Midway through a 60 page score I have some very short flows and text frames on one page.
I realised that I needed to reorder them but lacked space to do so easily, so I created a blank page on which to shuffle things around (by utilising the extremely useful “copy selected frames to page” function.)
Now that I’ve fixed it, I need to delete the now entirely blank page, and I can’t work out how to do so without completely screwing up the next 30+ pages of music (some of whose pages have intentional overrides).
UMahnken, select the frames you want to copy, then in the list of pages (over to the far right of Engraving Mode) right click on the page you want to copy to and you’ll find it on the menu.
Most of the time you’ll want to build them into your Master Pages (by double clicking on whichever Master Page and editing that).
To remove an individual page, select it in the Pages panel on the right-hand side in Engrave mode, right-click and choose Remove Page Override(s) – but don’t choose Remove All Page Overrides, as that will cause all overrides on all pages in the layout to be removed.
Daniel, your “solution” achieves the first part - deleting the blank page - but screws up the next 30+ pages of music!
When I inserted the blank page all the master page changes and overrides shifted back by a page, automatically.
Deleting the overrides to delete the blank page leaves all of the master page changes and overrides in their new positions, but brings the flows forward a page. See gif below:
Should I start wading through backups at this point?
Try moving the spurious overridden page to the end of the layout before you delete it, then: right-click and choose ‘Move Pages…’ from the context menu, and move that overridden page to the end of the layout, which should shuffle up all of the other overrides.
Sorry, no, that does half the job, but only half the job.
It’s shuffling up all of the overrides, but leaving all the Master Page Changes where they are, thus causing an irritating but fixable problem. In 38 pages I have 16 Master Page Changes - mostly “firsts” to “defaults” and back again, but with the odd custom page thrown in for good measure.
I’ve dug through my backups (both in the Dorico backup folder and on iDrive - thank goodness for continuous data protection and versioning!) but also constructed a list of Master Page Changes to “put right” after deleting the blank page.
As an educational exercise I went through and recreated all of the muddled Master Page Changes and (thankfully) everything I’d hope to remain intact has remained intact (it really is just the frames that moved, NOT any of the carefully-tweaked music flowing through them).
The question still remains, though: how does one go about removing, say, 32 bars halfway through a multi-flow layout without all of the following pages messing up?
Well, if you have a lot of overrides in your layout, I don’t think you can do this in such a way that you won’t have some manual fix-up to do, precisely because the placement of the page overrides is completely independent of the music that flows through the music frames on those pages, by design.
Ok. Is there any plan for this to change? The overrides aren’t the issue - it’s the Master Page Changes that don’t move automatically.
It seems odd to me that they can be made to move backwards automatically (by adding a page) but not made to move forwards automatically (by removing a page).
No, at the moment there are no plans for this to change; the reason that the pages don’t shuffle “back” is that all of the overrides are set by index, i.e. a fixed number of pages from the start of the layout. The goal is to make the overrides in the layout stable and not dependent on the music in the frames, which by having them completely decoupled we certainly achieve.
I’m trying to “think Dorico” about this: make the rules work, rather than breaking them (with overrides and workarounds).
In 38 pages there are 16 Master Page Changes. These are only here because the Layout Options > Page Setup > New Flows choice is set to “Allow on existing page”.
When this option is set to “Always start new page” Dorico automatically invokes the “first page” Master for the first page of each flow.
This is a feature request, but I’m not entirely sure how Dorico currently handles this in normal “always start new page” layouts - maybe some sort of super-page-break that the user doesn’t see.
If we had some sort of option for “Allow on existing page but when a flow starts on a new page invoke first master page” then (in my case at least) this would no longer be a problem - the other manual overrides would shuffle along with ONE manual process (move redundant page to end, then delete page overrides for that page) and the master page changes wouldn’t exist.
In the meantime I’m looking for workarounds that don’t involve allowing new flows on the existing page.
At present it would be quite awkward, and potentially have a negative impact on the application’s performance, to implement the kind of extra flow breaks behaviour you are asking for here, which is on the face of it entirely reasonable to request, of course. It’s not something we’ll be able to do soon.
I know that musical theatre works undergo constant revision up to and even beyond the first performance and so it is unavoidable that there will be cuts and so on, but you could probably save yourself some of the headaches by leaving the option to start a new flow in a new frame set until as late in the day as possible.
I was thinking “how can Dorico currently handle this better than Sibelius?”
In Sibelius it’s basically separate files for each number with a fudge (floating title/composer, bar number reset halfway down the page) when you need a new number/movement/song on an existing page. The pain is that if material is added or removed you have to do a lot of page number changes.
Dorico DOES still require a workaround, which I think is this: keep everything in one project but split the full score into as many layouts as necessary. If there’s a need for a new flow to start halfway down page 25, for example, then as much before that (say pages 1-24) goes into one layout, all set to start flows on new pages. Then page 25 is a separate layout with flows starting on existing pages. Etc.
Guys, while reading this thread the only thoughts that come to my mind are “why is this so complicated?” and “why are we talking workarounds?”
To me, one of the great strengths of this software is that the programming team is doing things properly to begin with—no taking shortcuts in the programming or in the “how do we achieve ___?” Everything is very well-thought and makes sense from the start, and I for one greatly appreciate this!
