I’m trying to set up my time signatures to look like those suggested by Clinton Roemer in “The Art of Music Copying”, or Darcy James Argue in “Music Preparation Fundamentals for Jazz Composers & Arrangers”, where both the denominator and numerator are 3 spaces tall, but instead of being centred on the staff, are offset vertically, such that the denominator sits between the 1st and 4th lines of the staff, and the numerator sits on the 4th line and extends two spaces above the staff (with or without the following “arc” described by Roemer).
Here are the relevant illustrative exerpts: Roemer, and Argue.
I can use the “Show once per bracket” Layout Option coupled with the “Scale factor for time signtatures centred on brackets and braces” Engraving Option to get the right heights, but I can’t seem to do anything to displace them vertically.
I’ve tried using the “Vertical alignment relative to bracket” Engraving option, which at present only allows for Top/Middle alignment, and it seemed to have absolutely no effect for single staff layouts. If a “Bottom alignment” option, were present and wired up properly, I’d at least be able to make my part layouts match Roemer/Argue.
I’ve also tried mucking around with time signature control characters in the “Edit Music Symbols” dialog, and either I haven’t figured out how to use them properly, they’re not meant to be used that way, or Dorico is ignoring them resulting in no visible effect.
Regarding Roemer’s “arc”:
I personally only ever use them with common and cut time signatures in handwritten fonts. This is trivial to accomplish in the “Edit Music Symbols” dialog as the time signature is formed by a single character.
However, it’s considerably harder, if not impossible, to achieve for “regular” time signatures due to them being composed of multiple characters. I reckon this would need to be handled with properties and layout/engraving options.
