System spacing and text

I have text attached to the top staff of a system (dialog over a vamp). Dorico ignores this when spacing out the systems causing pretty serious collisions. Is there any way to get Dorico to take this information into consideration when spacing systems?

I assume you’ve added the text in a frame, rather than as Shift+Alt+X text? Items in music frames won’t avoid items in text frames, so try adding the text directly as a system-attached text item at the desired rhythmic position instead.

No, I used the text button from the right hand palette (not sure what the shortcut is) that attaches text to the staff. There are other items that Dorico seems to ignore as well when spacing systems, like rehearsal letters.

The gap between the top of a music frame at the first staff/system below that is determined by your per-layout music frame margin setting (which you can override for individual frames if required). That doesn’t take into account items above the staff, in order to maintain a consistent top staff line across multiple pages. If you’re finding items are eating into that, change the music frame margin (for example, in orchestral pieces where the e.g. flute is consistently very high and using ledger lines, you’ll probably want to increase the top music frame margin; ditto for the bottom if the e.g. double bass is very low)

That makes sense, though it strikes me as an odd choice to generate collisions in a scenario where consistent staff alignment is going to be impossible.