"Automatic" placement - how to get rid of...

• Feb 7, 2019 - 03:15

I have run into a problem with Rehearsal Marks, Tempo indications, and Staff Text (among other things) colliding with each other. In order to "solve" my problems, I use the Inspector and then turn off "Automatic Placement", followed by manual moving of text items to make things clear. I am wondering if there is a way to have a Saved Style that would have this "automatic" property default y to "off".


Comments

In order to understand and assist better, we would need you to attach your score. Normally, autoplace should be avoiding collisions automatically, doing exactly ther right thing according to standard rules of engraving. You should only need to turn it off if you want collisions, or you want the order of the elements to deviate from the standard. So it should be pretty rare.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks, Marc. My situation is that I am trying to add rehearsal marks, tempo markings, notations for fingering, custom lines for bass LH positions, ... and things like the titles of incorporated tunes in a medley (often all in the same measure). In short, using the inspector and setting "automatic positioning" to "off" is just the thing that I find most helpful. I think that it is pretty clear that my use case is not "standard rules of engraving".

But where does one get the standard rules of engraving? Perhaps if I understood "stacking order" I could get what I want.

In reply to by Schopf

All of those things are pretty standard, and again, they should usually work out well. So if you are finding otherwise, we'd love to see the sample score.

There are multiple sources for engraving rules, but the modern standard we use most often is Elaine Gould's "Behind Bars".

Here's an example showing some of the many things we do by default based on her recommendations:

Autoplace_Cheatsheet.png

Stacking order is not actually relevant here, that's more about which element is drawn on top of which when collisions do exist.

In reply to by Schopf

And that is normally correct. But you can choose to move things sideways - without disabling autoplace - and as soon as you create enough room, things fall back down as if by magic. Disabling autoplace should not be helpful very often. Normally it will be much easier to get great results with it than without. Feel free to attach a score and I can show you exactly how well this all works!

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