Why does Dorico do this with system spacing?

[jjm_335]

I have this first:

Then I insert a system break where you see the orange selected barline above, and I get this:

I have justification minimum 90%, but this should not matter, I don’t think, in this case, because both the before and after have fullness of less than 90%. I don’t see how just adding the break should make the difference in the vertical spacing.

[benwiggy]

Do you have a fixed number of Systems per frame set in Layout Options?

What are BOTH percentages for vertical justification?

[Lillie_Harris]

The vertical justification thresholds are minimums: pages whose vertical fullness is below your justification threshold will not justify vertically.

If you want more pages to justify, even when they’re not very full, set a lower threshold value, like 50%.

(Actually I suspect your threshold was 80%, and when the page became 75% full, that’s why it stopped justifying. Changing which bars fit into systems can affect the vertical spacing, because fewer or more additional items may now collide.)

[Mark_Johnson]

Also bear in mind that normally Dorico stretches more than just the last system horizontally and frame vertically for justification. It stretches out the last two to evenly fill the space before the end of the score (or a manual break). The frame break makes it treat each page separately according to the settings.

This doesn’t quite explain what it’s doing without the manual break (until we can see what you have on the next page), but I wanted to mention it.

[jjm_335]

This is what the next page looks like before I add the break:

And after:

And these are my settings:

I guess what I don’t get is that before I add the break, the staves are justified (which in itself seems odd given these settings, but OK). After the break is added, I still have the same number of staves but no justification.

I don’t want Dorico to justify unless the page is 90% full. Rather, I would expect if it’s 75% full, it would pull another system from the following page (given the amount of room that is left at the bottom of the first).

[Lillie_Harris]

That looks like a final barline, suggesting the last system on this not-justified page is the end of the flow?

Are flows allowed on the same page as a previous flow in this layout, or not? If not, Dorico won’t put any more music on that page, because there isn’t any more valid music it can put there.

Allowing/Disallowing multiple flows on the same page

[jjm_335]

Sorry not to be clear. I was responding to @Mark_Johnson 's note above about “until we can see what you have on the next page”. My first post has the first page of a single flow that spans two pages. My second post shows only the second pages, before and after the system break is added.

[Lillie_Harris]

Ah - in that case, the top system on the 2nd page is quite tall, when you factor in everything stacked in b58 and the low note in b59. It’s possible that Dorico (making a best guess) doesn’t think that will fit in the space at the bottom of p1. Sometimes, Dorico doesn’t quite get this calculation right.

You can help Dorico be more flexible by keeping your default spacing settings (in Layout Options) as small as you’d accept, and trust Dorico to add extra space for high/low notes etc. The bigger you make the Ideal Gaps (which are really minimum gaps, in a sense) then the larger you make the minimum height of each staff and system.

And if you’re not happy with how Dorico has cast off, you can set a fixed casting off, or force music into the same frame, or reduce the height of the music frame (either by changing the frame size, or increasing the music frame margins).