How to draw a bordered box

[eldar_sad]

Hello! Is there any way to draw a box like the one on screenshot inside dorico (without graphics import)? There is such option in Sibelius, but I wonder if something similar is available in Dorico.

With respect,

Eldar

[dspreadbury]

Welcome to the forum, Eldar. I’m afraid your screenshot didn’t make it onto the forum. I’m not quite sure what you’re asking without seeing the picture. If you want to add a box around text, you can do that using the ‘Border’ property (select the text item and open the Properties panel at the bottom of the window). If you want to add a frame as a kind of cell or aleatoric notation, there’s no good way to do that at the moment but you can do it by adding a frame in Engrave mode and setting it to show a border in the Properties panel.

[hstrindb]

Hello!
Reading this discussion about the aleatoric box notation it struck me that the continuation line that follows the box, that line has structural similarities with the Rhythmic slashes which I love in Dorico. Daniel, could this be a way to handle them?

Thanks, Henrik
(happily having moved from Sibelius)

[dspreadbury]

We certainly have ideas about how to handle box notation in future, don’t worry!

[steveparker]

Is that as in Morton Feldman box notation?

[dspreadbury]

I was thinking of Lutoslawksi, but I don’t know much of Feldman’s music. I guess they use a similar technique.

[LSalgueiro]

If he means something like the Projections – and he must, because I can’t recall any other parallel – than no, it’s a whole other thing.

[willrice]

@Daniel at Steinberg

We certainly have ideas about how to handle box notation in future, don’t worry!

Please add my +1 to support for boxed notation as a feature request.

[JMSmordal]

and even +1.

[OldSkoolMark]

+1

[jfDem1ntez0]

and another +1

I have attempted a way using graphic music symbols + horizontal line, but it’s somewhat time consuming and hard to handle, and it didn’t work on percussion …

[xavierpages]

I have posted a possible solution to this here:

A new(?) method to create boxes of any size and thickness

[eldar_sad]

@Daniel at Steinberg

Welcome to the forum, Eldar. I’m afraid your screenshot didn’t make it onto the forum. I’m not quite sure what you’re asking without seeing the picture. If you want to add a box around text, you can do that using the ‘Border’ property (select the text item and open the Properties panel at the bottom of the window). If you want to add a frame as a kind of cell or aleatoric notation, there’s no good way to do that at the moment but you can do it by adding a frame in Engrave mode and setting it to show a border in the Properties panel.

Thanks, Daniel! I was talking about aleatoric box, yes. Text frame worked for me then, but now I am handling any extreme contemporary notation in external vector editor and I am happy with that.

And thanks for the beautiful program! I work in Dorico with pleasure all the time.

[Inga_Margrete_Aas]

+1 to support for boxed notation as a feature

Thanks for tips in this thread for how to solve it right now!

[YourMusic.Pro]

This might help also:

Aleatoric boxes font

I needed to make some aleatoric boxes for a client and found the existing workarounds a little fiddly, so I made a simple font for drawing boxes: [image] Anyways, I called it AleBoxes, and it’s really easy to use: AaaaaA draws a short box, BbbbbB is taller, and it goes up to WwwwW, for whatever height you need. I find 24-point font works the best for me, but you can adjust the point size for different line thickness. Of course you have to turn off collision avoidance on that text object, or …