I’m working on an orchestral score and generally I would like to hide the staves of resting players (e.g. to reduce vertical space requirements, or to save pages during a lengthy solo), but there are a couple instances where I would prefer to show a resting player’s staff (e.g. to show the entire string section even if only the cellos and basses are playing, or to keep the layout consistent across facing pages). Is there a way to do this that will not break a multi-measure rest in the part?
I’m not in front of my computer, but I believe you can put certain hidden objects on the staff that will force the staff not to be hidden even if you otherwise have it set to hide all empty staves…( but I’ll let others chime in further)…
- D.D.
Yes, but those will break the multi-measure rest, which is what the OP wants to avoid.
Whoops - good point 
- D.D.
I was looking around the forum for an answer to this. Is it possible in Dorico, something like Sibelius does hiding and showing empty staves selectively?
Not really, lucas. There are workarounds though - perhaps explain exactly what you want and we’ll point you in the right direction.
I am resuming this discussion, beacause I think, it is a very important thingt for symphonic scores. There should be a solution soon!
What are the best workarounds?
So far the only thing I know:
Insert an empty text in the empty instruments, that should show.
Disadvantages:
- Multi bar rests are split in the part
- dorico seems to calculate spaces for the empty text so I get a bad layout that needs to be fixed afterwards: this can be a lot of work on a big score.
To fix the multibar problem, I only see one way:
Finish the project and pray that nothing needs to be chaged afterwards. When finished, then I save it under a different name to make the full score. So I use one project for the parts (without empty texts) and one for the score (with empty text).
Disadvantage: All changes have to be addressed in both.
How do you solve this?
Torsten
I have the same problem with an opera score I’m working on right now. AFAIK, the only way to do this is to separate the score into different flows with different staff hiding settings for each flow, although I haven’t been able to figure our how to apply different layout options to each flow.
You can’t apply different layout options to each flow: they’re called layout options for a reason.
I agree that greater control over hiding and showing of empty staves is required, and it’s something we will endeavour to address as soon as we can. In the meantime, I suggest you try where possible not to worry unduly about which staves will be hidden and shown until you are reasonably close to performing the final layout. At that point, set up the system formatting in the way that you want it, i.e. which bars will be on which systems, and which systems will be on which pages, even if this results in some collisions in the process. Then add an empty text item to one of the bars on each empty staff that you want to remain shown, and finally switch empty staff hiding back on.
I’m very much aware that this is a workaround, so there’s no need to express your displeasure and your hope that this situation will not remain for long. As I said at the beginning of the previous paragraph, we will endeavour to address this as soon as we can, though it does not guarantee that we will be able to do so immediately.
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