Problem with creating elaborate Staff Labels

Hi everyone,
I’m a user who has switched to Dorico from Finale. I’m trying to create staff labels in the score as you can see in the images below—this is what the publishing house I work with has always required:
first system

from second system onwards:

The problem is achieving this significant difference in alignment between the first system (with the full instrument names) and the following systems (with the abbreviated names), and also the alignment of the numbers and choir section indication. Is something like this possible in Dorico? The options for Staff Labels in Paragraph Styles seem to change all systems equally…

Has anyone found a solution or can suggest a workaround?
Thanks!

[Edit]
Sorry I misread your question

Full name centered and abbr. name left aligned is possible:

I achieved this by creating a Paragraph Style that I applied to abbreviated staff labels:

[Edit: @pianoleo gives more details below. (And ignore my Time Signatures, I was experimenting the new TS and system-attached items features in Dorico 6!)]

2 Likes

Expanding on this:

  1. Set Paragraph Styles > Staff Labels to centre alignment
  2. Edit the instrument definition, not the individual instrument - if you do it one instrument at a time you’ll triple your workload for those three trumpets, for instance.
  3. Set the abbreviated version of the instrument name to left aligned (or create and use a separate Paragraph Style, as Charles has suggested):

The end result should be a first system that looks like this:

and subsequent systems like this:

If you’ve not yet found how to stack condensed instrument numbers vertically, it’s this option that controls it:

and if you set the Leading for the Staff Labels (Inner) Paragraph Style to something like 80% (dependent on your font) the numbers will be closer together.

edit: ignore the order of my string section!

6 Likes

Strangely, on my end, it is as if the Paragraph Style was taking precedence over the Instrument Editor. Changing the alignment in the editor had no effect, which is why I created a dedicated Paragraph Style instead. I can’t figure out why it doesn’t behave like on your side.

Thank you for your reply, pianoleo. Unfortunately, I’m not able to apply it to the file I created by importing the XML from Finale because of the way the player-instrument logic works (which, by the way, is something I actually appreciate more about Dorico), but knowing that it’s possible to achieve that result is a relief!