I’m getting pretty frustrated with this (apologies) I’ve watched the tutorial videos and read the online manual but I’m still stuck.
All I want to do is create a template for exercises that I can use in the future for lessons. So I have flow 1 - 8 of short example exercises and want them on one page, to continually flow if I add more flows later.
I have a template I’ve created, with the layout I want. I’m looking at frame chains MA, MK MM etc. I don’t understand what they mean. Am I able to create a page that uses chains selecting each flow in order without me having to do it manually? Also If I do this manually (ie, I change each block to flow 1, flow 2, etc) when I get to the mirror page - it has to be mirrored. So do I then need to create another layout page, and set each block up to flow 8? Then what happens if I add more flows later? Will I have to add more manually, or will it do this automatically? It all seems very complex to me.
Your post title indicates you’ve understood these initials correctly: they indicate separate frame chains.
If you want all flows to follow on from each other in a single sequence, put all your frames into the same frame chain: MA is the first frame chain, so you could just use that.
You can allow flows to appear on the same page as an earlier flow, if there’s space, too – it’s not always necessary to draw a separate music frame for each flow, they can squeeze into the same big frame if there’s space.
You select flows to display on a per-frame chain basis, so if you definitely want to show a specific flow in a specific frame, that needs to be in a different chain.
But it sounds like you don’t need to worry about that at all in your example: Draw the frames where you want them on the page, all in the same frame chain, set to show “all flows”.
Once you’ve added all your music, you can force the music into frames using frame breaks, if needed (although if the frames are already a suitable size for the length of flows, you’ll probably find they put themselves in the right places anyway). A frame break tells Dorico to put music from the break position onwards in the next frame – using the default templates, that means on the next page, but if you have multiple frames on the same page, that’s where the music will go.
You can use the frame order selector in music frames to determine the order in which music flows through frames in the same chain.
If you want to share your project, I’d be happy to take a look at your setup and offer any tips.
So these pics above is what my page looks like at the minute, the template is the 2nd pic. It only goes to 4 flows, but I want it to extend to 8 or however many I want.
I’ve created another template for flows 5 - 8 shown below:-
But I don’t have any more frame chains to use - else it changes both templates. Have I just misunderstood the whole process? I saw the tutorial on youtube again and he has L frame chains, which I don’t have.
(please read the above as one big long post, thanks)
(also thanks for helping me)
You may have watched an older tutorial, which was made before flow headings were added to Dorico.
You can see the automatic flow headings appearing in your first photograph, you can identify them because they’re added inside the blue music frames.
Here’s an example project that produces the result you want.
I’ve edited the Flow Title paragraph style, which is used in the automatic flow headings, so it’s smaller and left-aligned – based on what you seem to want on your formatted pages
You can change the gaps between flow headings and the previous/next flows in Layout Options.
You can of course draw in a separate frame for each flow manually, but hopefully you can see from this project that that’s not always necessary (which makes setting this up much quicker and easier!)
This is so much easier than what I was doing, I was pulling my hair out, thank you!!!
If I want to save this as a template once I’m finished do I just “save as project template” and will that save all the changes I’ve made in the master pages?
Thank you!
Yes that’s right, project templates include basically everything in the project: including options set for scores/parts in Layout Options, Engraving Options, and page templates.
