I often want to disable the spacebar (not permanently), as there are times when it gets hit (usually by the score on my desk) and sends me back to the beginning of my score. Then I have no navigate back to where I was.
How do I achieve this, please? (Belive me, I have looked in the dcoumentaiton, here, and in Google, to no avail!)
You take a screwdriver and pry the spacebar off your keyboard.
To be serious for a moment, I don’t think this is a Dorico responsibility. Perhaps your OS will have a way.
For quick ways to navigate back to where you were, you can go to bars / flows / pages, including using the new Dorico 4 jump bar.
If it’s jumping back to the beginning because pressing Space is starting playback, you could make a habit of moving the playhead to where you’re working, so that accidental Space presses don’t move the view massively. Or perhaps look at removing Space as an option for starting playback at all (although I confess I’m not sure how great that is as an idea).
This is what I am asking for: I can presumably restore it on the rare occasions when I need it.
Have you tried changing the Key Shortcut?
How do I access that panel, please? I only found play options in Preferences
One of these is "follow playhead during playback*, which would presumably stop the change of view, but I would like to be able to disable the spacebar as a playback control.
ACTUALLY, I just managed to toggle “Playhead position” via the Jump Bar. It only works when nothing is selected.
Before methods for disabling it were produced, I used to physically remove the Capslock key from my keyboards. 
But I just want to prevent the spacebar from starting playback in Dorico, when I dont need it.
That’s in Preferences > Key Commands. I then typed “Play” to filter the list; and while there were still lots of choose from, Play > Start or Stop Playback quickly presented itself. You can then change the key command to something else, or remove it.
OK. I had not remembered that > indicates the existence of a submenu! It’s quite a rabbithole…
There are still a couple of options left for starting/stopping playback.
Many thanks!
David