More advanced staff layout problem

[bo.lundby.jaeger]

Hi,
I’m again trying to find the right approach to moving systems around in dorico.
I enclose two screenshots showing what I want and what happen when using vertical spacing -Staff visibility

• I’ve have a free timing intro where I only want the percussion to show (Picture1)

• When using vertical spacing I end up whit a lot of clutter.
  Question: If I want to be able to flow the sytems around on the page - how do I do?

  
  

[asherber]

It’s a little hard to tell exactly what you want, but I maybe Layout Options > Vertical Spacing > Staff Visibility > Hide Empty Staves > All Systems might help. Or you could use manual staff visibility changes to control which ones appear.

If you’ve been using this approach and wound up with the system collisions in your first picture (assuming you haven’t moved any systems manually), then it’s probably because of a circular logic issue that has often been discussed – sometimes, Dorico isn’t able to accurately calculate the amount of space that a staff or system will need. A frame break on the bottom system will take care of that here.

„Resolve the collision..” strange behavior

The problem here is that Dorico does not know exactly how much vertical space the music is going to occupy until it has cast it off, but it cannot know exactly how to cast it off until it knows the height of the music, so this is an inherently circular problem. When the 'Automatically resolve collisions between adjacent staves and systems’ option is on, then Dorico makes an estimate of what it thinks the height of the system(s) is likely to be prior to casting it off, so that it can decide when…

[bo.lundby.jaeger]

Thanks Asherber,
For your time and patience
As a Finale refugee I try to grasp the inner logic of layout in Dorico which I by the way find an amazing and cool score editor.
My questions often is about how to think when a problem occur - I fall into my 30 odd years of finale thinking.
As an contemporary composer I often want to make off grid layouts.
in this specifik orchestral work I’d like to control the number of systems on the page which by my idea should be 3
I’ll make a model with scissors and foto analog to try to show what I mean.

[bo.lundby.jaeger]

@asherber

manual staff visibility

manual staff visibility bringes me close to the result I try to create
Thanks again Asherber

[bo.lundby.jaeger]

is it possible to use hide empty staves only in one flow - excluded from the other?

[TonH]

AFAIK you can’t hide show staves based on the flow, it’s a per layout setting.

Hiding/Showing empty staves - Dorico Pro - 6.1

But, you could of course create a duplicate layout, use flow 1 in the first layout, use flow 2-x in layout 2, and change visibility setting for layout 2

[Toaster1974]

You can also use manual staff disability changes at system and fram breaks. If you right click on the signposts…

P

[asherber]

You could also use a combination of the automatic setting in Layout Options and manual staff visibility, all within one layout. For example, if you wanted to hide empty staves in flow 1 but not flow 2, then you could turn the layout setting on and add a manual staff visibility change at the start of flow 2 which forces all staves to show.