Spacing within Staff Labels

Dorico
1

Hi, I wonder if someone knows whether you can adjust the spacing between the ‘B’ and the flat symbol within staff labels? I am using the Instrument Pitch feature, but as a result the transposition doesn’t appear in the Setup>Edit Names panel…

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1 Like
2

Can you add a space between them?

3

I find there are several issues with transposing staff labels:

  1. The SMuFL flat glyph Dorico is automatically using is simply the wrong one. This is used with text, not noteheads, and there is another glyph (U+ED60) that is intended for use with text. The implementation notes for this glyph state: “This range is intended for mixing music symbols with text. Its metrics and glyph registrations should follow the guidelines for fonts intended for text-based applications.” Dorico should really use this glyph instead.
  2. There really should be a kerning offset value for the accidentals here, as different fonts will probably require different ideal values before the accidental.
  3. Not Steinberg’s fault, but I have yet to find an accidental glyph that I really like with a sans. An accidental with a strong contrast between thick and thin calls for a font with a strong contrast between thick and thin IMO. This just looks odd to me. I’d love to find a set of accidentals that works better with a sans. I often use a sans for titles, headers, etc., and am not really happy with my transposition accidentals.
  4. Using that erroneous flat glyph screws up the leading, and I don’t think that is correctable. In the example below, the leading differs in the labels with a flat and the labels without. The Clarinet and Trumpet in Bb labels don’t match the other instruments.
    bravura
    bravura637×1327 49.8 KB

This actually annoyed me enough that I created my own font, which uses the correct flat glyph and the font metrics match my default font, so I now get this by default:

expoobident
expoobident661×1330 49.8 KB

6 Likes
4

Also, if we can substitute the font, I find the ♯ and ♭ in Arial Unicode to be very good.

5

Thank you FredGUunn, this is a great response and while I couldn’t get it to work for me this time, I really appreciate the time you took. I have since found an alternative which will work for me for now.

1 Like