Staff Line Thickness

(I edited my first posting in order to be more precise)

In “Engraving Options/Staves” one can set the Staff line thickness.
It is possible to choose between some values expressed in division, for example 1/8 or 1/4.
It is also possible to write your own values like 1/10 (for 0.1) or 3/20 (for 0.15)
It is also possible to directly write 0.1 and Dorico converts it to 1/10.
At first sight it seems also that Dorico converts 0.125 correctly to 1/8.
But hovering with the mouse on the arrow Dorico shows the decimal value 0.13 for 1/8
It seems as if Dorico can only use only two decimal after the comma.

  1. Why does Dorico shows divisions if they cannot be calculted exactly?

  2. It is possible to set the value 0.
    The score changes then and the staff lines are quite thin, but what is the spaces value when 0 is choosed?
    Hovering with the mouse over the arrows shows nothing.

  3. It is possible to set negative values.
    -1/8 changes the thickness to something like + 9/50
    -1/4 seems to be similar to -1/8
    From -3/8 each new negative value shortens the bar line!
    Is it the way it is supposed to be?

All these questions are essentially out of curiosity, I can live with what Dorico offers in this field, I am just trying to understand what the program does.

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Internally Dorico uses rational numbers, i.e. fractions, for everything, so even if you enter a decimal number, Dorico converts it into a rational number; however, there is always the risk of some loss of precision when converting from rational numbers to floating point numbers, and indeed this is the reason why when you type in 0.125 you later see 0.13 in the tool tip, because the converted floating point numbers are shown to a maximum of two decimal places.

You shouldn’t be able to set either zero or negative values for this value, so we’ll try to tighten this up in the future.

Thank you.

Dorico 5:
Staff line thickness still allows negative numbers. Not sure what that actually means in reality; the staff gets thick if negative is used. Zero is still allowed too but also not sure what that really means, because 0 makes lines visually thicker than 1/32.

I wonder if I am the only user who immediately changes the Staff Line Thickness to a very small value (usually I pick 1/32) on every new score. Thick staff lines drive me nuts.

It depends on the medium of transmission. Depending on the print process and the type of paper, I’ve used anywhere from 1/10 to 1/16 thickness. Digital depends on the size of the viewing screen. The type of music can also be a factor.

Did you come from Finale, by chance? :upside_down_face:

I jest; but I’ve always thought default finale scores look “whispy”. Dorico is known for its bolder / more plate engraved look.

Back to topic though, why don’t you save the desired thickness as default? Then you wouldn’t have to change it every time.

I’d be surprised if anyone else was doing that, yes. :grin:

As said, plate engraving usually has considerably thicker lines, as the ink would spread on the paper a bit. Laser printers have no such characteristic, and early notation programs used too thin lines, possibly to show off the 300 dpi resolution.
This led to a generation of ‘weak and white’ engraving, where everything was spaced out very widely with thin lines. It’s not usually regarded as a high point of the art.

Dorico’s engraving defaults are mostly pretty good – though slurs and beams need a bit of tweaking.

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I prefer performers who use iPads for score reading. Paper’s time is over.

I haven’t had performers provide feedback on these engraving details of my scores, either pro or con. I would welcome that feedback and make careful corrective notes if they provided it. But that is for the final score. For my drafts, I definitely prefer the very thin lines for readability.

Yes, and the very first time I read a page with Dorico‘s heavier lines from an iPad, I immediately saw how much easier it is to read! (See my story posted last year if interested.)

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