This is a suggestion I make, after seeing how nice Dorico is becoming. I would love that the page template editor could highlight (by color or arrows or visual enclosures) the differences between a left and a right page. I think it’s great that we have the freedom to set those pages differently, but I also think there are lots of mistakes being made because it’s not that easy to grasp the necessity to have two sided templates. Especially for the First Page. Some kind of visual aid would probably help avoid the cases where the user modifies one side and forgets about the other, then wonders why nothing is happening in the document (I’ve just received this exact case from a fellow user). Some enclosure or highlight over the differences would help the user notice that something is missing before applying and closing!
Ever since I defined the frames for the page numbers and edition number across the full page width (using the “inside” and “outside” paragraph styles), I haven’t needed separate templates for the left and right pages.
For my part, I’d like it so that when you create a page template based on another one, the latter isn’t linked to the template. To save time, I’ve often created a page template based on the default “first page” template, and… this “first page” template is now overwritten by elements belonging to the newly created one. And nothing helps, neither adding a frame nor resizing it… which is annoying because if I modify the “first” template, my new template will also be affected, and I no longer have the “first” model untouched.
Couldn’t we consider a small tick box along the lines of “unlink the new template”?
Think about headers in Default page. I think it is useful to be able to display the project title and the composer name in the even page and the flow title in the odd page. And probably other users would have this kind of idea. So being able to keep them different is very cool, when it’s on purpose.
I simply would like to minimize the mistakes when such purpose is not wanted.
