Text blocks - Master Pages?

Hello, a question from a colleague, who struggles (after having switched from Sib. recently) with inputting text blocks between flows.
I know this has been discussed somewhere here, I can not find the thread though. He wants to input little text snippets at the beginning of some of his flows, like text cues in the opera, before the music begins. These should appear in all parts of course and in the score too. In Sibelius it were the Subtitles, who would take over this job.
How can one intelligently proceed in Dorico without having to fiddle around with hand tailored Master-pages too much.
Any help appreciated.

If the text is different in each flow, they could utilise an unused field in Project Info for each flow (maybe “flow other info” ?) and then add a text frame with the relevant token to the flow heading. So in addition to “1. Flow 1” (or however they formulate their flow heading), there’ll be a block of text that corresponds to that flow.

Only thing to note there is that the text frame won’t automatically resize, so if the amount of text varies widely they might need to use multiple flow headings.

Or, just add it as system-attached text which appears at system-object positions in the score but in every part layout and handle the vertical spacing change at the top of the flow as required (as music frame margins set the gap between the top of the music frame and the top staff line, regardless of musical content).

Thank you Lillie,
to start with the second suggestion: we tried System attached Text first. The disadvantage is, that it will appear beyond the Flow Title, and he’d like it to appear above the flow title.
If one adopts this method, one would have to drag frames and flow titles after the basic layout has bean prepared. There will be lots of overrides. We tried the property avoidance of overlap with system text, but this does not recognise flow headings.
It would be nice to have a convincing solution for these situations, as this is a standard use case in shows, operas and similar flows, who need text intros.
The first suggestion with text frames and “other flow info” sounds tempting, still it has a disadvantage, that the text frame would be positioned at a specific place on the page. If one has lots of flows with short music, they will not always start at the top of the page. So one would need different hand tailored Master Pages to take care of the variety of positions.

Flow headings are dynamic, moving with the music (until/unless you override their frames on a specific page).

ah, now I understand, “ then add a text frame with the relevant token to the flow heading”, it’s the flow heading, where to add the extra text frame, brilliant! :slight_smile:

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