vertical justification 100 % doesn't fill the first page?

Hi,
I’ve set vertical justification to 100%

and my score looks like this:

I’d expect the first page to be filled completely with staves. Why is there this gap at the bottom?

(I know I can manually adjust this with “Make into frame” tool… but I see that as an unnecessary extra step)
example project:
100VJ_example.7z (392 KB)

Dear hpta,
The figures entered in the options fields are absurd. Try 60 and 90%. You should read them as : "As soon as a page is filled with music at 60% (or more), Dorico will justify distance between staves and systems so that the page will be filled. If it is filled at 90% or more, only distance between systems will be justified.
With the figures entered, Dorico will only justify the page if it is already entirely filled!
Hope it helps :wink:

Edit: Reading the whole thread some hours later, I must admit I had not really understood what the problem was about — I think the justification thing mislead me. Glad that you finally have a working answer on this one!

With the figures entered, Dorico will only justify the page if it is already entirely filled!

Well, that’s probably what I want here - no justification (spreading) at all.
My scenario is:

  • practice / casual peformance from a tablet screen
  • density of notes&lyrics as high as possible,
  • I don’t care much about beautiful output: as long as it’s readable it’s fine
  • I don’t mind the gab at the bottom of the page - I’d just like to enter frame breaks where I see fit (suitable “page turns”, i. e. places to tap on the screen) and be done with it

So far it seems to me the gap in the picture in the OP is unexpected behaviour / a bug. That’s why I’ve posted it here.

You seem to have missed the point of this functionality.
Dorico calculates how full a page is without any justification - about 75% in this case - you can see a readout at the bottom of the page if you go into Engrave > Staff Spacing.

If the vertical fullness is over the threshold, Dorico will stretch the music down to fill the page. If the vertical fullness is below the threshold, Dorico will not stretch the music down to fill the page.

You’ve set the threshold to 100%.

This isn’t a bug; this is a poor choice on your part.

Hpta, by choosing 100% you’ve basically told Dorico not to apply vertical justification under any circumstances. Sure, it may seem curious that Dorico doesn’t add more systems when there appears to be room enough to do so, but that has to do with how the layout is calculated. The best idea is to start out with good settings and let Dorico do its job. Occasionally, if you’re sure that you could fit more systems on a page, you can always force systems into a single frame.

Go to Layout Options > Minimum Gaps and untick “Automatically resolve collisions between adjacent staves and systems”. You’ll find that Dorico then fills the first page.

Won’t he then get plagued by collisions between lyrics and chord symbols?

Try it for yourself, Vaughan. The project is attached to the original post.

True, but there are still collisions until one returns the ideal inter-system gap from 8⅜ to the Dorico default of 10. The results are better when leaving the automatic resolving of vertical collision on and forcing three extra systems onto the page. There’ll be no collisions and there’s a maximum amount of music on the page. Interestingly, setting the vertical justification threshold to 70% and the inter-system gap to 5 will get the same amount of music onto the page but there will be vertical collisions.

I’ve being doing similar recently - where I don’t want vertical justification at all, so I set it to 100%. But Dorico leaves space at the bottom where I’m certain another stave or two would fit. The only way I found to work around this was to add a frame break, and set it to wait until the next frame break. Any better solutions?

Again, we’d need to see the document to see what’s going on. It could be the Ideal Gap values, or manual adjustments, or Music Frame Margin, etc, etc, etc.

But if you don’t want vertical justification, then surely some additional white space at the bottom of the page is to be expected?

Thanks. I will put together a project that reproduces the problem. You are right that I should expect white space at the bottom - but not enough white space to fit another system!

Dorico can’t reliably calculate precisely whether or not more systems will fit. I’ve written a few explanations about why this is the case, e.g. here.

You may find that specifying a fixed number of systems per frame in Layout Options gives you the best starting position.