Whenever I use an “irrational” time signature as a first measure in a system the bar numbers appear in brackets. Can somebody explain how to eliminate the bracket?
Apologies for being completely OT, but I fail to understand why one would use an irrational time signature, only to complicate it with tuplets. Surely simple nested tuplets would provide a cleaner representation for mere mortals?
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A 5/6-meter indicates a measure with 5 triplet-crotchets. The tuplets represent that. They are no „additional complication“.
The 5/6-meter itself does not define the triplets, therefore it is standard to notate them, even if this seems to be tautological.
I’m always a little surprised by the term ‘irrational’, as this kind of time signature is still very clearly a simple ratio anyway. Irrational numbers are things like pi or sqrt(2).
Maybe we should just call a TS like 5/6 ‘non-binary’. Or what about ‘queer’?…
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The other name I see used is “non-dyadic time signatures” which is more logical than “irrational time signature” but, in my experience, a bit less common.
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Agreed: this is why I put it in quotation marks! What about “unorthodox”?
“Queer”: please NO! 
Being no mathematician I wonder if “6” is a non-dyadic number, since it can be divided by 2 …
I would be happy about a better term for this!
Since the discussion drifts to the adequacy or the term “irrational” (which I dislike too!) I want to recall that my question was about the bar number in brackets! – Any ideas how to get rid of them?
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In general, Dorico doesn’t show bar numbers in brackets for “irrational” time signaures; it shows them for bars that are split over system breaks. Can you cut down your project to the smallest example that reproduces the problem, and attach it here?
Here is the document; the respective bar ist 26. - Thank you!
irrat. time-sig bar #.dorico (1.3 MB)
Thanks for providing the file. The reason Dorico is showing the bar number in parentheses is that it considers the bar to be a pick-up bar, and the logic in the processor that determines the bar numbers will draw a bar number for a pick-up bar in brackets after the start of the flow. I think this is wrong, really, in this instance, because the supposed pick-up bar doesn’t have the same number as the preceding bar, so the bar number shouldn’t be drawn in brackets. We’ll look into changing this.
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Thank you for providing this explanation so quickly. In this case I will handle this graphically.
In fact this sort of notation is very reasonable! Or do you have any other suggestion for what is intended here?
A “dyadic rational” is a number that can be expressed as a fraction where the denominator is a power of two. All the typical time signatures look like dyadic rationals, ex. 3/4, 2/4, 7/8, 11/16. So “non-dyadic” is a logical term for time signatures such as 5/6 because 6 is not a power of two, even though 6 is even.
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The reason Dorico is considering that bar to be a pickup bar is because it is only four quarter notes long, and Dorico expects the bar to be five quarter notes long. If you rewrite the entire bar without real tuplets and use the fake tuplet lines instead, it will fix the pickup bar problem. You can then also add hidden tempo changes so it plays back correctly as well.
“Power of 2” is the key, now I understand - thank you! – I will adopt the term and strive to establish it! 
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