Vertical position of text below staff

[Zalde]

Hi all, I’m having an issue with the vertical positioning of text items below the staff. I apologize beforehand for the long story but I couldn’t find any recent topics that covered these exact issues.

I’m using a custom Paragraph style for expression marks and I’ve set the vertical positions in Engraving options > Text fairly narrow: Default distance from staff set to 1 space and Minimum distance from protruding items to 1/2 space, with Avoid collisions turned on.

As long as I place a text item above the staff everything is fine but when I flip text below the staff, this happens:

The position of a text item when flipped below the staff seems to be measured from the text item’s baseline without accounting for the height of the text itself. This issue has already been pointed out in 2020 but I wasn’t able to find more recent topics about this. With the Default distance from staff set to 1 space this leads to the text snapping to the staff line, even though Avoid collisions is turned on. This is what my main question is about: is any change to be expected in the way the vertical position of text items is determined (i.e. will the Default distance to staff apply to text items above and below the staff in the same way?).

Secondly, in the second bar the collision avoidance does seem to take effect, even though the only possible collision is to the staff itself and not to any notes or other items (note that I set the Minimum distance from protruding items even tighter than the distance to the staff). Still, moving the notes from bar 1 down by a space seems to make Dorico aware of a collision. However, increasing the Minimum distance from protruding items only has an effect on bar 2, but not on bar 1, even when setting that minimum distance way higher than the distance between the stems and text in the first bar:

I’m trying to wrap my head around this because I want to avoid making manual changes to these text items as much as possible, but I can’t really seem to figure out how this distance is determined. Any thoughts?

[MicheleGalvagno]

It may be (but this is just speculation) that the text object is anchored tone of the staff lines and that flipping such a distance will bring it closer to the staff than desired.
Perhaps there is a value that works both ways.

[Zalde]

@Zalde

Is any change to be expected in the way the vertical position of text items is determined (i.e. will the Default distance to staff apply to text items above and below the staff in the same way?).

@Zalde

However, increasing the Minimum distance from protruding items only has an effect on bar 2, but not on bar 1, even when setting that minimum distance way higher than the distance between the stems and text in the first bar. […] but I can’t really seem to figure out how this distance is determined. Any thoughts?

I’m guessing my actual questions were a bit obscured by the TLDR post I hid them in, but is there really no one who can provide any insight on this? Much obliged!

[Christian_R]

Hi, interesting subject.

In my experiments, I have this results with this Engraving Options (one has to choose settings that compensate for the hight of the (biggest) text that is not take jet into consideration yet by Dorico):

Dorico file (for experimentation).
flipped text vertical position.dorico (429.8 KB)

There is also the possibility to reduce the Baseline Shift for the items positioned below: copying a text item elsewhere maintains this property.
It would be nice to be able to create a new Paragraph Style with a custom Baseline Shift, or that the BS would apply automatically when flipping, and the distance from staff (threshold ) is below a certain value… (but I am sure this was already been discussed):

[Zalde]

Yeah I’ve been messing around with those settings as well, but it’s not ideal. For now I’ve resorted to adding the marc. as a playing technique but I’d very much welcome more control over the position of text items (which as you mention has come up before, so I’ll be patient ).