Share your file management strategies

Dorico
#1

I would love to hear how others are leveraging Dorico to manage and organize project versions, revisions, scores and parts. What are your file naming conventions and are you able to utilize flow names player names and tokens to export without having to rename the PDFs? For example:
Song title - version score.pdf
Song title - version violin 1.pdf
Etc.

Thanks tons!

#2

At this point you have very little control over file name formatting. It’s just Project Name Layout Name. There have been requests for more control over this sort of thing.

I use a free bulk file naming utility for windows. Works well enough for me when I need it. You can automatically add suffixes or prefixes to a selection of files.

My players often get multiple revisions of arrangements, so I add a text frame to the master page in the top left corner and populate it with 1.0, or 2.0, etc. so they know what’s the most current version.

My filenames usually are Song_arrangement-Layout. “Silent Night_full orch-Violin 1.”

#3

Thanks dan.
When you revise an arrangement you just over right precious parts, same file name?

#4

Yes. On rare occasion that I do want to keep an old version, I’ll bundle it up into a sub folder and label it “old.” My life is complicated enough without tracking file revision history! :wink:

#5

I use Git.

Being a programmer in my day job, using version control software became a second nature to me.
You commit your current setup, tag it, comment it, and when you have a new version you commit it again. You can always roll back to older versions.

#6

Likewise.

Somebody ought to produce a “git for poets” interface to it, though. I would imagine many Dorico users would find it (and its documentation) too overwhelming to get started.

(No insult to poets intended - it’s a pun on https://www.amazon.co.uk/Physics-Poets-Robert-March/dp/0072472170)

#7

Really good idea!
I use TortoiseGit on Windows which is pretty easy.

I will try and put together some document for beginners on my webpage. Since we are talking about binary files here it should be straight forward to start up a local git repo which just holds dorico files in increasing versions.

#8

This is all helpful, thanks!