describe in more details what your desired result is (to see what the best setup for your divisi and labels is).
The first example is a very interesting workaround but for the second, it would mess up other divisis in the future. I hope that they allow for better control in a future update as im not sure why you would want the staff label to be so far away at any given point. Thanks for your help!
@bmoriak,
Maybe there are other methods, but, if you are not willing to share an example Dorico project, it is difficult to give more suggestions, as nobody but you knows how things are set up in your project.
@bmoriak
Anyway: here another variation of B:
Here is a cut down of what I want to be able to do - I know this is the Dorico way to do instruments like this but for my purposes Divisi is the best work around to get staff labels to way they need to be and be able to easily change staff labels or number of staves through out the score. (I am not worried about parts)
Divisi.dorico (1.8 MB)
Another work around for this specific example would be due to add the staff label to the divisi label and hide player label. (tho not ideal)
Thank you for the file, @bmoriak.
I see that you decided to create your own specific setup/workflow (which is actually not how Dorico divisi functionality was designed for, I think). But even looking at your project, I don’t know what are the advantages of using this approach, nor I can imagine what happens when the music is written down: do you use condensing for all the divisi? Do you use manual staff visibility?
[I am not judging at all: I would understand better what the final result should be, to be able to give suggestions.]
Beside my “variation of B” that I added in my previous post, here my suggestion for your example project:
Dorico file:
Divisi-VARIATION.dorico (1.8 MB)
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Thanks for the help! It’s mainly for a template I am setting up for an old school Hollywood guy who uses Finale and doesn’t copy parts or use condensing. In Finale he just had staff styles to easily change staff names for instrument changes (again no parts or transpositions needed). The divisi is the best way I found to give him freedom in orchestrating the same way without having to deal with Dorico’s condensing, auto- bracketing, numbering, instrument changes etc. I know it’s not ideal (and is not how my personal template is set up) I’ll just tell him this work around. It’s not like finale had an easy way to add staves and move the group name out of the way anyway ha! So this is far better to start out with.
-Brendan
I see…
Here another further variation in the divisi setup: just create a group for each section:
- the 1st group has no labels (delete them)
- the 2nd group is Flute with some added spaces after it: so it will resemble a label for all the three staves, but will not be spaced as an outer label (and this is a local change, so you can customise it as desired with empty spaces)
- the 3dr group is Piccolo.
Make sure you change both long and short names:
Dorico file:
Divisi-VARIATION2.dorico (1.8 MB)
EDIT:
@bmoriak
And to answer your initial question, this would be my suggestion for your initial example (with the three groups):
Dorico file:
divisi and groups labels-FINAL SUGGESTION.dorico (1.3 MB)
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