Page Template import quirks

Hey folks, two questions about Page Templates:

Question one:
When I import a Page Template from one project that has a graphic in it the graphic does not automatically load into the new project. I must click it and reload the graphic manually. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Question two:
Sometimes when I import a Page Template, some of my layouts look perfect and some look like the frames have been resized for some reason and I have to do a lot of manual work to make them look like the rest of the layouts. What’s the point in having Page Templates if Dorico is going to resize some of them at will?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. The graphics thing is annoying but I can handle it–the frame resizing is absolutely driving me bonkers.

Cheers, Rick

Page Templates aren’t designed to transfer graphics, just as they aren’t designed to transfer music.

As to frames being resized, it sounds as though you might be taking a Page Template that was built for one page size and assigning it to a layout that uses a different page size, or perhaps there’s a discrepancy in the page margins.

This isn’t a problem as long as each frame is only constrained to two sides of the page. For instance, a frame that should always be in the bottom left corner of a page should be constrained to the bottom and left (probably 0mm (or whatever unit) from bottom and left) but have a defined width and height. That way, regardless of what you do to the page size, said frame will always be the same shape, and will always be glued to the bottom left corner of the page.

The problem comes when you drag out a frame and leave it constrained (using the padlocks in the left panel) to all four sides: that way it doesn’t have a width and height; its left side is a defined distance from the left page margin, its right side is a defined distance from the right page margin (and same for top and bottom) so if the size of the page changes the size of the frame will too.

See documentation here: Defining frame constraints

Or I guess it might be that you meant for all your layouts to have the same page size and layout options but have missed some. Either select all relevant layouts in the right side of the Layout Options dialog, before altering values, or use Propagate Part Formatting (with Include Layout Options ticked and probably Include Casting Off unticked).

For what it’s worth, we would like to make it possible to bring graphics in page templates across when exporting/importing a page template set. There’s a limitation about the way graphics are handled specifically in page templates at the moment that makes this impossible, but we certainly plan to address it in future.

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Hey Leo, thanks!

I totally didn’t pay attention to the frame constraint section. I assumed falsely that it was for something else. That totally fixed the problem. Cheers!

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Not a huge deal, but certainly makes creating consistent layouts a little quicker. Cheers and thanks for the response!