In the Edit Accidental window, the horizontal offset (X) setting has no effect whatsoever on the appearance of the accidental on the staff. Only the Y offset does. Why is this, and how can I make the space between the accidental and the note wider? (Only for this type of symbols and not for every accidental)
n
I’ve had great success editing the X offset in the Edit Accidental window, using the Helmholtz-Ellis extended just intonation accidentals. When I change the X offset of one glyph, it affects all the others to the right of it, as well.
Nylonius, if you’re trying to add multiple glyphs to make an accidental, make sure that you add them in left-to-right order, so if you’re currently trying to add a new symbol and then position it to the left of the existing one, don’t do that: delete all of the symbols and add them again strictly in left-to-right order.
Thanks, I’m aware of the correct order when making multi-glyph accidentals but I’m simply trying to make a single accidental appear further left from the note-head. The Y offset does affect the position of the accidental on the staff. Should the X offset?
Have you tried “Accidental X offset” in the properties panel, in Engrave mode?
That’s local to one accidental, rather than applying to each time a specific accidental appears, Stephen.
Sorry nylonius, I don’t have an answer for this one.
Ah, I see. No, the X offset isn’t applied at the right-hand side of the accidental symbol: the default distances between noteheads and accidentals as defined on the Accidentals page of Engraving Options are always used.
OK. So when a particular type of accidental is placed on the staff so that it’s too close to the note, I suppose I need to re-space all those accidentals individually in Engrave / Notes and Rests /Accidental X offset?
Perhaps I’m not understanding something, as I haven’t yet had the need to use the Edit Accidental window, but can’t you just move all the glyphs in the EA window to the left so they aren’t too close to the note when used in the music?
If it’s a consistent problem, you should edit the rule in Engraving Options. What problems are you experiencing, exactly?
No, that’s the point: the offsets you can set in the Edit Accidental window control the gap between symbols in the accidental, but Dorico positions the accidental a fixed distance away from the note, regardless of the X offset of the right-most component in the accidental, and that distance is determined by Engraving Options.
I haven’t tried it, but could you work round this by inserting an invisible character (e.g. one of the Unicode spacing characters) to the right of the visible accidentals?
I don’t think so, because Dorico is only looking at the bounding shape of the actual visible parts of the symbol, as far as I know.
@daniel — could you explain the importance of left-to-right order? I’ve been adding glyphs either left-to-right or right-to-left depending on what is simpler for the accidental design (i.e., whichever method takes less steps), and I haven’t noticed problems.
Thanks,
Jude
What is important, Jude, is that you do not add a component, and then drag it or set a large negative X offset such that it ends up positioned to the left of the component that was added before it. Items with large negative offsets may not scale correctly e.g. on grace notes.