I am using Dorico version 4.3.30.1132 (Mar 10 2023) and want to use custom text frames in some of the flows in my Dorico score but allow multiple flows with flow headings to appear on a single page.
Perhaps I am not correctly setting up the engraving or layout rules for my text frames but don’t know how to fix this problem. If the Layout option for New Flows to “Always start new page”, then flow headings and the custom text frame appears nicely. But when the option is set to “Allow on existing page”, then the flow headers and custom text frame gets messed up. Attached is the simple dorico file as well as the PDF outputs for the 2 layout options. If anyone can tell me what I’m doing wrong, it would be greatly appreciated.
Flow Problem.dorico (477.9 KB)
Flow Problem - OK.pdf (21.9 KB)
Flow Problem - Bad.pdf (21.4 KB)
The text frame with the “interesting text” isn’t locked to the flow or the music, it is locked to the second page itself.
You have to remove page overrides. Beware, as on the second page you have an override with no music on it, so as soon as you remove the override, it will be deleted, since it’s no longer needed.
The overrides are indicated by a red triangle in the right sidebar in Engrave mode, for each page that has one. In order to delete them (one by one or all at once) right click on the pages and select “Remove page override(s)” or “Remove All page overrides”.
Thanks for the response! That makes sense but unfortunately, I don’t quite understand how to incorporate the text frame into the flow. Can you give some details or point to Dorico documentation that clarifies how to incorporate text frames into music flows instead of the page layout? Thanks in advance.
Thanks for your response. When I remove the page overrides, it deletes the text frame which is not what I want.
You can delete just the override for the first page. The override means that you have made a change into the page, meaning that the state of the frames within the page will be “frozen”, and that includes the text within flow headers and the flow headers themselves. I guess you modified page 1, maybe by double clicking on the flow header, then applied the layout option of allowing flow headers to start, which didn’t actually create new flow headers because there was an override in place. If you do it the other way around, that is, starting with no overrides, first allow flows to start on existing page and then creating the text frames, you’ll see that text is displayed correctly.
Flow Problem.dorico (486.5 KB)
As you see in this file, there’s an override on the second page only. In the second page you have a weird text on the flow header because, as a matter of fact, there is no music (thus, no flow) in that page.
Maybe those video give you some idea, how this all works.
Dorico can automatically show flow headings at the start of flows. This works by essentially inserting text frames inside music frames, between flows, and showing the tokens set up in the Default flow heading template (Engrave mode, right panel, Flow Headings section).
However, Dorico can only insert these automatic frames if the page isn’t already overridden (Engrave mode, right panel, Pages section: red triangles on pages indicate page template overrides). If you’ve done something specific to a particular page and promtped the red triangle marking, Dorico won’t touch that page: won’t add or remove flow headings, won’t delete it even if it no longer shows music. The override says: “I want this page exactly like this”, and Dorico will follow that instruction to the letter.
If you want a different flow heading for some flows, you can create a custom flow heading template and assign it to particular pages (but be aware this will then be used for all flows on that page; you can’t automatically have two different flow heading templates used on the same page, which I understand can be a tricky limitation).
Thank you to those who replied to my initial post.
I think I understand why Dorico behaves how it does for my particular example I posted. However, I would like to confirm that Dorico cannot do what I was originally hoping it could do, so please let me ask if Dorico can do the following:
I want to create something akin to a worksheet like in the examples posted in this thread.
I was hoping I could do something like this.
<< Write music of variable length>>
<< Write some text of variable length annotating the music>>
<< Write more music of variable length>>
<< Write some text of variable length annotating the music>>
repeat …
Since the musical excerpt and text annotations are of variable length,
I was hoping to rely on Dorico to do the heavy lifting of formatting and layout.
In other words, rely on Dorico to attempt to place all of the music - text combinations onto a page until it doesn’t fit and then move to the next page. Dorico obviously does this when there is only music. But it appears to me that when text is introduced, I have to make page layouts or master pages and tell Dorico how many music/text frame combinations can be placed on a given page.
This might work for worksheets where the musical excerpts and text are of fixed sizes/lengths.
But in my case, I want to be able to write, for example, one musical excerpt of 20 measures with several paragraphs of annotations followed by a musical excerpt of 1 measure with a one sentence annotation then followed by music of 8 measures and annotations. I don’t want to have to make any layout decision whether that will all fit into a single page or not. I don’t want to have to create a master page with a music frame to accommodate a 20 measure excerpt because the layout will look bad for a 1 measure excerpt and vice-a-versa. Like I said, I was hoping that Dorico would just nicely lay out the music and text nicely from page to page without me having to make any engraving or layout decisions.
I hope what I am saying makes sense.
Is my understanding that Dorico 4 currently cannot do what I described above?
One thing that doesn’t seem to agree with your information is that the flow headings do appear in the pages even though the pages have been overridden. It is only when the setting to have multiple flows appear on a single page is set that the flow headings disappear on overridden pages. Am I missing something?
No, it’s not possible to do it this way.
The worksheet video is a few years old, but basically it still works the same way. I think you want to create something similar. You just need additional frames for your text. If you will use more than one page, maybe you also want to create a “first-worksheet” and “default-Worksheet” master page - if you need different headers. But you have to place the frames for the music and additional text by hand.
Unless my memory is particularly faulty, flow headings will happily remain on overridden pages if they were already present at the time you made the override. It’s simply that they can’t be created on or deleted from overridden pages if you later hide/show them or to change where flows appear automatically (on the same page/always on separate pages).
Text frames won’t currently expand/contract based on the text within them; their size is fixed. The ability to have text frames automatically adjust based on their content, in a similar way to how extra music frames will be created and flow headings moved based on the music’s duration, has been requested before and is on the team’s radar for potential future implementation.