Now trying to get the looks allright, and am wondering about the vertical justification. I have watched the Youtube DiscoverDorico video about this topic, and have adjusted Notespacing, VerticalSpacing (rastral size, and gaps), all a bit smaller than the defaults, like advised in the video.
I did NOT change Vertical Justification (advise was not to change that), and I do not understand the following two (and more) pages:
Left page is 60.9% full, right page 34.4%. Justification is default on 60%, therefore the left one is justified, if I pull the Justification up to 61% than there is no justification, just as expected.
But why is the right page not justified? Is there also a (hidden) low value for the justification to occur? The next page (not visible here) is 51.6% and also not justified!
So I do not quite understand this Justification process, and I also do no understand why the advice given in the video is NOT to change that justification value?
Anyway I do not like the layout as it looks now, very unbalanced. Offcourse one could fill the left page with the contents of the right, with the flow parameter about new pages, but that is not the point here.
So the questions remaining are: can someone explain the exact working of the justification, and how to get a more even spreading of the systems withoue manually moving them?
The left page is justified because it’s over your 60% threshold.
The right page is not justified because its 34.4% is below this threshold. And if you say that the following page is 51.6% full, this also is below the 60% threshold.
So, you configured your values for pages like this right (and probably also the following) page.
You need to set your values so that the pages that don’t get stretched because of automatic adjustment look fine.
Ok, thanks, I will dive into that.
So you have to find a balance between the not justified pages, by changing the afore mentioned values, and let the justification take care of the more filled pages, sounds logical.
I was used to do this kind of justification on a per-page base, but Dorico works in a really different way…
You could also create a custom page template, based on the Default, but which has a shorter music frame.
You can then assign this page template to pages with less music on: the shorter music frame allows music to justify within the frame, with the frame setting the boundaries for the topmost/bottom-most staves on the page.
Other things to consider are Changing the Note Spacing, so that the music is ‘wider’, and therefore uses fewer bars to each line (or narrower for more bars to a line).
You could also change the side margins, if that gives a better fit overall.
Yes you can, although this results in a page template override and needs to be done manually every time a similarly-sized page occurs. Whereas a custom page template gives you a one-stop-shop, consistent setup any time you need it in the project (or even between projects).
As I understand, Dorico is built in a way that it is best to make changes as global as possible, right?
So then it seems to me that a masterpage template with smaller music frame seems more global than dragging the bottom of the frame, or is that (again) not right thinking?
Note spacing is indeed also one of the parameters I try to toy with…
The problem, or better, the new way of thinking is mainly in the fact that one is not supposed to alter something on the spot where it goes “wrong”. The whole philosophy of D is to set the defaults as good as possible, let D do the work, and in the end one “may” alter a few things if still neccesary.
That requires another way of thinking, and together with the new way of note inputting, and new ways of everything, it costs lots of time to get used to it, or to discover the “right” way to do things.
And that is what I am trying to find: the right way to do things with Dorico, not against it!
Ah I now see that Lillie has already remarked that, so that was at least the “right” wa of thinking
True, but I’m not convinced of the distinction between manually applying the “short” page template on each page that needs it, and manually dragging the frame on each page that needs it – particularly if not every short page is identical.
I generally agree with the principle of top-down, global to local: but there comes a point when you do have to make a few tweaks.
FWIW, I usually just drag up as benwiggy does. It just seems faster. If I need a 1/2 or 3/4 page in order to facilitate a page turn though, then I’ll apply a page template as I already have those configured with the “V.S.” text in my default settings.
For one or two pages, there’s no practical difference. I had a 180-page score a couple years ago with quite a few pages (including facing pages) not full enough to stretch all the way up & down. I made a page template with a smaller frame and applied it to quite a few pages. The advantage of that is that then you can change them all at once via the template if you need to.
Orchestral scores are one thing, but when it comes to solo piano music, publishers justify the systems if there are 6 or more systems on the page. They do something more like centering by expanding the bottom and top margins when there are 5-3 systems because justifying puts too much space between the systems. The left page in the first example in this thread is an example. There is. more space between the systems than at the top and bottom, which looks unbalanced.
For this reason, I made templates for 3, 4 and 5 systems per page that expands the top and bottom margins. and thus contracts the distance between the systems.
But it’s more complex than this, because when ledger line notes, fingering, footnotes etc. are taken into account, many pages must be adjusted by eye. I was glad to hear that other users are also just pulling up the bottom of the music frame (and one also sometimes has to adjust the top of the frame) , which works very well in Dorico.
Perhaps in the future Dorico will have even more sophisticated spacing that will account for matters I just described.
Alternatively, you can disable inter-staff/system collision avoidance and simply set your gaps to be sufficiently large to cover most if not all cases in the layout.
Well it turns out to be of concern for more people than only me, and also a lot of food for thought!
I completely understand what Mark_Johnson said about his 180-page score, probably for an orchestra of some size, then you need organizaion. For me I am mainly concerned with carillon arrangements, which is like pianoscores, but more simple I think, not too low in the bass, only probably lots of ledger lines (or 8va’s) in the discant. These scores are much simpler and shorter, a collection of arrangements rarely exceeds 60 pages.
After benwiggy’s remark about dragging up the bottom line of the music frame, I tried that and it is really very easy and gives instantenous good results (all judging by the eye)! Drawback is off course the overrides, but on the other hand I found out that if you manually apply masterpages to a certain page, this is also quite dangerous, because if the pages change by whatever change in the layout, the masterpage remains on the same pagenumber which then might be completely different, and there is no warning whatsoever!
If you do this with the overrides there are at least the red warning flags which reminds you that there is something special with these pages.
This topic gave me also thought for a new topic about masterpages, but I will start a new topic for that…
