Hi everyone. I suspect there may be a simple setting that I’m missing somewhere, or else this may end up being a feature request. I typically would prefer that immediate dynamics would be slightly to the left of the note head they are attached to, which amounts to the “align optical center with left-hand side of note head” setting in Engraving Options. However, this results in dynamic markings colliding with bar lines when bar lines extend between staves in bracketed groups.
I can resolve this by selecting the dynamic marking and changing the text alignment in the Properties panel, but that’s a very cumbersome fix across an entire score.
It seems like there should be a way (that I’m hoping I’m missing) to have Dorico automatically avoid the dynamic markings colliding with bar lines. Am I missing something? Thanks!
I will note that there was a previous discussion about this, but it hasn’t been active for 5 years, and at that time there was no resolution. I did check my default note head settings and it seems they are still the factory settings.
One catch with Erase Background is that it slightly displaces the dynamic – the amount of padding is taken into account for collision avoidance. Here, for example, I’m toggling Erase Background with the padding set to 2 spaces for clarity (in Engraving Options > Dynamics > Appearance.
For this reason, I would not want it turned on globally; when I do use it, I apply it locally only in the score layout or in grand staff layouts (which is where you would find collisions with barlines like this).
I guess if you wanted it to always be on, you could work around this by adjusting the options under Dynamics > Vertical Position to take the padding into account.
Good point! I hadn’t noticed that before.. guess I wasn’t paying attention. When I said I’d like it to be on globally I assumed there’d be no downside. So I’ll correct myself: I’d like the possibility to erase backgrounds of dynamics globally and for Dorico not to take padding into account when determining the vertical position of the dynamics. I can’t really think of a scenario where one would want padding to influence the vertical position of an immediate dynamic.
Again, good point. In tight spaces I can see that. The option to set top/bottom padding separately from left/right padding would help with that I guess. And/or (just spitballing), an automatic setting that will ensure top padding won’t exceed the minimum distances you’ve set in Dynamics>Vertical Spacing.
Personally, I don’t think this should even be an option–immediate dynamics, like notes, should never touch a barline. This is just something the program should take into account when casting off.
