Any way to bury the number of the bar rest count inside the staff?
EDIT: opps, sorry @jjm_335 I misunderstood your request. I leave my other explanation here below, in case someone is interested
Other case explanation (click to expand)
Hi @jjm_335, not any official way that I know. But a “global” workaround would be (consider that there may be position incompatibilities with different part sizes etc…, and be aware that this would apply also to Bar Count Region on bars with music in it, what you may not want. In this case is then better to just grab the desired Bar Counts numbers in Engrave mode to the desired position. Just try and see if this works for you):
- adjust the Bar Repeat Count - Font Style as desired:
- set the Engraving option Default distance from staff of Numbered Bar regions to a negative value (by trial and error, depending on your staff size). You may need to adjust also Minimum distance from protruding items as negative value, because of the bar rests. If you use the parenthesis in some of the numeration, the vertical alignment will not be perfect because of the baseline alignment of the parentheses: you can correct this with the Engraving option Align bar counts across width of system:
- select the whole bar rests (selecting the bars and using the filter/rests) and set their opacity to 0% from the Color property in the Properties Panel (don’t make Remove Rests, because there will be no spacing for those bars otherwise)
Result (unfortunately Font Styles doesn’t support (jet?) the Erase background function, so this may look a little suboptimal because of collisions with staff lines):
And the Dorico example file:
bar repeat count inside staff.dorico (508.0 KB)
@Christian_R thank you for this thorough walk through! But I’m afraid I may not have described what I was asking for clearly, my apologies. What I’m wanting to do is: on multi-bar rests like this:
I’d like to be able to place the “4” inside the staff. If I set the offset to a negative value in Engraving options, it seems to hit a limit when it touches the staff line and it will not move into the staff. I know this is not a typical approach.
That’s different than what you described above, yes? Though I’m happy to know how to do that, too, because I could see that being useful in some situations I’ve come across.
In Engrave mode, select the multi-bar rest and either drag the number with the mouse, use alt + down arrow, or change the Y value of Bar count offset in Properties > Multi-bar Rests.
On a case by case basis, this is great. But when I try to do this same thing using Engrave options, it bottoms out at the top staff line. Is this expected behavior? What I would REALLY like is to be able to put that number right in the middle of the staff and erase the background of the H bar. But I’m guessing no dice on that.
I’d settle for selecting a single instance and then “select more”, or “select all” and then filter for the count numbers, and then adjust them all at once. But that seems not to work either.
And I’m guessing now based on the fact that there have been no further comments that it is entirely NOT possible to do this via Engraving options, and that it is also not possible to adjust multiple count numbers at once via properties.
It is possible to select multiple count numbers and adjust them all at the same time. Use the procedure which is used to select non-contiguous items: click on the first one and then, in MacOS, command-click on each subsequent item. On Windows I think it is probably control-click, but I am not 100% certain of that. Make sure that only the multiple bar rests are selected and then adjust them all at the same time as I described in my earlier post. It appears that Engraving Options is not able to do any more than what you have already discovered.
Doesn’t “select more” usually work in these kinds of situations? It’s pretty tedious to have to select each one individually. And I cannot figure out why I cannot use Engraving options to adjust these globally.
@dspreadbury If it’s possible to set the engraving options to a negative number, but this setting does nothing, does that qualify as a bug?
One way or another, something’s not right: either we shouldn’t allow the value to be set negative, or Dorico should allow negative value to take effect. But my sense is really what’s wanted here is a way of telling Dorico to position the bar count in the middle of the staff, rather than using this kind of negative offset in the first place.
Thank you for the feedback. I would just cast my official vote for the possibility of allowing inside-staff placement—and ideally, the option to put the numbers right in the center of the H bar with the background erased. I know this might be a bit non-standard, but it would prevent so many collisions or vertical spacing issues.
In case anyone is interested, my solution for now looks like this:
40 - All Without Words - Guitar.pdf (99.1 KB)
I had to command-select each number individually to move them all with the properties. That’s a bit tedious. But I also made the H bar horizontal line very thin, then made the vertical bars on either end narrow but wide to look like horizontal lines. It’s not ideal, but it will have to do for now.
Thank you for the feedback. I would just cast my official vote for the possibility of allowing inside-staff placement
Seconded!