"Set local properties: globally" and then change the property locally

Dorico
1

I think I understand the way Dorico approaches this—when you set a local property as global, it moves to the global settings and that item can no longer be changed locally, without undo-ing the global property.

My current approach to dialogue in theatre score, where it needs to appear on the Score, the Piano/Vocal, and the Piano/Conductor, is using staff-attached text on the top vocal line, when available, or staff-attached text on both the rehearsal piano staff (Piano/Vocal) and the Piano/Conductor staff when there is no vocal. This is fine, but in the latter scenario, I need to hide one of the dialogue texts on the score, and if I have to change it, I have to change it in both places.

Slightly more ideal would be to have it as a system-attached text, where I can then hide the dialogue (a local property) with Set Local Properties: Globally enabled, and then be able to un-hide it in those two part layouts. If I use system-attached text now, I have to hide it locally in 10-20 part layouts.

Another approach to this would be group-attached text, which might have use for some very specific use cases but probably not enough to justify the whole can of worms. The wildest option would be having “locally/globally” be supplemented by an optional popout window with a checkbox list that allows you to specify which layouts received that change in properties and if it would be default for any new layouts created. Sounds like a Dorico 12 feature.

I don’t expect any of this to take priority, and the current setup works fine, but I couldn’t find any discussion of this question so I thought I’d raise it in case it’s something others could benefit from as well.

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Funnily enough I was having a similar thought about this just yesterday. My understanding is that with properties that have both a switch and a dropdown (or a switch and a separately settable value) there is the possibility to set globally then alter the value locally. This means that, for instance, one can scale an object globally then scale it normally (but still as an override) locally in the score layout.

I’m not sure why Hide Text is just a switch, but, at least from a UI perspective, it would be nice if it could be hooked up as a Visibility switch with a Show/Hide dropdown.

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3

I would call it “overriding” rather than undoing. If a local property exists, it can always override a preference setting (and be turned off to stop overriding it). You can set a switch in Properties with Global scope (on the right side of Properties) and then change the same switch in one layout at a time with Local scope.

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That’s the problem: with switches such as the one for Hide Text, you can’t, because turning off the switch - and thus turning off the override - is global. It’s the dropdowns and values that can be set independently, not the position of the switch.

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