I’ve a few oddities going on with the spacing of systems… please take a look and offer guidanceSample in a Jar.dorico (473.6 KB)
Here’s a link to a 30sec video demonstrating the issues: Issue with system spacing in dorico - YouTube
Your video shows you working on the score. If you switched to the part, does that make a difference? Don’t you want the part anyway?
hmm… yeah, the part looks better. i’m still learning, is it common to work in the part view? for most everything I do, I will just have drum parts. I’ve not worked in a part view yet… are there anythings I need to be aware of?
The only difference is that the part consolidates single bar rests into a multi rest, when there are 2 or more in succession. I’d choose whatever way works best for you and stick with it if your score consists of only one stave.
I wouldn’t quite say that’s the only difference - one key thing to be aware of is that some properties (that you can set for items using the bottom panel) are “local”, meaning they only change the item in the current layout, so if you switch to another layout, it won’t be affected. You can change the property scope to Globally to make changes affect all layouts.
Another one is that enharmonic changes to note spelling that you do in the score updates the part, but if you do it in the part that doesn’t update the score.
Full score and part layouts also use a different master page set by default, which provides some differences in appearance (primarily that part layouts show the layout name on the first page, whereas full score layouts do not).
Thanks, @Lillie_Harris - does the behavior I show in the video seem unexpected… e.g., is it potentially a bug, or am I doing something wrong?
I don’t think so - have a search of the forum for “casting off circular problem” to find various discussions about the calculations Dorico does when coming up with the initial casting off for each layout, and why there are occasions when this isn’t ideal. Here’s one -
Essentially, Dorico thought that the first page could fit all the systems it’s put on it, but with the collision avoidance added on to the text objects and rehearsal marks, that turns out to be a tight fit.
There are a couple of things you can do that can improve things - firstly, reduce the minimum gap between text objects and the staff (Engrave > Engraving Options > Text > Vertical Position) but increase the minimum gap between text and other objects a tiny bit. That will let text sit closer to the staff but still not too close to anything protruding from the staff. It will also let rehearsal marks get closer to the staff, because the text isn’t pushing it so far.
Secondly, in Setup > Layout Options > Vertical Spacing, increase the inter-system gap to 12. This adds to the “minimum” amount of space Dorico allows between each system, and a cursory test in your projects suggests this prompts a recalculation of which systems fall on each page. In part layouts, I often bump this value (inter-system) up a bit - it also helps on non-vertically-justified pages to give a bit more breathing room.
Do also familiarize yourself with the available spacing defaults. Dorico does a pretty good job in a lot of cases, but feeling confident yourself in how you like well-formatted parts to look and how best to achieve that is still a valuable and necessary skill.
Lastly, you removed the flow heading on page 1 by deleting it, causing a page override - the better way to do this is to hide it.