It is also the case that you cannot create zero-line staves with the instrument editor at the moment. We know there are several use cases for instruments without staff lines, but in general we believe that these use cases would be better served by dedicated features rather than using zero-line staves as a workaround.
I was hoping to use this as a workaround. You’re right that a dedicated feature would be better! But in the absence of that…
Anyway, I thought I’d explain what I’m trying to do. I’ve mentioned it before, but let’s say it again in this context.
I want to be able to create pages with libretto on. For example, the spoken scenes in between songs in an opera or musical theatre work. Importantly, they need to be flows, so that if I change the music earlier in the work, the libretto pages remain in the correct place. (If I were to make these pages by just inserting a text page, with Dorico such pages do not re-flow with the music, and are therefore useless to me.)
Since one cannot make a text flow in Dorico, I was hoping to use a zero-line stave music flow and attach the text to that.
It’s a concept we’ve been discussing a lot in Dorico’s early days — did I mention I’m really fond of XeLaTex? (I think I did by then)
I have to admit I use page templates to carry the text, and have to deal with this once all the music is entered and has been properly formatted. Only then is it really possible to change page templates to insert the text (although it’s perfectly possible to move those pages in Engrave mode).
yeah, my current system involves LaTeX, a custom script for converting from Fountain format to LaTeX, and embedding PDFs of each musical number within the LaTeX pages. But since it’s all scripted, they always go in the right place
My ultimate solution would be for Dorico to have a semantic concept of libretto, with spoken lines assigned to dramatis personae, plus stage directions etc. But whenever I suggest that I get pushback from people who only want to do music. So I think having a “Text Flow” would be a reasonable compromise – I could put whatever I want in there, format it myself, and it would always stay in the right place.
I can immediately think of LOTS of uses for a text flow beyond libretto. Stage directions. Pointed psalm texts, hymn texts, performance instructions, poetry… it’s a really neat idea.
Here’s a doricolib file that will add a 0-line and a 1-line non-percussion instrument to Dorico. In Setup you’ll find these in a new Custom category. Just unzip the file and add it your DefaultLibraryAddtions folder. In Windows, this will be found at Users\yournamehere\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Dorico 5\DefaultLibraryAdditions. If you don’t already have that folder, you can create it. 0and1Line.zip (1.0 KB)
I notice I had to drag/copy my DefaultLibraryAdditions from the Dorico 4 folder to the Dorico 5 folder in my User area (and restart my computer?) to bring up my custom Page Templates as defaults.
This is not a surprise: Dorico is not responsible for forwarding my user additions; but those who established a customized DefaultLibraryAdditions folder may want to check this to avoid surprises.
Yeah, there was a change in how Dorico handles these between D4 and D5. I think I figured it out and detailed it in this post.
Here’s a new doricolib file for D5 that creates both a 0-Line and 1-Line instrument in the Custom category. Additionally, it creates a Clef for the 1-Line Staff that defines the line to be middle C for ease of input. The image appears wrong in the right panel, but is correct in the score. If you delete that old doricolib file and use this one instead, it should work correctly. 0and1LineInstruments-D5.zip (1.3 KB)
Unzip the file, copy the doricolib file inside the zip to your DefaultLibraryAdditions folder (just search the forum for the location of that if you don’t know), close restart Dorico if it was already open, and it should appear in the Custom category in Setup.
