Feature Request: Flow Index Field

Dorico
1

Hi beautiful Dorico team,

It would be very convenient to have an automated flow Index field that can be configured and put in a text field. Or it could be a whole new “index” field type.

My current use case is a “family realbook”, a collection of leadsheets. Each leadsheet in it’s own flow. Would be cool to just add an index field on a dedicated page, showing title, composer and page number per flow, auto-adapting to the number of flows in the project.

Currently I’m creating it manually like below, with three text fields that serve as “columns”. It works, but whenever the number of flows changes, I have to change theese numbered variables to match my flow count. I could just fill up the page with a number of flows in advance but it has to match the actual existing flows, otherwise “{@flow7Title@}” is printed when flow7 does not exist. (it would work if the variable would render an empty string instead)

Also, since it is a custom page template and inserted before the first page, it counts as page override and does not get any updates on the template. So I have to remove and re-insert the page with each change of the template. For each Layout. (unless I’m overseeing an “update from template” feature for my custom page).

The manual index is constructed like so:
left Text Frame
{@flow1Title@}
{@flow2Title@}
{@flow3Title@}
..

middle Text Frame
{@flow1Composer@}
{@flow2Composer@}
{@flow3Composer@}
..

right Text Frame
{@flow1FirstPage@}
{@flow2FirstPage@}
{@flow3FirstPage@}
..

Would be awesome if the automated index feature would make it into your backlog.

Being a developer myself, I must say I’m very impressed with Dorico. This is indeed a beautiful piece of software. Very well thought throug and convenient to use. Everything reachable with shortcuts and popovers - I love it.

Bravissimo!

Thanks
Marcus

See also:

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2

p.s.
I guess a set of tokens would be the most flexible approach.
Similar to what the {@playerList@} token does.

Could be {@flowTitleList@} {@flowComposerList@} {@flowFirstPageList@} and so on.

3

The odd thing is that Dorico must already have internal tokens for this, otherwise it wouldn’t know how to place this information in each flow.

InDesign had a unique solution: being able to create a placeholder that you could point to any other object as it’s “source”. It’s used primarily in tables of contents so page numbers always update when a chapter changes length. Something like that would add a lot of text-handling power to the program.

1 Like
4

In page layout like InDesign, you can make an index out of heading types, which also include page numbers. I’ve got an orchestral project here with 39 flows, and an index with flow number, title, and page number on eveybody’s title page would save a bunch of time in rehearsal.
feature-request

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