I am trying to insert pages at the beginning of the layout for adding Title and Instrumentation list. I created a new page template for this purpose. Next, I tried to insert two blank pages at beginning with this template, by pressing Insert Pages icon → Before Page 1 → Use the created page template from drop down list. However it does not ‘add’ new pages to beginning but rather just applies whatever template is chosen in that dialog box over existing two pages at the beginning as shown in pic below. Can someone instruct me on how to get this right?
You may then need to either assign the First page template to the first page of music, or change this Layout Option so that the First page template is used whenever a flow starts at the beginning of the page.
To ask an obvious question: are there any blue music frames on your title/instrumentation page templates? If they’ve only got text frames on them, Dorico shouldn’t show music there; but if they have a blue music frame, then chances are Dorico will try to display music in it!
(When you insert pages and select a page template, what you’re doing is creating two local page overrides, that use that page template as their starting point. They don’t retain a link to that page template, so if you later edit the page template, the inserted pages don’t update. Although it can take a bit of getting your head around, it really does work just to assign page templates directly to the first pages: if they don’t have any music frames on them, Dorico will know by itself that it needs to push the music to a later page, after your page templates.)
A bit of a thread-hacking here: I’d love to have an option to change the page template of every first page of all parts and/or full score so that I can add a Cover template before a First page template. As it is now, and with keyboard shortcuts, it takes three steps for each layout to perform such task, which becomes tedious once there are more than five instruments…
Thanks for your understanding!
I expect the immediate solution would be to establish a document Template with a score and part layout setup with the intro page(s) from which one could propagate to any added layouts.
Do you suppose that would work until a built-in solution came along?
Is there any possibility to add a ‘blank page template’ at the beginning without getting a ‘template change green frame’ or a ‘page override red triangle’?
I’m just not intelligent enough to create a score which starts with 1-2 blank pages (in which I can later on write the scoring or whatever’ and then start with the ‘first music page’ without getting any green frames or red triangles.
My wish would just be to have a template for all instruments with how many blank pages what-so-ever at the beginning without the indication of ‘page-overrides’ or ‘template changes’ to receive more flexibility. Whenever I want to change sth later, I have to remove all overrides → I’ll loose my blank pages → then I make my changes → then I have to insert the blank pages in all instruments again.
Why isn’t there a possibility with blank pages at the beginning which doesn’t create any overrides?
Since one normally only adds a page template or a header template change on rare pages, these do not ripple through the rest of your document changing other page templates unless the page template is marked to “continue.”
UNLESS…
You have red-triangle page overrides, which stick to the pages on which they were created even if the music content moves to other pages.
Therefore, the goal is to do anything one can to avoid red-triangle page overrides. Sometimes one can do this by applying custom page templates instead of page overrides, since assigning a custom page template to a new page is much easier than reconstructing most red-triangle page overrides.
Using movable formatting methods like system breaks and frame breaks along with note-spacing, space-size changes, and tweaks in the vertical spacing distances in Layout Options prove the ideal approach.
Of course sometimes (thinking of needing to make room for dialogue over vamps in musical theater or opera scores in particular) one has to bite the bullet and make manual, red-triangle changes. I’m sure if there is a better solution, the Dorico Team will provide it when it reaches the top of the “roadmap” list; as far as I can tell, this would require some very complex programming if it is possible at all.
Applying (not adding) a Page Template does not add a red triangle but may misalign future music and red-triangle pages.
You should really try these ideas of yours out on a copy of your file to see what happens. You will discover the capabilities far better than if you rely on those of us here merely to explain them to you.
The trick here is, if you’ve inserted blank pages and have red triangles, when you come to replacing those blank pages with title page templates etc:
Assign your new title page template directly to the blank page (nothing will happen straight away, because the blank override comes first, before the underlying page template)
Remove the override, which takes away the red triangle but leaves the page template change.
Voila! Updated page appearance, without affecting the total number of pages in the layout.
So you could do that: insert X blank pages at the start of your layout when you don’t know what page templates you want, then replace them with page template changes later.
Alternatively, create the page templates first, but don’t worry about adding frames to them: just assign the “title” page template to p1, “info” page template to p2 etc, then edit the underlying page templates later to add text frames etc. The page template system then ensures that any page with that page template assigned to it gets updated when you edit the page template.
Thanx Lillie and Derek,
now everything works.
My mistake: I thought that red triangles AND green template changes are ‘evil’ if you want to change content of e.x. a title page later on but it’s only the red triangles who you should avoid.
Everything cool now
I duplicated the ‘First’ Template and couldnt understand what was happening