Un-justify all systems: feature request?

Dorico
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I think this might be a feature request, but I’d be delighted to hear that this is something that can already be achieved, or if anybody has any suggestions for an alternative workflow.

The use-case is this: I am trying to produce settings of chanted Eucharistic Prayers, such as the attached PDF (which I’ve created in Dorico today).

Because each prayer is made up of three or four components, which can change independently, I thought that using flows inside one ‘Master Document’ would be ideal: I would put each ‘component’ of each prayer as a separate flow, then create new layouts for each prayer, simply selecting the flows that would be required into a layout that is suitably set-up with no flow headings etc etc.

Then, when we need to create new prayers with subtly different combinations of existing components, creating these layouts is a piece of cake - I can even leave that bit of the work to colleagues and they wouldn’t have to do any note/lyric input or much layout work.

That works perfectly, but for one thing! The style of the engraving that I am emulating has each system lasting only the length required, with line breaks whenever the priest is encouraged to take a breath.

Now, I know that this is easily solved by tweaking the horizontal note spacing in Engrave mode (which is how I created the attached PDF) - but the manual note spacing is saved as part of the layout, and not the flow - so, all of a sudden, creating a new layout of existing elements is no longer a quick task, as the horizontal note spacing has to be manually altered each time a new layout is created.

It strikes me that one thing that would solve this conundrum is an option to un-justify every system in the way that one can un-justify the final system of a flow. That way, the systems would all automatically lie at 100%, with the system finishing where it needs to. I haven’t found such an option, and I presume that one doesn’t exist - but I’d be delighted to be corrected!

I appreciate that this is a niche feature request, but I thought it was worth reaching out to the hive mind in case there was a better way of doing this than I have previously envisaged!

Thank you for any thoughts!

Eucharistic Prayer C Bishops and Pastors.pdf (20.5 KB)

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System justification would stretch these systems across the entire music frame – so I think you mean that you want all systems un- justified, right? That’s what your PDF seems to show.

Also, if you have each of those systems set up as its own flow, that means that each of those systems is the last system in the flow. Would it achieve what you want to change this setting in Layout Options > Note Spacing to 100%?

image

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Whoops, yes! Sorry to get this the wrong way round - I do indeed mean that I would like all systems to be unjustified. Thank you for picking up on that. (I have edited the thread title to make this correct.)

Unfortunately, each system is not its own flow, and that would not be an especially viable way of handling this project. Within the example PDF, there are four separate flows, with system breaks for most of the systems. That is the best way of handling this data, as there are obvious ‘sections’ of these prayers that we would then put together into layouts.

This cut-down Dorico file demonstrates how I did this example, with the flows showing these ‘natural break points’.

Eucharistic Prayer C example file.dorico (606.9 KB)

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Just a note to say that I have encountered the same issue for extensive liturgical sections in an Anglican hymnal, and it was a challenge. I’d love this as well.

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I can think of other use cases where would be helpful to turn off all justification, like some kinds of worksheets, or short phrases that you want to grab in a graphic slice to put in some other context

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