I have a layout in which the last system is not full. I’ve unchecked the option in Note Spacing so that the system is justified. Now I’d like to make that last page look nicer, since the measures in the last system are currently wider than they should be.
In Finale, I would select the last 4 or 5 systems and use one of the available plugins to optimally reflow those systems in one pass, redistributing measures to average out the system fill and then locking the systems. Is there an automated equivalent in Dorico, or do I need to move systems around by hand?
Only when all other possibilities have been exhausted!
The best thing is to adjust the Note Spacing for the entire flow, so that all systems are balanced, and you fill a whole number of pages.
If you only have one Flow in your document, you can change the Note Spacing value in Layout Options; otherwise, add a Note Spacing Change at the start of the flow. (Select something at the beginning in Engrave Mode, and select Note Spacing Change from the Engrave menu.)
It’s possible that you may still need/want to add one or may be two System Breaks near the end; but otherwise, it’s often possible to do it without any.
There are several ways of doing this. What I generally do is to change the note spacing for either the entire document or, if the flow is particularly long, for just the last few systems. The former is done in Layout Options/Note Spacing and the latter is done in Engrave Mode by selecting an appropriate spot and inserting a Note Spacing Change. As a performing musician, I also have certain aesthetic preferences as to where I might prefer system breaks to be, and these I do by manually moving bars up or down.
Thanks for the replies. It’s unfortunate that there’s not a more direct way to do this, since in my experience this kind of thing comes up a lot. For example, I’ve got a right-hand page with a multimeasure rest in the middle of the bottom system. I select the measure next to it and add a frame break, so that the rest gives me a good page turn, and now I want to reflow the last few systems to even them out.
I get that changing note spacing will accomplish what I want, but it seems to operate at the wrong level (notes rather than measures), and it’s kind of trial and error. It would be nice to have a “Make Into Systems” command that works over multiple systems the way that “Make Into System” works on one.
In Finale, I would select the measures in those systems and use the JW Fit Music plugin to redistribute the measures in those systems to get a better fill balance than 96%/79%/66%. This is not a great example, because there aren’t that many measures to play with, but let’s assume that the plugin might move m. 55 down a system and then move m. 58 down a system as well.
I understand that in addition to changing note spacing or moving measures by hand, I could in this case also enlarge the MM rest so that it takes up more space and the two preceding measures get appropriately smaller. But I was hoping for a solution that’s closer to “Make Into System”.
In that first example, I’d still want to consider the whole page. I often find that when you set a good Spacing value, then Dorico fills the page optimally – better than I could have.
I accept that there is some utility in Finale’s “Make so many systems out of this”; and something like that may be added: but I’d try to use Note Spacing.
I appreciate the discussion. Conceptually, the other difference with the Finale approach is that it doesn’t actually change the note spacing in the selected region – given a set of measures with minimum widths determined by your preferred note spacing, it simply redistributes the measures in the region to try to optimize the system fill. And sometimes it turns out there’s nothing it can do to improve things!
(Finale also doesn’t natively have the idea of different note spacing in different regions – something I have wished for! – although there are plugins that can accomplish this.)
