During the Layout_Formatting Lesson of the “First Steps” tutorial, lots of changes are made to the layout. These changes are made in the “Layout Options” panel. Are these changes altering some kind of “Layout” document? In other words, if I open a brand new project, are these "Layout Options " present. The tutorial does not specify the type of “Persistence” of the changes I am making. Do I have to do them all over again for future pieces or even future flows within this project? Is this explained somewhere? In other words, am I editing a “template” here? To be clear, the tutorial (as far as I have gotten) never says to “save” these alterations in Layout Options, so I don’t know at what level I am changing something that will persist or need to be saved.
Layout Options get set on a per-layout basis within the current project only. They apply to entire layouts, meaning all flows within that layout, but excluding other layouts you didn’t select in the list on the right: meaning you can change options for the full score, without changing those options for the parts.
Changing these settings in one project won’t affect any existing project you have saved on your computer, nor will it affect the defaults a new future project starts with.
You have the option to save the current state of options in the dialog as your new defaults for all future projects at the bottom left of the dialog. However, First Steps doesn’t get into that, so you can safely ignore that for now if you like.
First Steps will, later on at the end of the guide, delve into layouts and their independent settings a bit more though.
You can also find more information about Layout Options (or indeed anything else mentioned in the guide) in the full Operation Manual: