Is there any way to improve the default position of items in score view? Some of these items are rather ridiculously placed, like the “1.” marker for 1st flute could easily fill the available space to the left, as could the Staff Text: “SOLO”. Is it possible to prefer dynamics be placed under a staff if there is only 1 player in a condensed staff playing?
When I go to Engrave Mode to manually fix this (which is not the end of the world), things start out okay, other than I am unable to hide a fermata (circled at right) which I think is excessive visual clutter. Any action applied to the fermata applies to all the fermatas in the bar, even in Engrave Mode.
But say I was begrudgingly content with all of those issues, now that I have regained valuable vertical space on my score, I can’t seem to find a way to automatically re-space the staves. Instead, by moving the flute staff up, the vertical space I gained on the top moves to the bottom! The other staves do not automatically move to take advantage of the space, which creates this awkward gap that I can only get rid of by manually moving all of the staves on the page.
But when I do this, the whole score ends up looking more jank and uneven compared to Dorico’s calculated spacings. Moreover, any non trivial change to the score often screws up this whole manually created layout requiring a redo of the whole page.
I feel like I’m misunderstanding the workflow here. Is there a feature I’m not aware of that can automate any of this? Or at the very least, I want to recalculate the staff spacing for the rest of the page after I’ve manually moved text and dynamics around.
Because objects are attached to rhythmic positions, Dorico won’t (yet) take into account if there is space even if you’ve manually moved things: it is making room for objects that are technically at certain positions.
Regarding staff text: you can click the text and toggle Avoid collisions in Properties. This will snap the text back to its default position, as well as adjust staves and other objects around it. You will then need to manually move the text somewhere appropriate, as it will likely be overlapping other items.
A lot of items can be flipped (by pressing F) and this will often change staff spacing.
Another technique is to change the rhythmic positions of items by just a bit - say, a 32nd note worth - and Dorico will then think “oh, we don’t need to make as much room for this as before”. This needs to be done in Write mode.
In short, manually dragging things in Engrave mode won’t automatically cause staff spacing to be adjusted.
Look for the condensing option to hide the rests of the pausing player automatically. Then there will be better spacing.
But if you want it like this, with rests for the second player visible, flipping the dynamics to below has to be done manually. It might look ambiguous though.
You have written SOLO with the text tool: Space saving option is to edit the condensing label to read “1. SOLO”. Or only SOLO. The 1. is understood anyway, since you have all the rests of player 2.
You will have to move it manually though, no automatic placing to the left of the entrance. And how to adjust the vertical spacing is difficult to advise on without seeing the whole page. Can you post a bigger screenshot?
