Problems with automatic spacing of measures in parts

[Jack_Richman]

I am having major issues with the automatic spacing between measures in my parts layouts. Photos attached. Does anyone know what might be causing this? Thanks in advance.

[Christian_R]

Hi @Jack_Richman, it is very difficult to guess what could be going on in your layout without seeing the actual Dorico project file. Can you upload it here?

(The systems are heavily overfilled, but again, from screenshots is not possible to tell what is overfilling them)

[Jack_Richman]

Can’t upload for copyright reasons. Each of those screenshots is only four bars.

[Christian_R]

@Jack_Richman

Can’t upload for copyright reasons.

Maybe you can try with the method suggested in this post:

@dspreadbury

Post a project, not a picture
If you are having a problem with Dorico, the fastest way to get the help you need is to post the project, or a part of it, and not to post a screenshot. If you post a picture, you will almost certainly find that the first person to respond to your thread asks you to post the project. You may be concerned that the musical content of your project will be judged, or stolen. While we cannot guarantee that this will not happen, because of the supportive nature of the forum, this is vanishingly unlikely. There may be copyright or confidentiality restrictions that prevent you from posting the whole project. That’s fine! It’s always better in any case to cut the project down to a smaller size to attach it, particularly because there is a 4MB file size limit on attachments.

To cut down your project, first do File > Save As to save your project under a new name, to avoid making unwanted changes to your working project. If the project contains multiple flows, delete all flows except for the one that exhibits the problem. If the project contains multiple players, delete all players except for the one that exhibits the problem. If the problem is isolated to a particular bar or passage, then use the Shift+B popover to remove all other bars (e.g. select a note or rest in the bar after the problem passage, type Shift+B and enter a huge negative number like -9999 to delete all of the remaining bars in the flow).

Once you have cut down the project to the minimum scope that reproduces the problem, in Play mode choose Play > Playback Template and reapply the default playback template, or choose Silence. This dramatically reduces the file size of the project after you have deleted most of its musical material, because it removes the saved audio engine state.

Finally, attach the Dorico project it to your post.

If you want to add a picture as well (perhaps annotated to show where the problem exists), then by all means do so. But if your problem relates to a specific situation you’re experiencing in your project, you are guaranteed to get a more helpful answer more quickly when you include a suitable project file to reproduce the problem.

[Jack_Richman]

Jack Richman_problem with measure spacing.dorico (2.3 MB)Here is a file that I have just kept the drum part in.

[Christian_R]

Hi @Jack_Richman, and thank you for the file. The culprit are probably the Engraving Options for the Multi-bar rests, especially the Gap between end of H-bar and barline, set to 50 spaces (instead of the default 3 spaces):

Here the Library Manager view (comparison with the Factory Settings):

And here the corresponding Engraving Options where you can correct it:

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As a further explication of what happened in your file visually:
In your file, the combination of these two Engraving options,

makes the single multi-bar rests look like a normal full bar rest, but they behave like multi-bar rests and follow the mentioned Gap option.

(And in bar 82 for example the chord symbol in the middle of the bar breaks the multi-bar rest, so that the rest in bar 82 is a normal full bar rest, while the rest in bar 81 is a multi-bar rest)

[Janus]

Excellent sleuthing!

[Jack_Richman]

Thanks so much. So is there not a way I can have my H-bar look the way I want it without messing with the spacing of single bars of rest? I see what you are saying in regards to them acting as multi-bar rests.

[Christian_R]

@Jack_Richman

So is there not a way I can have my H-bar look the way I want it without messing with the spacing of single bars of rest?

There is a way (but the single multi-bar rest will also follow this, but the result is much better that your previous one*) :

you can set a fixed width for the H-bars:

and you will see the bottom value (Fixed H-bar width) becomes active. And the other value Gap between end of H-bar and barline will be greyed out:

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(*) EDIT:
you can then set many other spacing options. For example you can set the desired Width for a single bar multi-bar rest:

EDIT2:
and you can even tell Dorico to not scale the single Multi-bar rests (in the advanced options):