Master pages glitch?

Dorico
#1

I have a project where most of the time flows start on new pages, but occasionally I have room to start a flow half way down a page.

First I set Dorico to allow new flows on the same page as existing flows (Layout options IIRC). Then I put in some manual frame breaks and set Master Page Changes to all the places where flows need to start on new pages.

In Engrave mode I created a new master page based on “First” and set its type to “Custom”, and named it “Halfway new flow”
I opened “Halfway new flow” in Master Page Editor and set all of the “Top” parameters for my existing text frames (Title, Subtitle, Composer, Lyricist etc.) to around 350pts, which brings them all around half way down the page.
Then I fiddled with the existing music frame to push it up above my text frames and added another underneath.
I set both frame chains to “MA” so that music flows the way I want it to.

So far so good.

Dorico can’t yet handle text tokens for new flows started on pages with existing flows; e.g. if you have a Prelude with flowTitle “Prelude” and a Fugue starting down halfway down the page straight after the Prelude, the title, on both pages, is going to be “Prelude” (not “Prelude” followed by “Fugue”).

To deal with this, still in Master Page Editor, I overwrote {@flowTitle@}, {@flowSubtitle@} etc. with “Title” and “Subtitle” - just placeholder text that reminds me to put something else there when I’m working with individual pages rather than the master page.

The problem is, all of my Titles and Subtitles on all of my normal First pages got replaced with “Title” and “Subtitle”.

It’s like the whole Left-Right and Right-Left thing in Master Pages Editor is actually linking my new Master Page (Halfway new flow) with my standard (First) Master Page.

Where have I gone wrong?

#2

I’m not able to fully visualize what you’re struggling with. Can you upload a screenshot, or the project?

I think that you may only have one ‘First’ type of master page in each master page set. If you choose ‘Based on First’ when you create a new master page, it will somehow be linked to the existing ‘First’ page.
If you select ‘Based on none’, and type ‘Custom’, I think you’ll be more flexible (though you’ll have to remake the frames manually).

I’m not quite sure why it is designed like this - it seems more logical to me that if you select ‘Based on First’ and type ‘Custom’, that you would get a copy of the ‘First’ layout, but without the ‘First’ behavior.


By the way, from version 1.1 you can indeed have multiple flow titles on a page. But you’ll have to specify which flow title to use. You can do that by writing {@flow1title@}, {@flow2title@}, etc. It also works for other tokens, such as flow1composer, etc…

#3

Thanks Anders. I thought that by selecting “custom” I’d create an unlinked master page, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I’ll have to start a new custom page from scratch, I think.

Your point about specifying flow2title etc. is useful, and not something is spotted - many thanks for that.

#4

When you made a copy of the ‘First’ master page pair, you also copied the text frames on those pages. The text frames in the default master pages are linked together between the left and right pages, which is something there’s currently no user interface for in the program itself, but which I did by hand when I made the default master pages. When you base a new master page on an existing one, that link is preserved, which may or may not be what you want! If you delete and recreate the text frames on your new master page you will find that they are independent from the text frames on the ‘First’ page pair, as you would expect.

#5

Many thanks for that clarification, Daniel. It occurs to me now that, of course, if I generate new text frames that never contain the tokens they can’t possibly impact on existing frames elsewhere.

If only I’d thought of that earlier!