An ongoing challenge I have in Dorico is what I’m showing in this picture. The first page of this part is beautifully vertically spaced/justified. However, the second page isn’t long enough to qualify for Dorico’s vertical justification. I know I can adjust the parameters Dorico uses so this last page will be justified – however, I don’t really want a page with only a few systems to be fully justified to fit the entire vertical space of the page. I also don’t want it to look like it does by default – the systems to close together than the spacing looking inconsistent with the previous page. Each time this happens (which is basically on the final page of every movement of every piece), I have to manually adjust it. Is there something I’m missing here? Wouldn’t it be amazing for Dorico to have an option that adjusts the final page of a score/flow automatically to basically match the spacing of the previous page – thus keeping the score looking more consistent?
Adjust the gap setting between systems to be larger. The left-hand page has systems that are nearly twice as far apart, so increasing the default gap between systems is not going to change that page until the value gets much larger than it is.
Remember that Dorico uses the Gap settings in Layout Options. Then it does any collision avoidance, then it justifies the systems down the page.
The alternative “manual” method is to drag the bottom of the music frame upwards, until the music justifies a much smaller area.
Also:
I see you’ve done manual adjustment of every staff. I’d wager that you could get pretty close to that automatically, using the right gap settings.
I don’t think I actively did manual adjustments on the first page. I only inserted a frame break at the very bottom. Maybe that’s why it shows up that I did manual adjustments?
If I change the default system gaps, won’t that change them for all pages of a score/flow? What is the new setting isn’t the right solution for other pages?
@benwiggy’s descriptions of the gap settings and how to get what you want manually are spot on, but it would be very nice if Dorico could do this automatically. I would even like this option for RH pages which are not the last in the flow.
I kind of wonder though: how would I absolutely know the correct vertical spacing of a score in advance – a spacing that would be consistent throughout a flow or whole score? It would likely still involve lots of manual spacing, even with changes in overall spacing. I’m hoping Dorico may offer some solution on this in the future.
Michael, I don’t think you’ve understood Dorico’s concept. The systems are spaced out by your settings and the musical content you provide. The musical content you enter is flexible and unpredictable, which is why Dorico can’t guarantee a layout with exactly planable system spacing.
No, I think I get that. I know that every page shouldn’t and can’t reflect exactly the same spacing. But I was just wondering about more consistency, especially in the case of final pages of movements, where there are often fewer systems.
If you want shorter final pages to have the same inter-system spacing as automatically justified full pages, you need to do one of the things that Ben suggests. Either increase the inter-system gap until the spacing on the two pages looks the same, or drag the bottom of the music frame up until the spacing looks right.
I think the confusion is about the first method – adjusting the gap. Ben’s point above is that justified spacing results from two things: the inter-system gap set in Engraving Options, and the extra space added by Dorico to justify full pages. In his example, the inter-system gap is 4 spaces, and Dorico has added another 7 spaces between systems in order to justify. You can therefore increase the inter-system gap up to (about) 11 without affecting justified pages, because Dorico will just add less space to those pages, keeping the total at 11 spaces. But on your shorter last page, the change makes the (unjustified) systems space further apart.
Regarding your changed vertical spacing: I think you dropped down the first system a little to make room for the stacked up A, holding down alt/opt to make all other spaces shrink at the same amount. Dorico takes this as manually adjusting all systems.
BTW I know your problem very well and like to second the request that it would be nice to have a simple tick option making Dorico adjust unfilled last pages similar to the pages before. Yes, it’s possible to scale up the standard gap size to better match it, but this may create problems on other pages which are spaced more narrow.
You’ll have to take into account that the vertical page adjustment values may have greater priority (let’s say your last page had 5 systems: If you space them according to the left, your page is more than 60% filled, so the vertical adjustment of the whole page will come in), but this should be workable.
