No Staff label grouping for Section Players

Engraving Options allows Staff labels to be grouped for Solo Players,

Screenshot

but not for Section Players.

I know I can use Divisi, but that seems cumbersome for Violin I and II (which each might want separate divisi options later). And Parts wouldn’t work.

It is common for Violins to be labelled as a group. This came up in discussion with people trialling Dorico, who considered it a ‘dealbreaker’.

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At the moment there’s no option for this, but I’ll make a note of it and try to take a look when I get a chance.

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I spent some time this evening working on this, so assuming it passes muster with our testing team, this will be included in the next version of Dorico when it arrives later in the year.

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A brief update on this: there are some complexities involving the handling of divisi and in particular condensed divisi passages that mean it may not make it into the next version of Dorico after all, since I need to work on it with one of the other developers, who is currently engaged on higher priority tasks. So perhaps better to assume for the time being that this will not be included in the next version, and if it makes it, it’ll be a nice surprise. It’s definitely something we will address as soon as it’s practical for us to do so.

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Even if it doesn’t make it, I think that’s next level responsive even for the Dorico team.

To close the loop on this: it probably wasn’t the wisest use of our limited time, but we did spend a day or so working on this last week to handle some of the corner cases involving condensed divisi, condensed adjacent section players, etc., and a new engraving option to allow you to group staff labels for adjacent section players (whether condensed or not) will be included in the next version of Dorico.

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I know I’m sort of necro-ing this post, but since it’s a new feature…

It’s nice to be able to center the name of violins between the 1st and 2nd violins… there’s only one issue: it only allows you to use the default English name “violin”.

My scores are in French, so full name = “Violon” and abbreviated name is “Vons” (formatted with an underline on the “n”, and the “ons” as being superscript).

is there any way to use instrument names other than the defaults? Might I have missed an option somewhere?

If you change the Instrument name language to French in Engraving Options > Language, then for Violins, you get:
Screenshot

Alternatively, it works with whatever your instruments are named, as long as they have the same name.

Screenshot

aha!
that was what was stopping the correct display. I was inadvertently including the “1” and “2” for 1st and 2nd violins.