Everything I’ve read indicates that Dorico automatically increases vertical spacing between systems as required to avoid collisions, flowing music into the next page if necessary, unless one has inserted a Frame Break with a Wait for Next Frame property. I also understand that Frame Breaks are visible in Layout mode as purple signposts.
I have attached a .dorico file which overloads page 1 of its Full Score layout to 143.8%, and its Lead layout to 134.4%. I cannot see any purple signposts. In the main menu > View > Signposts > Frame Breaks is checked ON. Why is Dorico not flowing music into the next page to prevent these overloads? Thank you.
Hi @jerrykrinock, in your project you have set an Inter-system gap value of 2, while default is 10!
Here a visual guide how to diagnose and resolve this from the Library manager, (or you can adjust the Inter-system gap back to the default 10 or a little less if wished, in Layout options → Vertical spacings):
Thank you, Christian. Let’s discuss the first issue you raised first. Indeed, I have set the Ideal Inter-system gap (in both layouts )to 2 spaces because, if left at the default value of 10, in the Full Score, I get undesired empty vertical space under the first two systems which have no lyrics. As I understand it, Dorico should use my Ideal gaps only if it does not cause collisions, and should increase the actual gaps as necessary to avoid collisions. The attached screenshot shows what happens in Full Score page 1 if in Layout Options I Reset to Factory. Notice not only the undesired empty space under the first two systems, but the lyrics at the bottom of the page not only overflow the music frame but even spill into the page margin. I can get acceptable results if I adjust the Layout Options and music frame height, by trial and error. But the adjustments required don’t make sense, and will certainly need to be re-done if the project is edited.
I am trying to practice Let Dorico do the work. It doesn’t seem to be doing it very well…
Thank you, Uwe. Indeed, it is the justification which is giving me the too much vertical space under the first two systems. I got even better results with both of those justification thresholds set to 100% and switch off the checkbox. I don’t like justification. I want any whitespace to always be at the bottom of the page.
This makes three of the four pages (both pages of Full Score and page 1 of Lead) look good. Lead layout page 2 has an issue where the repeat brackets and repeat text in the first system on page 2 (system 6 in the layout) now spill into the margin at the top of page 2. Again this is easy to fix by lowering the music frame on page 2, but it seems to me that this should not be necessary. And of course I still don’t have an explanation of why my original settings caused such awful collisions.
Here is what I think I’ve learned:
Dorico is pretty good at doing the work of laying out pages, but there seem to be edge cases, not difficult to stumble upon, typically involving elements that extend far above or below the staff such as repeat indications or multiple lyric verses, wherein Dorico allows collisions and/or overflows frames. If you stick to the Factory layout settings, you will encounter fewer of these edge cases. When you do encounter such an edge case, experiment with manually adjusting music frame heights until it’s fixed.
Also, I hope that if I email my demo file to Dorico support, Steinberg would fix some of these edge cases and improve future versions.
