Page size for displaying on an iPad

I tend to view my Dorico arrangements/compositions as a pdf on an iPad (using forScore). One benefit (if all musicians in the ensemble use iPads) is never requiring any repeats or D.S. etc - with no printing to consider you can just make the layout take up as many pages as needed, always moving forward never backwards or jumping around! Can make things very simple. (By the way it’s a great feature that you can set different page sizes for different parts, as some people don’t have iPads.)

I’ve just been using the preset A4, but a convenient feature would be in Layout Options to have page size presets for iPad screens… though perhaps there’s a never ending variety of tablet screen sizes.

My iPad 6th generation is apparently 9.7" - 2048 by 1536 display (264 ppi). Does anyone know how to convert this to a Dorico page size? I tried setting the width to 1536 points and height to 2048 points but then everything comes out too small. (by the way if anyone reading this needs to know, you can change the preferred unit of measurement in Preferences)
Thanks

“Points” in the way Dorico interprets it is a typographic measure (in the sense of “12 point Times New Roman”) and is not equivalent to pixels. When you divide the resolution by the pixel density, you get ~ 7,75 x 5,81 inch, which you can input as custom page dimensions in Layout Options. There you can also put the page margins to (almost) zero to save screen space, as the border of the device already acts as a margin.

Tablet screen sizes aren’t nearly as standardised as paper sizes, and new ones come out every year. It would be a waste of time for the Dorico team to try and keep up. However, being able to save your custom layout settings as a template would be a neat addition.

The “9.7 inch” screen is actually 250mm (exactly). Since screen size is measured along the diagonal and the aspect ratio is 4:3, that means the “page size” is 200 x 150 mm, or approximately 567 x 425 points or 7.87 x 5.91 inches.

(I guess the other answer gives slightly different numbers because it assumed the 9.7 inch size was exact, which it isn’t).

Layout Options can be saved as default, and that includes page size.

Why would Apple undersell the screen size when 250mm translates to 9,84 inches? And does the pixel density have the same fuzzy precision?

That’s quite drastic, as OP mentions not everyone in the band has the same screen. I was thinking more like being able to add your own options to the dropdown menu in addition to A4, US Letter and all the others.

My iPad’s display is 147 x 196 mm. (5.75 x 7.6 inches: 9.7 inches is the diagonal.)

Given the range of sizes possible - iPad, iPad Pro, iPad Mini, Android tablets, etc – you’d be best off just using a standard paper size, e.g. A4 or US Letter.

A4 gets slightly cropped at the top and bottom (if viewed to Fit Width) but is perfectly readable.

Screen sizes have been a source of “creative marketing” ever since screens existed. That’s why the size of the diagonal is used - it’s a bigger number than the width and height! If some marketing guru ran a focus group that said “nine point seven” sounded sexier than “nine point eight,” that’s probably a good enough reason.

The more obvious question is why Apple didn’t call it 250mm since that’s what it is, but I guess American customers wouldn’t understand “foreign units”.

Well, the math doesn’t quite add up, so yes. 2048 pixels at 264 per inch makes 7.757575… inches, which gives a screen diagonal of 9.696969… inches.

Yes this is useful - but is it only possible to save as either default “Part” layout or default “Full Score” layout? Might be useful to be able to save the whole Page Setup as other ‘defaults’ i.e. add to that Layout Type dropdown list. (The Letter page size seems good for my iPad screen, though then I need to make margins 0 every time.)

Yep. There are only two default sets available to us. That said, many of us save empty projects as a kind of template, then start the next project by duplicating our empty project.

Ah yes, true. Thanks!