Whole measure rests in divided measures

Dorico
1

I have a work in 5/4, and have come across a few instances where there is a cue from another instrument and silence from the instrument on that staff.

The measures use the | item to create a dashed barline dividing the 5/4 into 3/4|2/4 (and vice versa.)

Dorico left-aligns the rests (dotted half and half) to the left barline, and to the dashed mid-measure barline.

I feel that it would look better if those rests were instead centered within their respective half-measures.

As a matter of fact, completely empty measures, divided in this manner, would benefit from having automatic implicit rests divided and spaced accordingly.

Is this something that could be implemented at some point?

I’m including an image of real rests I had to insert to get the effect I wanted (rests in each half-measure), but that are aligned left rather than centered.

so the feature request is such:

  • An option to automatically insert dashed line separators even in empty measures
  • An option to center the resulting rests within their respective half-measures
  • Make these inserted rests implicit, so that multi-bar rests in parts will function.

(ignore the extra bass clef at the top of the image… this was a left-over artifact, I believe, from when those measures were empty and a cue was there in another clef. it has since been removed.)

Divisi_question
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2

I’d be curious if someone could find an example of what you are requesting in the published literature.

The way Dorico does it is what I am used to seeing. For example, check out pp.15-16 of the full score to Salome.

3

the Strauss example isn’t cue rests.

but regardless, I find it unattractive and can be confusing at times.

4

I think the problem is that, with aggregate time signatures and dotted barlines, Dorico does not treat the sub-division as a whole bar. Whether it should, or not, is debatable.

5

I understand.

I was just asking in the hope that this might be, at some time, possible.

6

While it may or may not be customary, I agree that this would be a nice option and improve the visual balance in partial measures in which there is nothing else going on. The case is akin to the practice of indenting or centering single notes that occupy whole measures, which one now has to accomplish on a case-by-case basis in Dorico. This latter might even be applied within subdivided measures, as in the last two measures of your example. This practice does, of course, require the contraction of the measures to look good.