When using large time signatures at system object positions, some issues occur:
- By default, condensing labels end up above the time signatures, which results in a big gap between the music and its corresponding label, which is hard to follow.
- Since these time signatures shove any tempo objects that are on the same rhythmic position to the right in order to avoid collision, the tempo object starts to look misplaced if the time signature is very wide (e.g. additive). Instead, in these cases it would be preferable if the time signature would be shoved upwards.
- Technically, the time signatures only seem to be able to move upwards in order to avoid collision with other objects, which occasionally results in ridiculous waste of vertical space (see attachment).
This image illustrates all these issues (no manual adjustments have been done):
I can imagine that automatic adjustments for 2 and 3 would be very non trivial to implement, but it would definitely be a time saver if the condensing labels would automatically be stacked closer to the staff and there were options (e.g. in ‘Engraving options’) whether to stack the time signatures and the tempo objects vertically or horizontally. Also, having a tickbox for the time signatures whether to avoid collision would certainly save me, and probably many more, a lot of time when the spacing and collision algorithms are insufficient.
All that being said, I have still not tried a notation software that handles these things better overall, but with these (seemingly) simple improvements, I think it would be even better!
All the best!