I think it would be awesome if you could have something very similar to the “make into frame” button, but which operates across a double page spread (or triple / quadruple page spread) - like a kind of very intelligent bookended frame break. I realise it’s relatively straightforward to just add frame breaks/ make into frame at the right places, but a “make into spread” function would really streamline the process and make it so much quicker to format parts and optimise page turns. It would be particularly useful for instances where page turns have to go in very specific places to be possible, but which would make the spreads look weird/bad on the page - and in a way that isn’t appropriate for the entire piece (like only having 1 or 2 staves per side) - or for instances where you have to create a fold out page have have a spread of 3/4 sides. This could also have settings that automatically adjust page numbers so that you can get pg 20a etc. Relatedly perhaps this could also connect to a function in export/printing that isolates the extra pages as separate to the main thing so they don’t end up printed into a booklet. Even better if it would automatically make it so that any blank pages within/at either side automatically took some (editable) default blank page text or something like that.
Really, you can fake this function already. Put a frame break after the last measure of your two page spread, and put one at the beginning of the section as well. Then Dorico will reflow the following measures. It’s possible you could end up with an orphaned measure or two on a third page which would have to be moved back manually, but the starting and ending frame breaks would get you 99% of the way there already, and a simple note spacing change for those two pages might solve any other issues. Granted, it’s not as quick and easy as your suggestion, but it still tackles the problem relatively trivially.
Yeah, of course it’s easy to fake. Most things can be easily faked and if we were going from that argument we might as well not update anything. This was just a thought of something that isn’t a huge change to the ways that Dorico works already, and in my mind fits the overall ethos that you shouldn’t have to do much editing and messing around in parts once you’ve put the notes in.
I have to say, it seems stupid to have to “fake” a layout that is widely used. That is, to have to jump through hoops to create a standard instrument part where there’s a cover and then pages 2 & 3 for the first movement/song, 4 & 5 for the next, and so on. So I figure by now (2025) there must be some layout setting to default to such a spread for parts. So far, however, I do not find it.
I don’t think creating a title page and thus having your music start on page 2 is ‘faking’ anything. It’s just making very basic arrangements for a sensible page layout. Some parts need it, some don’t. No jumping through hoops, it’s plain, regular Dorico functionality, and quite easy once you know how to do it.
BTW: if you simply set your starting page number to 2 (from the right-click menu on the first page in the right panel in Engrave Mode), your pages will be arranged in spreads without any further action needed.