My tempo markings that land in the last bar of a system keep falling off the page. Is there a way to get Dorico to automatically catch this and re-space the systems appropriately without a manual bar regrouping?
I don’t think so I’m afraid.
Jesper
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Hi @craiglang,
well, not automatically, but if you don’t want to break the system there, this is a good example where to use Note Spacing Changes 
:
It works better if you activate the property Wait for next system break, to avoid the splitting of the system, in case your Note Spacing Change needs an higher value, as in this case, as this can create an overfilled system, as you can see happen here, looking at the red percentage value on the right of the system.
The behaviour and strategies can vary, and depend on the context of your music (*):
(*) in this example you could put a value of 3 (narrower than the default 4, if you use the global Dorico default value in Layout Options/Note Spacing for that Layout) in the bars that contain only one note, so that it compensates for the large value of 12, and the overfilling of the system is not so big, and other notes on previous bars on that system will have more space to accommodate:
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I would mildly suggest it’s probably best practice to break the system before a tempo change like this anyways.
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Another workaround might be to enter the tempo text without the metronome marking, and then adding the q=140 as a separate entry on the second grid position (set the grid to e.g. 16ths).
Disclaimer: I have not used this method in practice so I don’t know if this might cause unwanted side effects, but it seems to do the trick. You’d have to set the tempo for the Manically marking at q=140 in the Properties if you want it to playback correctly.
Edit: I just found out that adding the trill line will cause both markings to not align horizontally anymore (resisting the urge to bring that subject up again) so that’s something you’d have to address manually. But that might still be easier/quicker than other methods.
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This forum is a great source of knowledge!
Today I’ve learned a new word.
MANICALLY!
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Thanks everyone for your responses. The closest solution for me in the end was mainly changing the note spacing from the default 4 space to 5 spaces with some manual adjustments depending on part (full orchestra score). Not a perfect system yet, but there are certainly pros and cons. I’m coming from Finale where I found the nature of their vertical and horizontal spacing quite good, but with many other caveats. Dorico certainly saves a lot of time in other areas, but still feels closer to the inconsistent Sibelius spacing. But it’s getting there. I hope in time it will be able to catch some of these things. Vertical spacing is a bit hit or miss as well. It’s certainly come a long way since version 1. Thanks again!