Feature request: preserve formatting adjustments when reordering flows

My use case - a project with lots of song (1 song = 1 flow) Say I want to perform 8 of them (from a phone/tablet screen). I’d put these 8 songs/flows at the beginning in the order I like one after another, then print them to pdf.

However, Frame and Staff Spacing (when you move staves up and down) adjustments made in Engrave Mode are lost when you reorder flows. (Graphic Editing and Note Spacing changes are preserved - at least this is my observation)

So feature request: for layouts with
New flows: Always start new page
I’d like the settings mentioned above to be preserved too.

(for now I’ll probably reorder pages in a pdf editor)

And then also for this kind of project (“live” song book, new songs frequently added, order of songs frequently changed, multiple layouts like: PC monitor, paper, tablet, smartphone1, smartphone2) I think these features would be great:

Copy a layout: would create the exactly same layout with “original_name- copy” name (full, custom, part)
and Re-sizable Flows window - so as to more easily reorder flows if they are many of them

Dear hpta,
As it has already been stated in this forum, starting the layout edition before everything is finished is the beginning of evil (or something like that… I cite it from memory and English is not my mother tongue). My advice would be to not perform any adjustment on staff spacing or note spacing before you know exactly how you’ll need the work to be layout. And use Save as… if you know you’ll need different versions :wink:

Just create a New Full Score Layout that only selects those 8 Flows. That leaves your original layout intact, and you can edit the new one separately. Admittedly, you can’t change the order of the Flows without affecting the other layouts.
At Worst, you could remove the page numbers from the Master pages for this new layout, and then rearrange the PDF pages afterwards.

Now that PDF Pen has exact positioning options for numbering pages in PDFs, I’ll be using it in cases like these. When publishing songs with choir, I need to bind the different parts in a certain order and number them sequentially: first the score, then a choir part, then instrumental parts, etc. I haven’t found a way to do this in a notation program without complicated workarounds.

Marc, I know it’s strongly recommended to type the whole thing, set global settings and then as the very last step (before printing) to do fine individual formatting adjustments if needed.
But I think it’s a reasonable request. (If you want songs on a mobile phone to look really nice it’s sometimes quite handy to adjust music frames a little) And you know, from my point of view the flows (songs) are finished and each song is on 1 or two pages, each song starts on a new page so I would consider them isolated. Yes, it might not be trivial to implement this request - but from the user perspective It’s basically just reordering pages which could be very useful.

I was considering this. I don’t like the idea of setting all values in Layout options again though. It’s for my smartphone - I could maybe set settings as default in the full score layout, then create a new layout … (and then reset to Factory, a bit awkward) … but I made the smartphone layout as a custom layout, and you cannot save the values as default in custom layout … my bad. And still the formatting adjustments would not be here.
I was considering also 1 song = 1 layout - it would be a messy, although still possible way. (and again possibility to copy layouts would be quite handy here - it’s one of the things I’m very much looking forward to in V3 :slight_smile:)

The original suggestion would also be useful for session and MT gigs where re-arrangement is common. Flows have already made this 100% easier.

Searched for this a little bit, sorry if there is another thread I’ve overlooked:
Will it at some point be possible to reorder flows and maintain the formatting/overrides?
(Without having to manually “move” the overrides…)

It’s a bit hard to imagine exactly how that might work, given that there is no direct connection between page overrides and the music shown on those pages. I think what is more likely is we will try to find ways to make it possible to create the kinds of layouts you need for things like musical theatre where you need to include large amounts of text between or during flows without needing page overrides.

this would be an extraordinary improvement !!

I would also ask for the possibility of saving models and being able to exchange them between the layout of the director and the layouts of the parts. including the header of the flows

I have a practical scenario where the lack of attachment between flows and engrave settings is causing problems. I’m working on a show and I currently have three flows (but there will soon be many more), one for each song. During the work process I often have to send PDFs of the current state of the score to my collaborators. Because of dialog and other elements of text that appear above or below the staves, Dorico’s default layout creates unreadable collisions. Not a big deal, I go into engrave mode and move staves about. Now if I add bars to the second flow, the layout adjustments in the third flow are screwed up and I have to redo them. It would be really helpful if engrave mode layouts could somehow stay with their associated flow.

IIRC Staff order is consistent in all flows; so if you reorder the staves in one flow it will affect all the others.

The work-around (and it is a shame it must be a work-around) is to create “duplicate” staves placed where you want them and then to hide/uncheck the misplaced staves in the flows as needed and to combine those staves into a single part layout for the player(s).

I’m not sure that staff-order as a document-wide property will change in the “imminent” future. Perhaps farther down the road. I face this same problem for a Piccolo that switches to Alto Flute between movements; so the problem exists and I expect will ultimately be dealt with.

Dear Derrek,
I’m wondering whether you could use another workaround involving a new layout. There’s an option in Layout options for changing a player’s order(Players>Uses custom order) so you could use that custom score for the flows that require that special order, without needing to duplicate any staff. My 2 c.

You may now be right. When I created the score I think I was using Dorico Pro 2.x. It’s worth looking into. Thanks, Marc.