Just a quick question—what is the system break for? I was playing around one day and accidentally added two. Don’t know what happened but the score changed somehow. It went back to normal after I deleted the breaks.
In general you don’t need to worry about creating system breaks manually, as Dorico handles system formatting automatically, but it can be useful to create them in particular situations when you have special reasons for wanting a system to start with a particular bar.
Although this documentation is for Dorico on the desktop rather than Dorico for iPad, the general principles are the same, so take a look at this introduction to system formatting topics:
As the name suggests, it ‘breaks’ the system at that point; so that a new system starts where the break is marked. (Obviously, the width of the systems doesn’t change.)
If you created two breaks, you probably activated the “Make Into System” command, which takes the current selection and turns the whole thing into one system.
This also happens when you adjust the note spacing, even one nudge. I usually delete the breaks after, because the changes I make are small enough not to disturb the distribution of bars.
Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I couldn’t believe what I saw when I looked at my score. I noticed the system break signposts and quickly deleted them. Ahhh, back to normal.