Hymn Verse Separator Lines and Space to the right of Tick Bars at System Edge

[Marc_Cerisier]

Greetings, all!

I’m working on a new hymnal, and I know the two topics I mentioned in the subject aren’t Dorico features (yet…, hopefully), but I was curious what workflows y’all use to achieve them. I don’t feel like I’m being especially efficient in how I’m handling them now, and with almost 600 hymns that will need them, I don’t want my life to be any harder than it has to be.

1. Verse Line Separators
   

   
   
   Right now, I’m doing them the way I do them in Finale… text objects with four underscore characters—manually placed. (And thanks for the crosshairs in engrave mode! What a help these are!) In Score, I use lines instead of underscores, but this feels a bit tricky from how I understand Dorico, at least, especially with more than one on a single system (as in the screen shot). What are y’all doing? Do you have any tips for vertical alignment other than going by eye? How about making sure the extension to the left of the verse number is consistent between systems (where the verse numbers aren’t in alignment, so the crosshairs don’t help)?

2. Adding space at the right edge after Tick/Short barlines
   
   My workflow right now is to manually move them in the PDF using Acrobat/Pitstop Pro (as I find that less apt to cause font trauma than Illustrator would). So, if anything is edited, it has to be redone each time in the PDF—which is less than ideal. In Finale, I would use a blank barline, and then manually add custom expressions I created that used the same barline graphic. In Score… well, I’d just put it where I wanted it, and it was happy to be there How are y’all handing this when you enounter it?

Many thanks for any input or suggestions. This is the first time I’m getting to use Dorico for a large project like this, as I’ve typically been required to use something else by the publisher, and there are not words to describe how much easier it is. Thanks, Dorico team!

[Romanos]

For both of these things I just use Affinity Publisher.

Currently, I have to take nearly every single score I produce in Dorico to AP for these two specific reasons.

Technically, both can be achieved in Dorico if you fiddle around with lines enough (this really is a pain since Dorico doesn’t like you having more than one line at the same rhythmic position on the same instrument) and by adding one beat dummy measures and hiding rests after each tick barline… but I find that adding a single line in AP and alt+clicking it with shift drag into other positions is much faster, as well as just selecting tick & half barlines and nudging them.

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edit: you have to be careful with the four underscore approach… I’ve had this backfire on me before, because certain PDF viewers will add tiny amounts of space and high resolution printers will print sufficiently to show—at least on closer inspection—that they are separate characters.