Split measure feature request

I love that Dorico has the capability to easily split measures across systems, it’s just a feature that I’m not going to use 99.99% of the time and is only going to create another proofreading step. If there was a checkbox somewhere to disallow partial measure splits across system or frame breaks (is there now and I’ve missed it?), that would be very useful to me anyway. Thanks!


(I know that not clicking notes, only barlines during layout should also prevent this from happening. I really thought I had, but perhaps I forgot to lock everything, and a couple of split measures went to the printer yesterday. Oops.)

To answer your peripheral: no, there’s no option to forbid splitting measures.

Thanks Dan. I had searched and sorta figured there wasn’t, but there’s all kinds of stuff I’ve missed so far as I’ve been learning it so just thought I’d ask.

In Layout options / Staves and Systems / Casting Off, there is tick box for “Allow open bars to be split across system breaks” (which seems to be off by default).

AFAIK bars with time signatures are never split automatically, and that option prevents unmeasured bars splitting automatically.

There is nothing to stop you inserting a manual system break anywhere you like, though.

Rob is correct-- Dorico will never split a bar on its own (to my knowledge). It should only happen if you add a manual split in the middle of a bar. I’ve used Dorico since 1.0 and I’ve never had it split a bar unless I did it explicitly.

Thanks Rob! (Usually when I use the phrase “open bar” I mean something entirely different :laughing: ) I guess I’m still looking for a way to not allow it ever. As it is allowed (and I’m still not sure how I did it as I thought I was always clicking the barline, but I must have clicked an 8th stem on the & of 4 and then propagated the part formatting) it’s one more thing I’ll need to add to my proofreading routine.

Having used Finale, where it is necessary to nail down everything to stop it moving, one of the things I find truly great about Dorico is that things tend to stay where you left them.

I would never put System Breaks on every System in Dorico, partly because changing Note Spacing is a much more elegant way of filling the space; and partly because unlike Finale, it’s not going to re-flow the whole piece on a whim.

It will definitely split unmeasured bars on its own, if you set the layout option to say it can do that!

Once I did the initial casting off and had all the bars per system correct for all parts, I split the project between 2 files, one for the score and one for the parts. This was necessary due to the different font sizes between parts and score, and the fact that I had to turn Text/Avoid Collisions off in the parts and just resolve collisions manually as Dorico doesn’t play well with lots of rehearsal letters and system text. The odd thing is that when I looked at the parts in my “score” file today, the casting off is still correct as I had done it, but was changed with several last 8ths pushed to the next system in my “parts” file. I’m sure it’s probably just user error, but it definitely wasn’t on purpose. Perhaps I accidentally hit Shift-S in Engrave when I meant to hit Ctrl-S to save or something. Anyway, it’s now something I know I have to proof for that I’ve never really had to consider before. A setting to never allow this would be one less thing to worry about.

Well, yes. Unmetered is a bit of a horse of a different color though. But fair point. Good news is whenever you’re in regularly metered music you don’t have to worry.