Hey,
So Dorico 4 did a fantastic and extremely helpful thing by allowing us to export a PDF of a specific flow without checking the exact page numbers, and I’m using it all the time.
The thing is, every time I need to export more than one flow, I need to export separately each flow in a very robotic and technical way - choose instrument, choose flow, export, repeat.
It gets very tiring when there are a lot of flows in a project, and I’m sure writing a script that’ll allow me to choose 10 flows and export every one of them as a separate file, named Project_Instrument_Flow (or even Project_Instrument (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) ) - would be extremely helpful to everyone.
I’ve seen many other users dealing with this problem, and it’d be wonderful to find a solution.
Most of my project are flow based. I don’t know if that’s what flows are supposed to do, but I use them as many seperate songs in the same band project, so I always have the exact instruments and settings for this projects in every song.
But I sometimes get to 40 flows for a project, and it gets frustrating to export them one by one.
Thank you for listening!
Shaked
I hear you and I know the team do as well - it’s certainly been brought up before. We can now export flows separately in D4… we are on the right path!
2 Likes
If you never (or very rarely) need to create part layouts with all 40 pieces in a single continuous document, maybe keeping them all as flows in the same project isn’t the best solution? That’s really one of the primary benefits of keeping flows in the same project, especially as in addition to having one part with continuous flows and page numbers, you can show multiple short flows on the same page. There are some other workflow benefits when flows are in the same project too, like easier copying between flows.
For the workflow where you have a consistent set of players/instruments, you could set up a project file for your needs, then save that as a project template. You can then start new projects from that same starting point, and have a separate project file for each piece.
If you later need to combine several pieces together, you can import the relevant flows into a single project.
If you later decide to make adjustments to the default settings, you can use the Library Manager to transfer those updates to all the other project files.
(And as a last aside, when you talked about “choose an instrument, flow, export, repeat”: if you mean in Print mode, are you aware you can select multiple layouts in the panel on the left, then change Print Options on the right for all selected layouts simultaneously? Equally, you can set different options for each layout independently, but still select multiple layouts and print/export them in one go.)
Alternatively, you could have several different Score layouts, each comprising different flows.
Can you explain your workflow, where you have to export 40 flows as separate PDFs as part of one process? What happens with all the separate PDFs?
I agree with Lillie, that if you never intend to use them all as one big thing, then you might as well put them in separate project files.
A few years ago I had to make a 72 page worship aid booklet for Triduum. I put all of our musical snippets (hymns, responsories, psalms, ordinary, etc.) in one file, each as its own flow. That way all of my engravings would be perfectly consistent and then live in one document. The problem was I needed to export each flow as its own image file for placing within the worship aid document in another program. It would have been positively lovely if I could have exported all the flows with one click. (This was also pre-4.0 days where you didn’t even have the option of exporting by flow, so I had to do it by page ranges.)
From the very beginning, flows have been billed as a very flexible container that could have any number of uses. So it seems reasonable to use them in ways where you’d want separate exports but still need to keep data in one file.
1 Like
I think the biggest help to me at the moment would be a flow title token to add automatically in the filename. One less step for me when exporting separate flows.
I have separated flows into their own projects until this becomes a bit easier for me. I’m sure my computer thanks me for splitting them up anyway.
4 Likes
They idea is to have all of the band’s repertoire in one place. So if one day there’s a Baritone saxophone instead of a trombone, I could just change the instrument and export the whole project.
Or if I decide that I want to change the font - I wouldn’t need to worry about inconsistencies between different songs.
So even if I can “Select all instruments” → “Select flow” → “Export” and I don’t need to do this for every instrument, I’d still need to do it 40 time if I have 40 flows.
Not to mention renaming all the files later, but that’s another topic (or is it? 
)
And as you mentioned - I could just edit each song in a different project and then combine them all together when I want, but it still won’t solve the export problem, and would just be more work instead of the very elegant multiple flows solution that is so unique to Dorico.