In the layout options, I made the page size for all the parts to be basically a half sheet of paper so that I can put two copies of the same part onto one page for marching band. (I actually did 5x7 with minimal margins rather than 5.5x8.5 since that fits into a flip folder better.) Now I’ve gone to print mode and it looks like it’s back to that same 8.5x11 page size (letter) but still otherwise the right size if I turn off the scaling and just set it to 100%.
First, I was wondering if it’s possible to get Dorico to put two copies of the part onto the one page. And second, if that’s not possible, how do I at least move the part to the top half of the page? If I need to put two copies onto one page myself in Adobe, that’s fine, but I at least need the part to be at the top half of the page instead of centered in the middle.
And as a side note, if my first question isn’t doable and I’ll have to put two copies on one page myself in Adobe, that might not be a bad idea for a feature to add to a future update.
To get two pages printed onto the same piece of paper, you can change the printing job type in Print mode, in the right panel.
For single-sided sheets, you want 2-up.
For double-sided sheets, you probably want booklet.
The underlying definition of how big each page is in Dorico, and the staff size of the music on the page, can be entirely independent of the paper that it’s ultimately printed onto.
For showing the same music on two adjacent pages, you could use a page template with a different music frame chain on for page 2 – similar to how you might set up a layout for piano duet.
I’m sorry, but neither of those were helpful for the problem I’m running into. Basically, for the page size for the parts, I made it a half sheet, and each part is only one page (or really, one half of a page). In print mode, it’s showing up on a normal letter sized page and it’s also centered vertically instead of taking up the top half of that page. 2-up actually made it even worse, so if that won’t work for me, so be it. But at the very least, I need to either make the paper size that same half sheet (I don’t at all understand what most of those options are for paper size), or I need to be able to move the music to the top half of that sheet instead of being centered in the middle. And I don’t know how to do either of those.
You need to change the page size set for the layout in Layout Options to be the size that you want the resulting music to be. Don’t pre-empt how you want it printed at this stage. Dorico can take whatever music you have, and arrange it onto paper later.
If you want more precise advice about how to fix your current situation, please share your project. There’s only so much that forum users can help you via guesswork and mindreading.
@Alan_Moffett, as far as I know, Dorico can’t do this. I’ve talked to publishers like Hal Leonard and Alfred, and they said what they do is they export all of the individual parts as a pdf, then use a pdf to jpeg or png convertor, and then using a word processor, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, import the picture and stack and resize them to fit onto the page. I know it’s a lot of work, but I’ve done it and it’s worth the time if I’m being honest.
@Lillie_Harris I admit that I find this problematic as well. Here’s a project with a page size defined for the part layout as 8.5x5.5 in (half of a letter-sized sheet). I don’t see a way to get Dorico to print each page at the top of a letter size sheet, or to print 2 up top and bottom.
This is a couple more steps than are needed, and the conversion to an image file will lower the quality of the output. Once you have the parts exported from Dorico as PDFs, most PDF applications will be able to directly print them 2-up. Here’s a screen shot from PDF X-Change.
I downloaded your file just to see what I could do, and I have nothing so far. I’m using Adobe Acrobat as my PDF viewer. How did you get them to be stacked like that?
Thanks for this – perhaps it was a failure of imagination on my part, but I was picturing a different orientation of page sharing, hence my confusion. Concrete examples are very useful!
You’re right that Dorico’s native paper-sharing arrangement options don’t cover this context, because they’re based around portrait pages, rather than landscape pages.
Again as @asherber says, @Alan_Moffett exporting the layout as a PDF and using alternative arrangement options in the PDF viewer of your choice should work, however. For example, Preview’s “Layout” options allow two pages to share a sheet of paper.
This is what I’m currently looking at. In the Layout Options, I had already set the page size to the 5"x7" layout that’s called “Band.” (I also made super small margins so that it would actually take up most of that 5x7 space.) I moved over to Print mode, and this is what showed up. Actually, first, the scaling was set to fit to paper, so I moved it over to custom scale so it wouldn’t change size.
If I can’t get two copies on the same page (top and bottom) in Dorico, that’s fine. I’ve already figured out how to do that in Adobe from back when I used Finale and that program didn’t do what I was wanting, either. But at the very least, how do I get that part moved to the top half of the page so that I can do what I need to do in Adobe? Right now in page setup, I have it set to letter because I don’t see “Band 5x7” in there and I don’t know what most of those other options even are, but nothing I’ve tried seems to do the trick. As long as I can make a pdf of the part either on the top half of 8.5x11 or simply on that half sheet (8.5x5.5), that’s enough for me.
