Text frames in flow headings weirdness

Here’s the quick and dirty issue: flow headings - YouTube

So I’m putting together an MT score. At the top of certain songs there needs to be a few lines of dialogue printed on the score. I figured the most simple way to do this would be with flow headings. But since the number of lines of dialogue varies, I made multiple flow headings ("MT 2 lines, “MT 4 lines” etc). After making the first heading, I made more “based on” the initial one I made.

What’s weird is when I go to edit the text frame in any of the flow headings, the edit is made in every other heading. Does this have something to do with the headings being “based on” that initial heading? Why?

Is this clear? I’m having difficulty articulating the issue.

If you copy a frame from one Master Page to another, they are linked. It would not be surprising if the same held for Flow Master “Page” Headings.

With version 3.5 (Pro) you can add SHIFT+X text to the score and should be able to hide it in the part to which it is linked.

Thanks Derrek. I didn’t realize the frames would be linked like that. I’m sure there’s a page in the manual…

Without trying (dongle is in my other computer), I feel like shift+X would be as much of a headache. I really want minimal trips to engrave mode. See examples for what I mean. Maybe it’s as easy as shift+X but i suspect it’ll interfere with the tempo text and a bunch of other stuff.



Mozart was crazy :wink:
Boy that first example takes me back…

To expand slightly on Derrek’s post: you probably need to create Flow Headings that aren’t based on any other Flow Headings. At the very least, when you create a new flow heading you need to delete the existing text frame and add a fresh one in its place. This step will break the link between the two different Flow Headings.

I was thinking that, if one attached the SHIFT+X text to the top line of the system, often a vocal line, you would only have to hide it if you did not want it in the Pno/Vocal score, since (not being system text) the text would only show on layouts that included that top staff.

I admit that this is not the best way to do this–and I think eventually the Dorico Team will introduce a better solution for opera, MT, and the like–but it seemed one way to add text above the system which would not perpetuate in layouts where it was not wanted. Whether this or adapting Flow Headings would produce the best results for the least added effort may be a personal matter.

But by all means, John, whichever path you pursue, let us know how it goes. I’m pretty sure that quite a few folks will be interested in how you deal with this layout challenge.

Hi,

I’ve been encountering a similar problem - possibly not exactly the same, but worth noting here I think. Possibly a bug, or at least very unintuiative consequences.

I was preparing an MT score with several Custom Score layouts (ie the Piano Conductor part) and then the usual Instrumental Part layouts. I wanted the Custom Score Layouts to have exactly the same headers & First/Default differences to the Instrumental Parts layouts, so I set the Custom Score layouts to Master page set: Default Part in Layout Options.

However, then when I made edits to text boxes in headers in any Custom Score layout, they wrongly adjsuted the boxes in the Part layouts, despite being the same Master page set.

The only reason I can figure for this is that the Custom Score layouts have slightly different top margins. Therefore I presume that the text boxes positions/sizes are referencing the margins set in the Layout Options on a fairly absolute basis, as opposed to dynamically depending on the margins of any individual part?

My workaround is to switch my custom score layouts back the the Full Score Master Page Set, & duplicate the headers from the Part set into the Full Score Sets. But this feels a bit clunky!

Can anyone shed any light on this?

Are your paper sizes the same in these various layouts? If not, you’ll need to be extremely careful as to whether the boundaries of the frames are locked to explicit heights and widths or explicit distances from the page margins.

Ah, ok - yes - the Constraints area was definitely what was screwing things up. I hadn’t really tied that together with the Frames sizing/margin options in the bottom panel when editing Text Frames.

Thank you!