I prefer to number every bar in my arrangements, and of course that’s easy to do in Layout Options. In barbershop harmony we use 2 staves with up-stem and down stem voices. When there are lyrics above the tenor notes (treble clef, up-stem voice), measure numbers get moved above the tenor lyric, rather than being placed right above the staff. I can manually move them with Engraving Options (I have Pro v.5), but there isn’t always room for them. Is there some way to solve this problem that I’m not seeing? Thanks!
I would be manually moving them myself. If there doesn’t seem to be room, I’d do some nudging of the objects in that area to fit. Alternatively, you could manually adjust the note spacing for beat one of bar 39 (for example) in Engrave mode. Does any of this not make sense?
EDIT: if this is common, you might be able to try increasing the default distance between the notes and bar lines. I can’t remember which dialog this is in, sorry.
In my music (not barbershop, I admit) I generally put measure numbers below the bottom staff, which would probably have fewer conflicts that putting them above where tenor lyrics could conflict.
Yes, but it’s too bad that there aren’t settings for this. In Engraving Options there are all kinds of settings for lyric placement below the staff; there should also be settings for lyrics above the staff. All measure numbers should appear above the barline, rather than getting moved above the lyric, and the lyric should be positioned appropriately so that there’s space between the number and the lyric. In Layout Options Vertical Spacing there are settings for inter-system gap with content but no way to set the gap for content above the staff. [feature requests!].
It has been brought up before and, for what it’s worth, I completely agree.
But also, Daniel has said that vertical spacing (and I’m just assuming that this falls into this category) is the most difficult thing to code in Dorico.
In the thread on what Dorico users do to help, Daniel mentioned: tell us what you want to see. This is one thing I want to see. In the meantime, In the meantime, I guess I have to resort to manual positioning.
Well, therein lies your problem! Alter your preference and the problem goes away. IMO the whole score would becomes easier to read as bar numbers occupy valuable real estate on the page.
Turns out there is a setting that will achieve what I want. In Layout Options / Bar Numbers, uncheck the option for “Avoid Collisions”. I don’t know why this works but it does. When I uncheck it, the bars line up just above the staff, even on bars with lyrics in the tenor part. No more manually moving bar numbers. Hooray!
