I’ve noticed that when I place a slur between two notes separated by a very large interval, the result often looks rather awkward or unbalanced. I’m curious to know whether there is a recommended way of handling this, or if there are engraving conventions that I might be overlooking.
For clarity, this doesn’t seem to be a Dorico‑specific issue. I remember encountering the same problems when using Finale, and I suspect it may simply be a general engraving challenge. I haven’t used Sibelius enough to know how it behaves in similar situations.
Of course, it may also be the case that the way I write certain passages contributes to the problem.
To an extent it’s a general engraving challenge, you always need to find a compromise. One thing you often see in hand-engraved scores is that slurs are allowed to (slightly) intersect accidentals. There are settings for that in Dorico too, under Engraving Options > Slurs > Avoiding Collisions, which should help significantly in those cases. Increasing the note spacing a hair, especially in bar 3 would help too.
Dorico is very insistent to attach every slur all the way to the notehead, but often that isn’t at all necessary in order for it to be clear which note(s) a slur belongs to. In mixed-stem situations, attaching it to the stem side could be more advantageous. There’s a setting for that as well:
How right you are… There have been posts about this kind of a problem before, including slurs over a system break.
The first thing that struck me about your setting was the incredibly aggressive kerning, particularly in bar 3. Have you changed note spacing or collision preferences in some way?
I adjusted the layout so these bars appear in the same system.
However, in other places Dorico does this automatically. I did it intentionally here to show this.
