Editing frame constraints doesn't update the interface as expected?

Dorico
1

When I’m editing frames and I unlock or lock a constraint (lock icon), I have found I need to click away from the frame and back again for the “Frames” properties to update properly. I thought this was everybody’s experience, but I was surprised watching how responsive frames appeared in Anthony Hughes’s (wonderfully helpful) Youtube videos on layout. When he clicks on the constraints icons, the fields in the bottom of the window instantly update (e.g., “Height” or “Width” instantly appears/disappears). I have to click on the constraint, wait a moment, click away, and click back. I’ve found if I do these things too quickly, the program will hang (with a stopwatch cursor) and never recover. This happened a bunch of times today when I started to get impatient editing my master pages and was clicking on things “too fast.”

Compare examples from his Youtube video:

On my computer: interface doesnt update - YouTube (I unlock constraints but nothing happens in the “Frames” fields at the bottom.)

My computer isn’t new, but it’s generally powerful enough for this sort of work, and other parts of the Dorico interface seem to work as expected. (Specs: Mac Pro (Mid 2010), 3.2 GHz Quad-core Xeon, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB video card.)

Thanks for reading.

2

If do this while editing the Master Page, I get your behavior. If I edit a page directly, I get Anthony’s behavior.

3

Yes, that’s quite interesting. My OCD makes me avoid any little red “override” flags in the layout. :slight_smile: Therefore, I spend a lot of time editing master pages so everything “just works.” It would be great if editing master pages worked with “Anthony’s behavior” rather than “your behavior” (if my meaning is clear).

4

The issue you’re experiencing, Jeffrey, is that each edit to the master page has to update any open layouts that are using those master pages, and this can as a result currently be very slow: it’s fast in Anthony’s project because it’s tiny and doesn’t have many pages. Improving the responsiveness of editing master pages is a high priority for us, and you can expect it to improve in future. Unfortunately there will always be a hit to be taken when the changes you make to the master pages are applied to the layouts that are open, but it should be possible for you to make a series of edits in the editor and then take the hit only once, rather than taking the hit after every single edit, as you do at present.