References between flows

One of the first tutorials I viewed after Finale’s first announcement, was

about creating an index, and I though it very interesting, In this tutorial, the referencing flow just displays the start of the music in the target flow. How can I specify the location in the target where I want the reference to start?

You can only start at the beginning of a flow, you can’t set a frame to show only eg bars 8-12.

If you need to show a particular section of music, you’ll need to put that in a separate flow.

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Oh :frowning: . This is disappointing. It diminishes the interest of the tutorial: this suits well the case of an index where one flow references a number of targets, but I was hoping it could also work for a different kind, where several items in a big music piece would need being referenced and commented from one or several other flows. I can always create one flow with the same players, and duplicate in it by copy/paste the section of music that needs commenting, but copy/pasting loses the link to the original piece. Is there no notion of a reference to a section of music in a flow? Maybe using markers purposely introduced in it?
In a way there is already, but vertical, through the selection of players.

Maybe you could use graphic slices, with SVG format, into Graphics Frames for this. (but they are not dynamically updated if the music changes thought):

Sadly, there is non yet, and given the amount of other features requested I doubt this will be implemented too soon.
But depending on your needs, the issue isn’t so bad. I regularly do all my performance notes in dorico, which has the benefit of making sure all the noteheads and symbols update in every instance, if I need to change them during composing.

had been thinking about that, too, both the pros and the cons. I think that, at least, if I fix sometjing in a commented section, I would just as much reproduce the fix of redo the pasting that regenerate a png. Thanks anyway :slight_smile:.

Well the issue cannot be too bad, because I do not work for customers but for myself (and friends):grinning:. What is your strategy?

I use separate flows which are excluded from the main music frame chain and create custom page templates with their respective music frame showing the small excerpt, next to text frames.

But you duplicated the excerpt from the main musci frame “by hand”?

Yes, they are separate flows only some measures long at max. But these are performance notes, your use case might differ.

Not really different. That is indeed what I was starting to do. Thank you, among other things for showing me somebody else would appreciate that feature :slight_smile: .

Well, I think this is the way it goes, at least for now. I will close the topic. Thanak you for your rapid answer.

Give Lillie the credit for the solution. She hasn’t got enough (666!).

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Oops! I thought i had :frowning: !

Believe it or not, I have to eat my words: I had so many painful problems with replicating the main music that I decided to switch to Graphics Slices/Graphics Frames ! Well done :slight_smile: .

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Hi @klafkid, me again.

Indeed my idea was to have, after the main music one (ideally) flow, which would host such pages, a mix of text music of graphics frame. I started with one, was a little sloppy with the page templates, did not create any new one, and it worked. Some care is needed when editing the main, because music frames can spill between flows, and is seems better to have a specific layout for printing them, because they may need layout options which will disagree with the main music.

The I wanted to add some. I started from scratch, and added to my (already a little customized) Full Score Page Template Set an extra Page Template tuned for the pages of this extra flow. Apparently, this officially called an extraPageDefinition in the doricolib. Ideally this would be like my “normal” page template, including flow title and page number at the top, copyright at the bottom, but without the big music frame. I quickly learned that pages without any music frame would be ignored by the printer. Of course, when I would create such a page, I would always add at least one music frame, but to be on the safe side, I managed to create a page with a minimum music frame, not claiming any music content, and only visible as a thin line at the top. I did try, in my original experiment, to insert such a page with only text and the “phony” music frame, and I managed to print it, but the printer was “reluctant”: if I selected the flow, it would not be printed, I had to select the 2 pages!

What I hoped for in the best of cases:

  • Systematic use of this page template after the end of the main music flow (I have already set Use First Page Template for first flow only)
  • No need for page overrides.
  • Only one flow (fingers crossed).

But this did not work at all like I hoped.

The main thing is that in the main flow, pages are in a way created automatically (from the normal page template) by the music, and occasionally by the Create Frame Break. None of this would exist in my extra flows(s).

The available actions are Insert Pages on one side, and Add Flow or Split Flow on the other, but they are uncooperative.

Ideal action for me would be either “Add Flow switching the extra page template and the normal page template” or “Add Flow using the extra page template for its first page” but there is none.

And for the alternative of adding an extra page first, and creating the flow afterward, all my attempts to Split Flow after doing that (and even adding a true music frame in the page) resulted in disasters, like music spilling between the flows, or unexpected page template changes. Also, though Insert Pages can be given a page template to use, it seems to guarantee overrides, that apparently cannot be undone without reverting to the normal page template.
From what you said, you must have done someting similar to this (maybe after experiments :slight_smile: ). Can you give me tips?

I have progressd a little… both ways!
The way I am going now, I think I have to give up about avoiding page overrides. But to my happy surprise, I seem to be able to keep the same flow for consecutive nots pages. At least I managed it for 2 pages :slight_smile: . Still I am not totally convinced that I have chosen the best way.

That’s quite a lot of text that requires a fair amount of imagination to parse, with no guarantee we’re correct.

If you’d like some precise feedback, you’ll make it easier for everyone here to help you if you share a project file that demonstrates what you’re talking about.

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Hello Lillie, and thank you for your interest. Yes this was very verbose :slight_smile:.
I will attach my project, with a short rationale about my aims.
MenuetsEnRondeau4Z.dorico (2.4 MB)
This isan arrangement by myself of a Rameau opera piece to be played by me and friens , and the arrangement is prettty exotic. So I wanted to integrate to the project some notes addressing the challenges of the transcription and explaining or justifying my choices, with music quotations.
I wished those notes to be in an extra flow (a single one if possible), and I found a lot of challenges. Finally I settled on having each note occupying one page, with a similar content: one text frame, one music frame (of music not in the first flow), another text frame, then a graphics frame containing a graphic slice of some music belonging to the first flow.
I was pretty desesperate when I sent the first post to @klafkid, but I managed somehow.
I had hoped to have the second flow using pages not overriden from their t,emplate, but I failed on hat, possibly because my strategy we not the best.
The flow now has 3 pages, with text in french, but there is no need to read all that, it is the structure that needs to be evaluated.
Well, this is less verbose than the previous post, but not that short, is it? Sorry about that.

I’ve finally had a chance to come back and have a look – you’ve done a lot of good stuff here, by editing page templates and adjusting per-layout horizontal and vertical spacing settings.

To show musical examples, I would avoid using graphics frames wherever possible, because you lose any dynamic link to the original source material, the sizing quickly becomes inconsistent, and it is generally easier to make the music detail look worse.

Try to use paragraph styles as much as possible: you’ll get consistent text formatting and require fewer manual overrides to every text frame.

You also created a number of extra text frames on your First page template which might be overcomplicated: just expand the existing ones, add line breaks, and add extra text tokens in there. You can format each paragraph differently inside the same text frame.

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