When I look for “Dorico stretch bars” I get results that deal with the first and last system.
But I am looking for an option that allows me to stretch bars in an unfinished score somewhere in the middle so that remaining empty bars get bigger in order to leave room for composing. The screenshot shows such a situation, where the last 3 measure are very tight, but they should be enlarged to approximately the same size of the previous measures. (I did try Engrave mode, of course, but at some point notes get “pressed” into the bar lines… so I was just wondering, if there is a better option at hand that I am not aware of).
If you ‘locked’ 6 (or so) bars into one system, then they would all have more space.
But, to be honest, I wouldn’t try to ‘make space’ for future notes. Just enter the music. Once you fill those bars with music, you don’t want any manual spacing adjustments that you made for the empty bars affecting the real music.
Thanks! The next page is fine, I know that. And, well, I am still a hand writer. So I print out the score and work on paper. Therefore I wanted to know, what I can do, when a page is only half used.
You could use a special layout with casting off set to (say) three measures/system (which I think is what Ben was suggesting) but only use that layout for your handwritten scratch versions. You could even suppress the measure rests if that would be convenient.
As long as you keep that layout separate from your working score and presentation layout(s), the extra layout should not cause any inconvenience.
But what you mean creates a new page, right? Or do I misunderstand you? – I would just like to know if on an existing, unfinished page there is an easy option (one I might have overseen) to make those measures wider (without dozens of alt-arrows in Engraving tool). Like quickly drag a measure line e.g. (like in Finale)
You can’t make some bars bigger without making other bars smaller. You could change the Note Spacing, to a much larger value. But this would likely push one or more bars onto the next page.
If your goal is to print out a half-finished work for completion by hand, I think you would be better off using fixed number of bars per system (in Layout Options), or lock a smaller number of bars into each system, as said.
It would be totally ok, if the existing bars would get smaller – they anyway will, once the rest of the bars has content.
Didn’t expect this to be so complicated to explain… sorry for any confusions! In Finale I simply dragged bar lines around, printed, did my work, entered the content and re-spaced stuff again. I just thought something like that would be available in Dorico, too.
Anyway: thanks for your feedbacks, very much appreciated!! I wish you creative holidays!
To paraphrase The Wizard of Oz, “You’re not in Kansas any more.”
(I did mean create a separate layout, but you could add a Frame Break and then a Paragraph Break every three or so measures. I just think a separate layout would be simpler; the existing music would be on the screen, unless you contemplate editing that on your printout.)
There should be a setting in somewhere like Engraving Options for the minimum width of empty bars, which you could try increasing to make sure Dorico allocates at least that much space per empty bar.
Or just use any of the other methods for determining which bars appear in each system, some of which have been mentioned above, in order to cast off your music such that it’s useable for handwritten additions once printed.
