I’m starting to use a theatre hack suggested by the brilliant @Stu_M, where system text is reserved exclusively for dialogue. And to get the systems to space automatically to avoid collisions with this text (however large), a single staff instrument is always cutaway at the top, with the dialogue set to appear below it (and system vertical spacing set to 0 to accommodate, now that the cutaway is providing that spacing.)
In the past, I did dialogue as staff text on the vocal lines or the rehearsal piano and conductor/keyboard staff if there were no vocal lines, and had to manage how those displayed with some hiding. I and others have previously suggested the automatic spacing for dialogue (eliminating the cutaway workaround), but this new system text approach has inspired the question, “What if there were multiple “voices” for System Text?
At any given time, often overlapping, we have
- Tempo
- Vamp/Safety indication (system text, appears on score/ allparts)
- Section name (system text, may appear on some or only on all, for dance break section, or “verse”/” chorus”)
- Dialogue (system text, more limited set of staves/scores/parts)
- Character cues (staff text)
Having at least 3-4 layers of system text with independent settings would help immensely. The layer could be chosen in a dropdown in the text editor, and paragraph styles could have a specific layer defined.
Additionally, being able to specify the default vertical order of all these tempo/system/staff layers (and rehearsal marks) and maybe an order of priority in which they shift from their default spacing, would be a huge additional bonus.
Thanks as always for the ever-thrilling updates!