Question about creating and saving custom lines

Dorico
#1

I wonder if anyone can confirm the following for me, please?

I see that it’s possible to create a new Line Body style via Engrave Menu → Edit Line Body → New (or New from Selection), and that one can then give this new line an appropriate name (e.g. “newline”).

While this creates the new line body style, it does not in itself create a new “line” that can be used within a project. For that, one must open up the “Lines. . .” editor, and find “newline” within the “Body Style” drop-down.

However, if one then hits OK, one will have (inadvertently) changed the appearance of whichever line had been highlighted, by default, in the line list (on the left of the dialogue window).
To avoid this, one must again hit New (or New from Selection), and create a new name for this new line (whether that be “newline”, or some other new name).

In other words, the two operations are separate, and – to avoid inadvertently changing an existing line – one must give what one has created in each operation its own new name.

Have I got that right?

#2

That’s correct. If you want to create a new line body and then have it used by a new line style, without affecting any existing line bodies or line styles, you need to make a new line body and a new line style. This is just the same as every other library item in Dorico: if you edit an existing item, it changes that item; if you add a new item, it’s a new item and won’t affect any other existing item.

1 Like
#3

For information about the different component parts of what is in Dorico “a line”, see here.

1 Like
#4

Thank-you, Daniel and Lillie.