"Make into system" feature in Dorico SE/Elements

Dorico
#1

Hi,

My girlfriend and I use Dorico 3.5. We are both full time musicians, I own the Pro version and she installed the SE version a few months ago. She uses it a lot for transposing tunes that she sings, and for teaching purposes (she’s a singer).
We were very happy to discover that the “System Break” and “Frame Break” features were included in the SE version, and very sad that the “Make Into System” was not. It wouldn’t make much sense for her to switch to the full Pro version as she mainly writes lead sheets. But the “System Break” feature is pretty much useless in my opinion without its counterpart “Make Into System”. Do you plan to integrate it into the SE version anytime soon, or even the Elements version ? Right now we end up transferring her charts to my computer, changing the layout slightly and transferring back to her computer. It’s a bit cumbersome for some basic layout editing.

Congratulations for the hard word you’ve put into this great software. Greetings from Paris,

Clément

PS : forum search seems to be broken, whatever I type it says “The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words”.

#2

Salut Clément !
Make into system is simply two system breaks, with the first having the property “wait for next system break”. There is no need for make into system — I don’t use it any more for almost three years ! Click the system break signpost, check the properties panel (cmd-8) and tick “wait for next system break”, and that’s it. Note that if you’ve done that once, you can alt-click that system break, and it will retain the property. Also note that if there is no other system break after this one, your score will be super compressed ^^

P.S. : You and your girlfriend are welcome in the Groupe des utilisateurs francophones de Dorico on Facebook that I created some years ago. We share interesting stuff and answer to questions too :wink:

#3

Marc, the Wait For Next properties are only available in Engrave mode, which SE/Elements don’t have.
It may be possible to Alt-click Breaks that already have that property set from within SE/Elements - I’ve not tried.

#4

OMG, Leo, you’re right!!! Sorry Clément… I think this would be a logical feature request for SE/Elements owner : make that property available!

#5

capillotraktor, I also use Dorico Elements on one of my computers. As a workaround one can gradually reduce the system space size in the layout options until the two system breaks fall into one system. Of course if you have more instances in the lead sheet, you would have to observe all of them.

#6

That would look quite unattractive, though.

#7

actually, it looks fine, as one anyway should not squeeze a system too much. Another option in SE/Elements is changing the note spacing gradually until the desired system jumps into place.