Is there a way to set Dorico 6 to not use the Flows? My work is often just one piece of music , where I have no need for Flows, and I would like to just work on it as such and not have to set Flow settings in every new piece
You must always have a flow in the project to contain the music, there’s no way around that. Could you be more specific about “having to set Flow settings in every new piece”? You can save things like the Show flow headings: Never setting as a default, synchronise project and flow tags in Project Info, and if you use the Create New dialog from the start screen there’s a checkbox for Project will use multiple flows—if unchecked, flow headings etc. will be disabled automatically.
thank you, the “create new” tip is is helpful. I can´t really figure out how to save Show flow headings: Never setting as a default, that is why i go to layout options for every project and turn it off. Neither do i see “synchronise project and flow tags” in project info?
There is always one default flow. Its basic to the architecture of Dorico. Just write all in your music in that and don’t think about creating other flows. To that extent, you don’t even need to know about flows.
Thank you so much. However when I try to set as default, nothing changes in the next new project. I still have to set Layout options again. I also set Finale Maestro as default font, but new projects and Xml imports all start with Bravura.
If you have a template that you use as the basis for your projects, make the changes there.
When you make the changes, click the star at the bottom left to “make default”. This will include it in future projects instead of just the local one.
When you set options as default, they will take effect in new projects started with File > New. But if you start a new project from a template, either with File > New From Project Template or from the Hub Create New page, the settings in the template will take precedence over your user defaults.
In that case, as @jaskarbong suggests, you’ll need to make the changes in the underlying template file.
Thank you so much for help. I am beginning to get an overview now. But regarding my main topic here, I would still like to have a “Flowless” modus operandi. But thats maybe just Finale nostagia:-)
Even in Finale, you had a “workflow.” If it was anything like mine, it was haphazard! 
Seriously, there were things in Finale that you had to do before other tasks or you would find yourself doing them again! Layouts could be messed up if something new was added at an earlier point, or lyrics were added or changed. We learned a “best way” of doing things (in Finale) and got used to it so that we didn’t think about it. Dorico requires a little adaptation from the old ways but, once learned, it is so much better!
— Jim
I think you’re wishing for a text without a page.
A book has a cover, one or more chapters, one or more pages, one or more paragraphs, one or more sentences, one or more words. Even if you don’t use pageheaders or pagenumbers, the page is still there. You can’t ask a wordprocessor just to create some paragraphs but skip the pages.
Likewise you can’t ask Dorico for a project without a flow.
But you can skip flowheaders, flownumbers, etc.
With flow headers set to off as default, what else would you want from a flowless mode? (Also note that the checkbox “Project will use multiple flows” should be unchecked if you start from scratch.) I can’t think of anything else I have to change when writing something in a single flow, which like you is what I do most of the time.
(I do however love that flows exist when I want them. I have made multi-movement pieces in Finale, and getting that to look the way I wanted it across all parts took time…)
Finale Maestro, I believe, is not really a SMuFL compliant font. @dspreadbury could say more but, if I remember correctly, it is missing glyphs and has misplaced others in the wrong location.
Just consider Flow 1 to be your stack of staff paper onto which you will write your masterpiece and all will be well. If you only always have a singular flow, then it should become relatively transparent to you for the most part. Our minds are uniquely capable of ignoring that for which we do not care…
Honestly, the one thing I disliked about Finale was not being able to have independent movements within a given file. Dorico lets us have all the movements to our work that we need or want.
I tend to think of flows more like CHAPTERS than pages. Chapters are essential to organize any large work, but the vast majority of writings have just one chapter, and the concept of “chapter” can simply be ignored.
It seems many new Finale converts are very agitated about this concept. There is no need to stress about it. Just ignore flows, unless you are doing something like this, in which case, you will quickly become a huge fan of flows:
- Hymnal
- Musical composition with movements
- A Medley, where each song can be a new flow
- A show book, where each song in each scene is a flow, making it easy to rearrange sequence, delete songs, add songs etc.
- A composition where you want to try several ideas – put them in different flows and you won’t lose any ideas
- Classwork, where each flow might be a different day’s lesson – then later you can make a condensed version of the class by deleting flows
- Etude book – each etude can be a flow
- Etc.
It is endless really, but if you never do anything like this, just ignore flows – until the day you have a project and think “Hey, maybe this would be a good time to try flows.”
It’s fully SMuFL-compliant, I believe MakeMusic made Maestro a SMuFL font for Finale 27, along with a number of the other Finale fonts. Engraver and Petrucci/Finale Legacy are also technically SMuFL fonts now, but they’re missing a lot of glyphs that are a part of Bravura, Maestro, Leland, and Sebastian. Thankfully Dorico does fall back on Bravura if a SMuFL font is missing glyphs, but unfortunately there’s not a way to specify a fallback font if you would prefer Maestro or Sebastian.
Maybe there is ?
Substitutes
Allows you to manage substitute font styles for music font styles. This can be useful for music font styles that do not contain all glyphs in the SMuFL range.
The action bar at the bottom of the list contains the following options:
-
Add Substitute: Adds a new substitute to the selected font style. You can change the substitute font style by double-clicking substitutes, then either entering the font style you want or clicking the arrow 
and selecting a font style from the menu. -
Move Up: Moves the selected substitute up the substitutes list, which changes its substitution order. -
Move Down: Moves the selected substitute down the substitutes list, which changes its substitution order. -
Delete Substitute: Deletes the selected substitute.
I am mistaken then! I completely missed those options since I rarely use a full font that isn’t Bravura.
Thanks for the correction! I must have misremembered something that I read recently (or misunderstood). 
My bad!
— Jim