Prepping 1.1. Best practices: multiple flow print project?

Dorico
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I’m eagerly waiting for the new version so that I complete my next project in Dorico.

It’s a collection of about 100 folk melodies transcribed in lead sheet form, so I need chords and 1st/2nd endings. I’ve already transcribed many of these tunes in Sibelius.

What I’d like to do is import them into one Dorico project as separate flows and then lay out the entire book in Dorico.

I have some questions and any advice on best practices (or if this is possible) would be helpful.

  1. Is it yet possible to import music XML files into new flows in one Dorico project or do I need to import each into a new project and then copy/paste to get them into the same project? I haven’t played with XML importing yet, but IIRC, this was not possible in earlier versions.

  2. I’d like to create an index which would include the first few bars of each tune since many of these songs are similar and either don’t have names or else have the same name. Is this something that I can easily do in Dorico? How would you do this? Duplicate flows that are edited to only include those few bars and then resized in Engrave mode to fit 20 or so on a page? Is there a better way to do this?

  3. Some of the songs need D.S. al fine and Segno markings. IIRC, these will not yet be in the latest version. I assume I can copy the symbol from the SMUFL page and use text to work around this. Is that correct? (I don’t need it to play back.)

  4. Will winged repeat signs will be in 1.1? If not, is there a workaround?

Thanks much!

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  1. In Dorico 1.1 you will be able to import MusicXML files as new flows in the current project using File > Import > MusicXML. (If you use File > Open and then open a MusicXML file, that will always open the MusicXML file as a new project.)

  2. You should be able to use the flows themselves, provided you always want to show the first few bars; if you need to show a section other than the first few bars, you’ll need to duplicate those bits into new flows. Then create layout-specific music frames and assign the appropriate flow to each.

  3. You can indeed create D.C., D.S., segno and coda marks etc. using text objects, which will be the necessary method until such time as we have the proper items implemented.

  4. No, there will not be winged repeat barlines in Dorico 1.1, but you can create Shift+X text objects containing the brackets and position them in Engrave mode, I would have thought.