Is it possible to shorten a system within a flow?
I also would like to stretch a system?
Horizontal adjustments are not possbile at the moment, but they plan it. What you can do is to use frames with different dimensions on a page. Don’t forget to set the right link (“MA”).
This moves, but doesn’t stretch (or reduce) the system length. If I shorten the frame, it cuts bars rather than squashes them. Same for extending.
Also, frame chain, order, flows and players seem randomly unelectable on frames in engrave mode.
Any idea of the reason for this?
Also, sometimes the staves squash vertically when resizing a frame, sometimes music at the end disappears, undo leaves the end stave with different spacing to the others (and that it had before).
I’m going backwards and forwards like a loon trying to work out an order of operation that doesn’t get undone.
I have rather good experiences with this. To get more or less bars in one system you can do it by “make into frame” or “insert system break”. Music disappears actually only when some of the bars jump into the next frame on the next page.
The use of frame chains is a mysterium sometimes, thats true. The meaning of “MA” “LA” and whatever there is selectable (not always) is not completely clear for me…
You should certainly find that if you use Lock System such that Dorico is told in no uncertain terms which bars should appear on a given system, even if you then make the frame in which that system is shown wider, the music should squish up rather than being cast off again. Note that Lock System is different to doing Make Into System, which doesn’t prevent the music from being cast off again in future.
As for why the filter menus in the top-left corner of frames are not enabled, not all of the options can be changed for frames that are defined on the master page in use: you have to edit the master page itself to edit those filters.
‘Lock system’ seems to work to a point, then hides bars. Is their an indicator somewhere that a system is locked?
I also have a big problem with selecting frames. If a frame’s corner box overlaps music (or a slur etc.) in another frame, it is difficult/impossible to click the frame’s corner box, rather than the note or slur.
I certainly agree that selecting frames is awkward, and we need some proper control over how you can select overlapping items, which is definitely on our list for the relatively near future.
You can see that a system is locked by the presence of a system break at the start of one system, and at the next, and if you select the first system break, you will see that the ‘Wait for next system break’ property is set.