[SOLVED] Voices spacing with rests : weird display

When I put 2 voices in the same staff, I have a different spacing within the two voices if rests are displayed or not :

With rests, everything is fine :
Upper voice with rests.PNG
But without leading rests in upper voice, the spacing between G# (lower voice) and E (upper voice) seems really to small :
Upper voice without rests.PNG
Voices spacing problem.7z (299 KB)

I think your voice management is wrong there. If you turn on voice colors, I bet you’ll find you have three voices in that staff, not two. Is that what you intend?

Those first several notes need to be in a down stem voice.

Hi dankreider,

No, I really have 2 voices in that staff.

When you remove a rest, you’re not hiding it: you’re removing it, and there’s nothing there to cause the music to be spaced wider. If the screenshot with the removed rests is really what you are going to present to your performer, I’d suggest reconsidering and at least showing the eighth (quaver) rest that should be coincident with the half note (minim) to remove the ambiguity.

Thanks Daniel, the display is much better if the eight rest is shown :
Upper voice with rests 2.PNG
But I think I noticed a kind of bug :
If I want to revert back and select “start the voice” at the E of the upper voice (and remove the leading eight rest), I can’t do it anymore !!
I can’t select the option : start the voice !

There is probably a conflicting property set on an earlier note or rest in the voice that’s causing the property to be cleaned up as soon as it’s set because it’s incompatible with what’s already going on.

I send you just a small example with one bar.
It’s easily reproducible.
Voices spacing problem with revert bug.7z (299 KB)

vandamme, just select the rests and go Edit > Remove rests.
There’s no need for you to use the “Starts voice” property, so it really doesn’t matter if this “bug” is reproducible or not (which it is, but that’s not the point!).

It’s not a bug, vandamme. As I explained, the ‘Starts voice’ property can only be set if it is not in conflict with something happening earlier. In your example, the eighth rest at the beginning of the second beat is forced to appear (it has the ‘Force position and duration’ property set). Therefore the eighth note that follows the rest is not the first note in the voice: the rest that precedes it is. You can no more set ‘Starts voice’ on this note than you can e.g. the third note in a bar of 4/4 with four quarter notes in it. If you need to start the voice on the eighth note (which, as discussed, is a very bad idea since the player will have no idea what the rhythm should be), then select the eighth rest that has ‘Force position and duration’ set, and delete it by hitting Delete: the rest will not itself disappear, but the explicit rest will be replaced by an implicit rest. Now you can select the following eighth note and set the ‘Starts voice’ property.

Thanks a lot to both of you !
And mea culpa …
I didn’t notice that if you choose this eighth rest as the begining of the voice, it becomes explicit !
I read the documentation about implicit/explicit rests and now everything is clear for me.

This excerpt comes from a score I have just finished to transcript and write with Dorico, it’s a tribute to Michel Legrand :