A few thoughts and suggestions on the Create New / Project Templates addition in v 4.0
A little bit of background first. I’ve been making my own templates and modifying Dorico’s own templates. The aim is to minimise the amount of work I need to do right after a template loads. So, for example, they load with vst’s defined, Instruments loaded, Playback Templates set, Page Template Sets imported, Page Sizes and Fonts defined, and some aspects of Layout Options changed. Obviously I can go a great deal further but for the moment I’m limiting it to that.
And, for the most part, it works really well. Just I was hoping for from having User Templates included as part of Dorico.
Small issues
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The “Empty” Playback template isn’t registering in the “New From Project Template” section under the “File” menu.
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Saved Templates and new Folders are registered immediately in the “Create New” Section of the Hub, but Dorico needs to be restarted for them to appear under the “File” menu. This also works in reverse - deleted Templates and Folders still appear under the “File” menu until Dorico is restarted (clicking on a deleted file opens an empty template).
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The Dorico Templates all load with Full Score Layouts set up for a Transposing Layout. That seems to run at odds with Dorico’s own approach as outlined in the manual and I’ve found I’m changing that aspect for all of them.
It would be good if the above can be fixed but they can all currently be worked around. However, one issue can’t.
- Fonts that are set as part of a template are overriden by the settings in the right hand column of the Create New window. Any Fonts that aren’t set as Default Fonts need to be re-selected before the template loads which works, unless, of course, you’ve forgotten which Fonts you used to create the Template. Relatively easy for Music Fonts, occasionally very difficult for Text Fonts. Unlike the Time Signature and Key Signature, there is no tick box facility to turn off adjustments to fonts. It would be very useful if that was also included so that Fonts established as part of a Template are loaded as they were when the Template was saved.
Suggestions
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It would also be useful to be able to define the behaviour of the tick boxes in the right hand menu of the Hub’s “Create New” Tab by having the ability to pre-set in them in the Preferences Window. One less series of things to manage.
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It would be really good if the right hand menu reflected the contents of the Template. At the moment it’s all default settings and you just have to trust that whatever’s there in the Template (Page size / Orientation, Rastral size, Music and Text Fonts) loads.
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Dorico’s own Templates are an excellent starting point for a lot of work but inevitably they will be tweaked by users. Rather than do all those tweaks (vst’s defined etc.) after loading, I would humbly suggest that users should be able to overwrite Dorico’s Templates and that some “Reset to Factory” function is added for those Templates. This enables users to update Dorico Templates to their needs without having to save them under a different name, or in different folders (just more clutter and confusion) and it also gives users the ability to revert them if that’s needed.
I’ll end where I started - the templates are a great new addition to Dorico. Thanks.