I’m still wondering why Dorico often refuses to place one more system on a page even though there’s plenty of room and there’s no setting or formatting addition which should be preventing it. It means that I often have to resort to manual frame breaks to force another system onto a page, even though the resulting page shows only 95% full.
Just now I had an even stranger experience while entering lyrics. The layout was a vocal score with only one singer and piano and there’s plenty of room for 5 systems. A layout with only 4 systems per page often shows the page to be only 75% full. While entering the lyrics, I could see the layout jumping about wildly, sometimes allowing 5 systems on subsequent pages and after entering the next syllable, jumping back to only 4, although not on all pages. I was watching carefully and it was not as though some of these [smaller] syllables could be causing any formatting changes, either horizontally or vertically. So what in heaven’s name is Dorico doing?!
Invisible padding of boundaries, I suspect. You can set lower values for things like ideal gaps, as well as minimum distance values for items like lyrics and dynamics.
When you’re wondering why Dorico doesn’t seem to fail the frame, check the value for your inter-system gap. Sometimes you do just have to “make into frame,” but I rarely do any more.
I’ve worked out the system gaps carefully and I’ve already reduced the minimum distance values of lyrics and dynamics considerably, and these setting should really allow more systems. I’m still having to do a lot of make-into-framing…
FWIW, I’ve witnessed pages downstream change even when I’ve had frame breaks set. It will flash for a second and then often pop back. Just saw it the other day. I freaked out for a second because I thought my manual overrides had been deleted on the next page just because I adjusted a lyric the page before. I’ve also been frustrated how Dorico always shorts the first page one stave because of the title. Often I’ll have, say, 3 staves on page 1 (plenty of room for 4), 4 staves on page two, and only a single stave on page 3. Have to force that first page manually almost every time.
If one enters music (and lyrics) in Galley mode and formats later, one doesn’t have to worry about this. This is the idea the Dorico Tem had when they designed the system, although I’m sure that some users would stay in “Finale mode.”
It can be nicer to enter music for a solo instrument in page view, especially with vertical scrolling, because you can see more than just one system across the page.
But the continual hopping about as Dorico keeps trying to justify the last system can be a distraction.
Yes, I find the design rather baffling. I don’t know why we don’t insert an instrument change similar to, say, a clef change, and keep one staff per player.
That’s just the design and it’s pretty clever, as it solves a lot of problems other programs have with switching instruments.
My problem isn’t so much with Galley Mode, especially with large scores as it does become unwieldy. I just prefer not to use it much, except for instrument switching. It has nothing to do with being in Finale mode which, after all, had Scroll View since day 1 and I didn’t use it much there, either.
My problem is with Dorico’s frequent refusal to format for a correct number of systems on a page, despite settings which should allow it. Many’s the time Dorico places a single system on a page and after forcing a second system into that frame, there’s still quite a large gap between the systems. Why do I keep having to do this manually?
What’s clever about it? I’m not saying other programs handle instrument changes well, but given there is a hard constraint that any player can only be holding one instrument at a time, it GUARANTEES wasted space, and brings nothing to the table in terms of correctness or flexibility.
Vaughan, part of the problem is the checkbox to “scale systems” based on height. I unchecked that and it put an extra stave on my title page instantly.
Ah, I was looking under Vertical Spacing which is where I would expect such a setting to be. Is this really applicable to general situations, though? It requires me to fix the number of systems per page, which is impossible since I almost invariably need different numbers of systems on each page, and turning on ‘Scale number of systems by frame height’ is the only way to change this, and then only on a master page with different music frame heights, like the title page.
I dont think it can be used generally - as Romanos said, it made a difference on his title page.
How about putting the maximum number of systems per frames you’'re likely to need (5?) in the fixed number of systems per frame box and, when you want fewer frames on the page, cutting it off where you need to with a frame break?
Totally unrelated, but… great profile pic, David. I think more folks should add a photo of themselves. It makes it feel so much more like a conversation between people, rather than anonymous computers. Just my two cents.
