overlapping staves progressively worse

Dorico
#1

In my full band score, about half way thru doing parts in score order, on the second page of the parts, there started to be a big gap between 2 staves in the middle of page. I just moved them manually. But the problem got worse, gap got bigger as I did more parts. By Timp, the staves were all on top of each other, some at the top, some at the bottom, difficult to pry apart manually, but possible. In Perc 1, same problem, but m56 disappeared in the part. After playing with system breaks and frame breaks, got that back. And, after manually moving staves to appropriate positions, as soon as I enter a system break, they all jump back into one overlapping pile. I think the vertical spacing settings in Layout are correct. Please help! Thank you!

Link to the file in Drop Box:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zpt3ou7hwzff1zz/Dorico%20J14B%202017-10-17%20perc%20part%20staff%20spacing%20problem.dorico?dl=0

#2

There looks like a nasty bug in play here – I need to show this to Andrew, our vertical spacing and page layout guru, but he won’t be back in the office until Friday. I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.

#3

Thank you! As soon as I have an answer and I can get this done, I can send to the group to play it!

#4

Thought it might be helpful for you to see copies of the score before it got really bad. I think the system spacing problem was just starting around the date of the first link. At first I just moved things into place. As it got worse, I started doing “copy system spacing” from pages that were ok, and that worked for a few more parts (as I did them in score order.) Later, that no longer worked and the gap between systems in the middle of the page started getting bigger and bigger, as you can see in the link I sent in the first entry in this string of posts. Thanks again for your help, hope this helps you. Looking forward to getting back to work and getting this done, Thanks!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/do1kjr5klp6r3wh/Dorico%20J14B%202017-10-13.dorico?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oj2juecdtz5n19i/Dorico%20J14B%202017-10-10%20parts%20done%20to%20BCl.dorico?dl=0

#5

PS: would you please let me know as soon as you have accessed the documents so I can deactivate the links, thank you!

#6

We were able to get to the bottom of this problem today: it turns out not to be a horrible bug in the casting off or vertical spacing code, but instead it is caused by a large number of empty text items you have at the start of bar 114. I suggest you make a block selection in the full score between bars 113 and bars 115, then do Edit > Filter > Text, and hit Delete. That should instantly fix things!

#7

Tried your suggested fix. All of the woodwind and brass parts that I had carefully moved staves (systems) to the perfect positions still have the huge gap and overlapping. Although now I can manually move systems, as soon as I do a new system break (Engrave Mode, shift +s) the staves all jump back to being overlapped. Also, the “copy staff spacing” function isn’t working. Could you please try a system break in the parts for the docs I sent to see how they all jump back to the overlapped positions? And, shouldn’t it work to use “copy staff spacing”? Thanks so much for your work on this!

#8

OK, found it, I applied your fix to a larger area, measures 97-128, that worked. So relieved, thank you so much for your help! I think the reason I was putting in blank text boxes for the whole score was in trying to force the multi measure rests to break at a certain place. Is there a better way to do that when you want the break and there is no rehearsal mark? For example, when it would help the player to see 8 bars rest, then 4 bars rest, instead of 12 bars rest. Again, many thanks for your help!

#9

There is at present no better way to force a multi-bar rest to split, I don’t think, but you might find that if you want to employ this approach, setting the option on the Text page of Engraving Options such that Dorico does not attempt to perform collision avoidance for text items works better, though you will then occasionally have to nudge the position of a text item that you do want to see.

#10

Is there a way for a user to look at the document and find any empty all-parts text boxes, as you did? I don’t see a signpost for them (understandably, since usually there would be something in a text box.) Thanks so much for your expertise and care!

#11

Rebecca, for me it works to split the multi rests, when I reenter e barline either with the popover (selecting the barline and than shift+b and |) oder using the panel on the right side. Hope that helps.

#12

(Re-)entering a time signature and then hiding it will break a multi-measure rest in the part.

#13

No, not really: I used some secret squirrel techniques to find them, which are not available to mere mortals. I think we should in due course make empty text items show signposts, so this is something we’ve added to our backlog.

#14

Thanks Daniel, Derrick and HeiPet!