When manually adjusting page layouts, I’m struggling to find some of the controls I need.
Is there a way to move a staff along with all of the staves below it. I know option dragging up seems to bring everything closer, but how do I move a single staff and either everything above or below it?
sorry - I see it works for dragging down, but what about dragging up. i.e. if I option drag down, it does bring the staves below along, but what if I want to go the other way, but without bringing all the staves closer together.
Also: is there an equivalent to option dragging from a lower stave that works in reverse (i.e. spreads all the staves apart)?
Is there anywhere in the documentation where all of the manual page layout controls are listed in a concise way - I’ve struggled to find it.
Dear shnootre,
If I am not mistaken, you’re talking about concertina drag.
The only solution I found to meet my needs would involve justification and changing the frame’s height. Because, as you’ve discovered, concertina drag in Dorico only works in one way. This is a known limitation, I think you should find threads about that from late 2016 or 2017 !
I don’t think anything has changed for this since, but honestly, I find that I no longer need this kind of tweeking. Setting the vertical spacing as I wish usually solves the problem. Anyways, if you find yourself in a situation that seems impossible to solve, feel free to send us a picture here, and we will be glad to bring you some help.
Thanks for this - interesting, I did not know that term.
I’m dealing w/ a chamber opera where the basic instrumental group remains on each page, but the number of singers varies, so that each page basically has its own layout. I’m finding it’s an awful lot of work to get the pages looking how I want them (i.e., wherever possible I want two systems on a page, rather than one) - I don’t understand why Dorico allows system overlap - when I can manually position the systems to work on a page. I wonder if this is something I could correct in my global settings - is there a really good video that deals in depth exclusively w/ page layout? Thanks for your help!
You could try this video for starters.
My guess is that the values you have set on the Vertical Layout page of Layout Options are too large. You should really think of those values as the smallest values you would accept, rather than as the values you expect to see. If you set all of them to large values, that forces Dorico to space the staves and systems apart by at least those values, which then limits the leeway Dorico has to perform vertical justification. Try reducing the various staff-to-staff and system-to-system values – but make sure you make a copy of your project first, then reset the overrides you’ve made to staff spacing in Engrave mode, before you start making changes, or you won’t see their true effect.