When I change an existing time signature, Dorico skews all the manual note spacing in the music of the following measures. Is there a way to avoid this?
Jason, I don’t think there is a way to avoid this. If you change your time signature Dorico will recalculate and distribute the music accordingly to it. If it would have to consider changes of the note spacing at the same time, it may run into some recalculation loops (that’s my guess). That’s probably why it will have to start freshly.
The workflow when working with Dorico should always be: input all musical content first, do the Layout as very last step only.
Thank you for the response. That is unfortunate - if I were to make a small revision such as a single time signature change after engraving the piece, it would mean doing all of the manual positioning after that point again. Perhaps an update could lock positioning in order to avoid this.
Yes that’s Dorico’s way at the moment. Also things like Time Signatures have to be sorted out before starting the Engraving/Layout.
You can actually lock/freeze your existing layout. If you then change some basic input, you can at least limit the damage to one page and try to fix it by changing parameters like Note Spacing just there.
Hold on, though. This is not a rare use case. Dorico does a great job of adjusting to spacing, and as @k_b says, you can lock systems.
Can you show an example of a problem you’re having? I just don’t see this being an issue.
Thanks for the reply - my apologies I did not see it until now. I have tried to lock systems and when I change a time signature, the subsequent manual spacing is erased. In the first image, I have manually spaced the 9:8 in m. 31. In the second image, when I change the time signature to 2/4 in m. 27, the spacing in m. 31 reverts to the original configuration. If there’s something I’m missing here please let me know.