Not sure what’s gone wrong here (screenshot), but in my current project, I have a page containing too many systems (five), while the others look fine.
Pages 1 and 3 have four systems each, and page 4 has two systems ending in a double bar line – but page two has five systems. As a result, page 2 is crowded, with dynamics clashing between systems. “106.2%” is displayed in red color in the bottom left-hand corner.
This should be: Three systems on p. 2, four on page 3 (as before), and three systems on the final page, leading up to the double bar line.
I’ve understood that I could force the number of systems on the page, and will resort to that unless I find help with this. But there must be something I’ve done wrong, or that’s going wrong, for this not to happen automatically.
In Engrave mode one could select a note and add a Frame Break on page 2 to force a system onto page 3. I’m not sure that one can expect Dorico to do that automatically.
But the program is deciding on the number of systems per page automatically already. I haven’t defined it as four, but that’s what it’s mostly giving me – and that works. I don’t get why there ends up being one single page that looks totally off, and others are fine, assuming that number of systems isn’t arbitrary.
Edit: And yes, I did force a frame break. Why I had to do that on page 2 specifically is a mystery to me.
I have to chuckle that a veteran from Finale is balking at work-arounds. That was one approach from Finale that I have always found useful.
Dorico does a lot of things automatically, but it cannot always predict the effect of rehearsal letters, extra ledger lines, or the like on system spacing and page layout, although usually that results in overlapping systems rather than extra white space. As I recall Daniel’s explanation from long ago, to correct for that would require recursive programming which would slow program responsiveness excessively.
I’m not “balking” at anything. This four pages I’ve written is very homogeneous, and absolutely nothing happens on p. 2 that should make the program decide to put five instead of four systems on it. I’m not asking the program to predict something, just trying to understand what could be the logic behind what it’s doing so that I can get it to work better for me.
When you encounter odd behavior by a software – or by your car, or a household appliance – it’s probably a good idea to try to understand what’s going on. I wouldn’t call it a “rabbit hole”.
I’m having a hard time understanding in what way these responses are intended to help.
Hi @Christian_R, and thanks for the offer. I’m not worried about what to do with this particular file, though, as the issue itself is easy to solve (with a frame break). I’m just trying to wrap my head around the logic by which Dorico decides how many systems it has per page. Automated, intelligent, and clean looking layout has been described as one of its main selling points.
If one page suddenly has five systems, no matter how crowded it looks or how much information each system has above and below, there must be a reason for it. As in, why not 7 systems, or 20? Or conversely, why is the layout on the other pages as you’d expect? Or why don’t they have three or two systems?
I also noticed that the last page, with (eventually) three systems, spaces them really close to each other, leaving a big blank area in the lower half of the page. Again, I fixed that manually easily, but would love to know why Dorico does that.
I’ve read the post, I cannot follow it. Tagging @dspreadbury here too.
“Dorico does not know exactly how much vertical space the music is going to occupy until it has cast it off”. From a quick Google search, “casting off” means fixing the layout – is that correct, or is there more to it? Why would Dorico not know that the music will need at minimum enough vertical space to avoid clashes?
I can’t follow what is circular about the probelm – but perhaps I don’t really get what “casting off” is. So wanted to clarify this: “…but it cannot know exactly how to cast it off until it knows the height of the music.” What is meant here by “exactly how”? Does “height of the music” mean the height of a system? If so, still don’t get what information is missing before the program can make the choice of reducing the number of systems on a page.
Dorico displays a percentage of >100% in red to show me that there are two many systems on the page. Why does that not already result in it including less music on the page, rather than confirming this way to me that I need to force a frame break? And why would that happen on a single page, not the others?
I’m just trying to understand the issue here, and whether there’s anything one can do to address it.
Then I’m really lost trying to understand the explanation in the post you linked. Dorico wouldn’t suddenly put 20 bars in a system and display a red “115%” next to it to tell me they don’t fit. Why is it doing that with systems on a page? Maybe I’m not understanding what “height of the music” means here.
It gives me no joy to say this (again) but the way to address it is manually. If the Dorico team could have made what you want automatic, they would have, and Christian has quoted Daniel’s explanation why they have not.
Only when Dorico has assigned the number of measures that would (ideally) fit in a system do the vertical consequences of rehearsal letters and ledger lines, etc. appear. Asking Dorico to go back around and revise its casting off (perhaps several times till it solved the vertical problem) would make the program too slow. The alternative, manually choosing a spot and pressing two or three keys, apparently seemed the quicker and more efficient way to handle the situation in the minds of the Development Team.
Finale expat here. As with Finale, page layout in Dorico is sometimes more of an art than a science, but in some ways simpler than Finale. Finale does have Space Systems Evenly and also ways to adjust page layout with various plugins (eg, the pricey and complicated Perfect Layout), but I still had to futz a lot in many cases, and it was often trial and error.
What I’m finding with Dorico is a bit better… I still find the Frames paradigm a bit obtuse at times, but as far as spacing systems, you can go into Engrave mode and highlight one system (click the Space Systems button on the left and then select the large handle on the left for a page that works best for you in terms of layout) and you can apply that spacing to a range of pages, and that worked fine for me for a new composition I just finished.
If you go into Layout options, there are many ways to specify number of systems/staff and also number of systems/page. I’ve heard that one should, if you want the page to be used fully to make as much use of the page, set the % under the default 60% but I’ve not found that to do anything with regard to the new work of mine. But dragging systems to be spaced 1.0" apart on my own layout and then applying that to all other pages worked well.
I’m glad, though, that I was not the only person who had no clue what “casting off” meant in the context of Dorico. That was a new term for me (like Flow, which doesn’t apply to my music).
I’m not a software developer, so if the answer is that this is an insurmountable engineering problem, I’ll accept that on faith. You can imagine, I’m sure, that this can be surprising to some users, seeing as avoiding clashes between systems is such a basic and non-negotiable aspect of layout.
If there’s also a logic (i.e. “circular problem”) to this issue, though, and one that is possible to explain – as the post linked here is trying – understanding what that logic is would be helpful to people learning the program.
For example, I’m trying to understand what this means: “when Dorico has assigned the number of measures that would (ideally) fit in a system”. When is that moment, i.e. at what point does the program do this? Is it when I’ve filled the pages with blank measures? Or when I’ve written some music in them? Does it do it at once, and then it’s set in stone (aside from manual adjustment)?
These are all questions that have totally pragmatic implications to my work. Not sure why asking about them seems to be considered a nuisance, as I’ve seen under other vaguely frustrated posts on this topic as well.
What I’ve tried to reword above is what I was trying to understand in my original post: When exactly did Dorico assign five systems (as opposed to four) to a single page in my project? What things does one do that make the software behave like that? In my case, no additional ledger lines, and no rehearsal letters, since those were mentioned.
My experience is that with spacious vertical layout settings, Dorico is more likely to manage the casting off. The tighter the spacing, the more likely to end up with situations like yours. Have you tried to solve it with the vertical spacing settings in layout options?
It is actually possible to set them up to space all systems evenly with uniform system distance per page.
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