Time signature mess up

After a failed experiment with polymeter, with Vln 1and Vln 2 in my string quartet in 3/4 against Vla and Vc in 4/4, I decided to abandon this, for various reasons. Now when I delete all the bars I am left with what I can only describe as a mess, and no matter what I do the cautionary end of system time signatures wont go away and I cant seem to just make everything 4/4 again…

How badly have I messed up my score. What to do?’

The weirdest part is that it was 3/4 in the top two staves, not the bottom. Perplexing.

If you turn on the signposts (from the View menu) you might get a better look at what’s going on. It’s going to be hard to give precise instructions without seeing the score, though…

Hmm. Signposts are on.

After much hacking around, it’s irredeemable. Reverted to a backup - thank goodness Dorico has a great backup system.

Never one to quickly jump to claim a bug, this smells of a complex defect to me. But so rare I would imagine not even worth fixing, if so. Somehow Dorico could not recover sensibly from undoing a polymeter section.

Were you trying to delete the bars themselves? If so, a staff selection (clicking one bar then shift-clicking another) just deletes the contents of the bars, and it won’t delete time signatures/tempo marks/chord symbols or anything else that’s system-attached (and yes, I realise that staff-specific time signatures don’t feel like they’re system-attached but generally speaking time signatures are system-attached).

To delete bars you either need to use Shift-B -8 (or however many bars) Enter, or the System Track, or a careful marquee selection.

From experience, I wouldn’t be too quick to jump to that conclusion. Depending on what you did, things can get a bit messy to clean up again. (That’s not to say that this couldn’t be improved upon.)

I have – very rarely – had cases in the past where polytempo scenarios lead to problems that got into buggy territory (at least once it lead to file corruption; although I should also say that this was in a version that is long out-of-date by now). But I don’t remember ever having irretractable edits of this sort with something so simple as a 3:4 ratio.

I’m afraid the only way to maybe have someone else discover what is going on is to provide the file.

Thanks - it’s OK. Life’s too short to diagnose this. I doubt hardly anybody will encounter this. Appreciate the offer of help though.

Time signature changes are generally not “permanent” - you can easily delete and re-input time signatures. Have you tried that, rather than deleting bars?

@Lillie_Harris Well that did not work at all - I had tried that already. I was unable to delete the time signature. i thought this odd. Hence my underlying suspicion I triggered a bug. You should be able to delete time signatures, or course. The cautionary time signatures are the end of the staff simply refused to gp away.

It’s hard to generate this at will - and I don’t really want to!

This is the second time I have had a polymeter change mess up my score. I do think it’s some sort of issue where Dorico is not quite dealing with things properly. The polymeter aspects seem to be somewhat undercooked at this point in time.

If you can share the project (or a version of it with just a selection that still demonstrates the problem) that would be helpful.

You can not hide cautionary time signatures. If you do not want them to show, you need to use a coda or a new flow.
See hide cautionary clefs, keys and time signature

Ah yes, but in this case I deleted all the following music and bars and the cautionary refused to go away. That’s cant be right. There’s nothing to caution!

It’s pretty clear from your screenshot that you deleted the contents of the staves. You didn’t delete the bars.

That was before I deleted the bars.

With the cautionary, even adding new bars still in 4/4, the cautionary stayed and cant be deleted. That’s not right.

I dont think this is worth pursuing - I cant see any benefit in this thread for readers in the future, and I would submit a bug if there were some way to duplicate this.

So you get 4/4 - cautionary 4/4 with 4/4 continuing. That’s an error, arising from the attempt to remove the 3/4 against 4/4 staves.

Just post the file (with notes removed and Silence PB Template applied) and indicate the measure where the problem is. If the problem is solvable, someone will tell you how. If the problem is not solvable, the Development Team will want to see the file.

If this back-and-forth in the abstract were going to solve anything, it would have several posts back.

I for one am at least somewhat interested in looking at the issue, and I wouldn’t be surprised if others who have tried to offer you help would be curious to see as well. It’s a learning opportunity for everyone - and it might help you understand Dorico better for the future too.

@Derrek Ha! I learned how to prepare the file as you said, deleted all notes with an edit filter, deleted all rests with an edit filter, and now I can delete the offending time signature.

I am not currently at liberty to distribute this score, so I can’t submit the whole thing with 200 pages at this time. I can ask the composer for permission for debugging and diagnosis.

Curious behaviour.

I’m sure a score without notes would not compromise the composer. I trust a series of time signatures (in a portion of the file) would not compromise his or her intellectual property. I guess if you can delete the time signature, you have solved your problem.