Letter Spacing in Line Annotations

[Joseph_Schumann]

Hello,
I’m a long-time Finale user & new convert to Dorico. I’d like to apply some formatting (tracking/letter spacing) to the text in a line annotation. The font I like to use for my default text is a little tight on character spacing, so I typically add a little “letter spacing” as Dorico puts it. Is there a way to accomplish this?

It’s possible to add letter spacing in “paragraph styles” but not in “font styles” (ie, horizontal line font). Wish I could apply a paragraph style to horizontal line font or just simply add tracking/letter spacing to the horizontal line font directly. No such option. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[k_b]

Joseph, welcome to the Dorico forum.
If you add your annotations as System Text (via Shift-x, you will get a text editor where you can also change letter spacing.
In this link have a look at (8);

Text editor options in Engrave mode

[Joseph_Schumann]

Thanks, k_b. I was looking at System Text. I think that’s a great idea, but Lines allows me to embed the text in a line and make a decorative header for the instrument that I’m writing for. Lines also allows me to preset the height above the top system, and Line Annotations allow me to make preset titles for the instruments I commonly write for. Here “SMALLPIPES” is a line annotation, bordered and centered on the line. I just wish I could add a tiny bit of letter spacing to the words in the box.

BTW, this example shows 2 other areas of Dorico that I’d love to see new features in:

1. Allowing a line to anchor off the page margins, not just elements in the music (I manually drag/extend the line to the margins in the Engrave workflow, but it’s a little tedious and imprecise).

2. Allowing one to add space globally between the chord name and the “minor” (I know I can create individual tweaked chords in “Chord Symbols,” but that seems unnecessarily tedious). I know this has been mentioned elsewhere.

Thanks again for your idea.

[k_b]

@Joseph_Schumann

that’s a great idea, but Lines allows me to embed the text in a line

Joseph,
I need a little bit of explanation here, what is the term “Lines”? Is it used in another program for a certain function?
Thank you for a little enlighment

[Mark_Johnson]

You can safely ignore Font Styles! Just do it with a paragraph style (even though you are writing a single line).

Dorico 4 Crashing

If Dorico had been perfect in its implementation from its immaculate conception, then font styles would really only be used for things that are drawn directly in the music, or that definitely require no formatting (since font styles are simpler and cannot support “rich” text like mid-run changes in format), and paragraph styles would be used for pretty much everything that is printed using normal alphanumeric characters. But paragraph and character styles were a late addition during the pre-1.0…

[Joseph_Schumann]

Hey k_b,
Sorry, being new to Dorico I’m probably not using the correct terms. Here’s a screenshot. By “Lines” I mean the tool menu in Panels on the right. I select the whole top system and apply a straight horizontal line over it, set at a pretty high height (26pt) so it’s over the flow title. As you can see, Dorico doesn’t allow the end caps to anchor on the page margins - only on elements within the measures. So I have to drag both ends laterally to the margins in the Engrave workflow. Would love to see some sort of anchor-on-page-margins (or edges-of-systems) feature implemented there.

But my real question was getting the line annotation “SMALLPIPES” to have a little more space between letters. I just really love that font for my engraving and don’t want to give up on it. Might need to make a second version of it in FontForge with more built in character spacing. But I wish Dorico could just do that formatting for me.

BTW I’m arranging this for an iPad screen - that’s why the margins are so small. Overall, though, REALLY pleased with this software. And thanks, all, for the help.

[k_b]

Joseph, you are new to this Software and came up with a brilliant idea, to use the Line tool for a decorative element. In Dorico Lines are usually connected to musical content, with selectable anchor points. A “page” per se does not exist in Dorico, we have to think of it as a container to display musical content. The correct term would be a “Layout”. In Dorico Pro one can also add Frames with text and Frames with graphical content. Your workaround for the iPad/Elements version is astounding.

[benwiggy]

You can make lines by creating Frames with almost no height, and a border set to 1pt.

[Joseph_Schumann]

Benwiggy, that’s a cool idea. I think the advantage of the lines tool, though, is that the annotations (ie ‘’SMALLPIPES”) are automatically calibrated to the line (centered vertically and horizontally). I can make a library of instrument names as line annotations to quickly select through in the line properties. I think using the frame method I’d have to make a separate system text box and try to manually center it on the line (frame). That seems like more work for this scenario, but I’ll play around with it. I think the frames idea will be useful to me in some other ways, so thanks!