But the problem here are the overrides and master page changes, of course. The whole implementation of Dorico’s page layout scheme à la Adobe InDesign makes sense, but perhaps we need to come up with a better way to handle master pages and how they are applied? In Adobe the master page moves with the page itself, and I would have expected that to be true of Dorico too—but apparently not? I’ll give my +1 for changing this…
Also, I never understood why flow titles, subtitles, dedication, lyricist, composer, arranger, and orchestrator text could not simply be integrated as part of a flow—not as first-measure items like Sibullyus, but simply anchored to the beginning of the flow under the hood so it prints above the first line (with proper controls for spacing, &c) on its own, without the need of text frames. This would allow the flows to, well, flow! within a single music frame on a page, making it simpler to achieve a great printable outcome without page overrides and template changes and what not.
Of course, the option would still be there to start new flows on new pages and would still work.
Dorico has got it right IMO. integrating “heading” text as part of the flow is the wrong logical place for it. If you wanted to integrate it anywhere, the layout would be a better idea (but still a bad idea).
You might need to display the text anywhere in the score in any format you want, perhaps multiple times (e.g. in a table of contents, an index of themes, etc), or maybe not display it at all.
There is a balance between ‘doing things properly’ and maintaining flexibility. When it comes to layout, Dorico’s superior flexibility makes certain things complicated, but what else would you expect from a pro application? For ‘simple’ use, I do believe a lot of the default settings gives most people an acceptable result without any tweaking. For ‘advanced’ use, the possibilities are endless as long as you learn the more complicated stuff.
In Adobe the master page moves with the page itself, and I would have expected that to be true of Dorico too—but apparently not?
As Daniel explained here, “The reason you don’t see these anomalies in Adobe InDesign is because InDesign never automatically crates pages in order to make sure that all of the content that might be lurking in any of the chains of text frames in your document actually appears, whereas Dorico has to do this automatically”
Also, I never understood why flow titles, subtitles, dedication, lyricist, composer, arranger, and orchestrator text could not simply be integrated as part of a flow—not as first-measure items like > Sibullyus> , but simply anchored to the beginning of the flow under the hood so it prints above the first line (with proper controls for spacing, &c) on its own, without the need of text frames. This would allow the flows to, well, flow! within a single music frame on a page, making it simpler to achieve a great printable outcome without page overrides and template changes and what not.
I think this simplification would diminish the flexibility of layout in Dorico. Flows ≠ movements - they can be used in many creative ways where you never would want a title. If you haven’t seen it yet, have a look at this tutorial, which demonstrates some of the layout possibilities using flows. Text frames are an important part of this flexibility. I think that having some text within the text frames, and some floating around without would give far less control over the result (I’m not talking about music text such as tempo, playing techniques and etc, which has to be linked directly to the music).
I have some ideas/questions regarding this topic:
Would it be possible to make ‘Allow on existing page’/‘Always start new page’ a per-flow specific option? I think this would enhance the ‘automatic flexibility’. I imagine it accessible through right-clicking the flow in setup mode. This would of course have to be subordinate the layout setting.
Is there a reason why ‘Swap with next page’ doesn’t apply to master page changes? I have found that selecting multiple pages and using this feature works great for tidying up page overrides when the music length changes, so I think this would be a very handy feature for master page changes as well.
I agree with what you are saying, but I am looking for possible ways to make something that is complicated today be less complicated in the future. I love Dorico’s flexibility, and being a long-time InDesign user, I felt at home right away with the Engrave tab, and the only real complaint I have about it is that it’s not enough like InDesign! (I miss the mm sizing boxes, the smart guides, ability to copy+paste frames, &c.)
As Daniel explained > here> , “The reason you don’t see these anomalies in Adobe InDesign is because InDesign never automatically crates pages in order to make sure that all of the content that might be lurking in any of the chains of text frames in your document actually appears, whereas Dorico has to do this automatically”
I get it, but there has to be some smart way to handle this…
I think this simplification would diminish the flexibility of layout in Dorico. Flows ≠ movements - they can be used in many creative ways where you never would want a title. If you haven’t seen it yet, have a look at > this > tutorial, which demonstrates some of the layout possibilities using flows. Text frames are an important part of this flexibility. I think that having some text within the text frames, and some floating around without would give far less control over the result (I’m not talking about music text such as tempo, playing techniques and etc, which has to be linked directly to the music).
Correct, and I’m not advocating the removal of text frames—I think they are absolutely needed. But you could also have flow-attached text, and when you wanted to do something like the choral preces (which I had seen when Daniel first blogged about it) you would simply leave the title, composer, and other text blank (or “unattached” to that specific flow).
These are just ideas, of course… What matters most here is the dialogue and exchange of ideas!
As for your list:
Agree with this, great idea!
Perhaps a better implementation of this could solve the issue that originated this thread?
'Fraid I’ve just spotted another downside to adding/removing pages from the middle of layouts:
Any following pages with overrides are effectively locked, so an overridden page based on a “left” master page will keep its page number in the left corner even if the page number changes from 50 to 49 (for example).
Again, I can’t off the top of my head think of any situations in which a user would want Dorico to behave like this, but it’s the way it’s designed.
(I miss the mm sizing boxes, the smart guides, ability to copy+paste frames, &c.)
