Orchestral score: overlapping systems in “Hide Empty Staves” mode

[Zalde]

Not (always) when the page is overfull. Sometimes a little manual adjustments are still needed as Daniel explains below.

Overlapping systems with almost default layout settings

Unfortunately Dorico can’t always correctly predict whether a frame is going to become overfull, and once it has decided on the casting-off result, it can’t change its mind once it discovers that it was wrong. Dorico doesn’t know exactly how every item on every system will be positioned until the music is fully spaced, and of course the placement of some items, like beams etc., is dependent on the spacing itself, so there is a circularity to this process: it can’t figure out whether or not the m…