I have what I think is a very nice note spacing and layout for a Haydn string quartet of 24 pages or so, using whatever Dorico has set as defaults, but the last few bars spill over onto a new page. This does not look professional. How can I encourage Dorico to finish at the end of a page and not overflow? The image here shows what is happening. I suppose I could squinch the notes in backwards by hand with adjusting all the breaks for many pages backwards, but that seems tedious and needlessly complex.
Edit: In this section of the First Steps guide, the sequence of tasks takes you through bringing a piano piece from 4 pages down to 2 with no manual interventions, just using various default spacing options. You may be beyond this level already, but I mention it in case it’s still informative.
As Lillie points out, instead of the approach taken by other notation apps, of forcing more bars into one or more systems, tightening the overall Note Spacing value in Layout Options can work wonders.
The default of 4 spaces is quite generous: you can go down to 3.5 for a lot of music. And then there are the local Note Spacing changes, which can also help. 3/8 often needs more space than 3/2, for example.
If the music was different, and nearly but not quite filled the third page, then you could increase the spacing to get a better overall fit.
This is one of Dorico’s great strengths in producing beautiful notation.
Andro, forgive me, but if you are wanting a ‘professional’ look, get rid of the instrument names. They are totally unnecessary for a string quartet! You may find this frees up enough space for your problem to disappear.
The spacing as is looks nice to me. As already suggested, I’d put in a manual spacing change, but perhaps 3, 4 or 5 pages before the end. The further back, the less the change will be apparent. The spacing usually needs to be reduced only a small amount over a longer span.
