Request: auto-hide time sigs added only for beaming purposes

Dorico
1

I request that time signatures added only to change the subdivision for beaming purposes should automatically be hidden.

Example:

  • Meter begins in bar 1 as [3+4]/8 and bar 2 needs to subdivide as [4+3]/8

In Dorico [3+4]/8 and [4+3]/8 both correctly appear as 7/8, but it makes no sense to show the meter twice. When the [4+3]/8 time signature is added in the second bar, it should auto-hide. The user should not have to go to the properties pane, turn on and check the Hide time signature option.

This auto-hiding logic should also be applied to imported MusicXML documents, please (although I would understand if you say no to that).

My question about specifying metric subdivisions and hiding time signatures is here:

[Yes, the meters could be shown as 3+4/8 and 4+3/8 instead of 7/8, but when that’s not what you want, then the most logical thing for the software to do is hide the visually equivalent time signatures automatically.]

2

Dorico’s support for interchangeable time signatures very nearly does what you want here, because by typing e.g. “2/4 / 6/8” you will see 2/4 / 6/8 at the beginning of the flow, and then subsequent bars will automatically not show their time signature provided they are any of the ones defined in the set of interchangeable time signatures. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work for your case, because you would end up seeing n instances of the 7/8 time signature, one for each set of beaming groups defined. I’ll certainly make a note of this, though you can of course easily hide the time signatures via Properties for the time being.