How to delete blank Text pages at beginning of score?

Dorico
1

So here’s the next step in my brave journey of trying to write my score Front Matter in Dorico…
I set up nine blank pages each for the orch score and vocal score and inserted Text Frames.
Then I decided I don’t need the (so-called) bastard title in the vocal score.
So now I want to remove the first two Text Frame pages.
I remove the purple triangle page override. No problem.
Then I try and remove the red triangle overrides. Immediately - voila! - the first two pages of my music score leap into the first two pages I was trying to delete. Then follow 7 pages of Front Matter, then comes page 3 of the music.
How does one proceed to remove prefatory blank pages the simple way?

2

I do not know whether this will work for you, but I created a custom Title Page and a custom Blank page Page Template to handle that sort of situation, but a lot of folks handle the music separately and then create text pages separately and combine them using a PDF program.
MasterPageConstructionTemplate.dorico (787.2 KB)

1 Like
3

Instead of page overrides use page templates for title page, empty page etc. and insert page template changes for the pages you want.

Page overrides and page template changes are sticky to the page. If you want the first page to „disappear“, you have to change its page template to the one used by the second page, the second to the third and so on…

1 Like
4

Thanks, Sasha
What do you mean by “use page templates”?
Let’s say I insert two blank pages at the beginning.
Should I then go to Engrave > Page Templates and set up a Custom Page Template?
(The problem is, I think that’s what I did.)

5

If you’ve got page templates for e.g. the title page and then pre-score text info, you don’t even need to add blank pages manually: you can simply assign your custom page templates directly to e.g. pages 1 and 2 – Dorico will bump the music to the next page (as Dorico automatically adds/deletes pages as required to display all the flows assigned to the main page template frame chain – that is, what the Default page template is set to show inside its music frame).

However, it can be a useful psychological step to add blank pages at the start of the layout, assign your custom page templates to them, and then remove overrides (to make sure the pages follow the current state of the page template; any pages with red triangle override markings don’t get updated when the underlying page template changes).

2 Likes
6

Yes, that’s exactly what I do. I have several Page Template sets and each of them contains a “empty” page template with 0 frames on it. I can apply it to any page I want, for example if I am not sure yet how a specific front matter will look like.
Later, I can replace the templates with other ones I created, by changing the page template change. I produce Layouts with several pages of frontmatter without any page override (red triangle) ever. It’s the most flexible way.

I think the crucial part for your issue is though, that page templates apply to a page. Imagine this scenario:

  • page 1 has a title page template change
  • page 2 has an empty page template change
  • page 3 starts with the music

Now if you delete the page template change of page 1, you will have the following:

  • page 1 starts with music
  • page 2 is still an empty page, as the page template change still applies to it
  • page 3 continues the music.

This is by design, and you have to reapply all your page template changes.

7

Many thanks indeed to everyone, and thank you to Derrek for his MasterPage template.
I’ve been trying this. It’s clear there is quite some learning curve involved here. I’m going to stick with pdf prefaces for now. But I’m making a note of this page and will try it again.

8

The way I use the MasterPage (now Page Layout) template is to experiment; and then when I have what I need, I export the appropriate Page Layout Set to a convenient location so I can import it into any files I want.

9

:+1: Thanks