I prefer 8.5 x 12 inch paper (8.5 x 14 in. US “legal size” cut down) because to me, it makes a satisfactory substitute for 9 x 12. A4 would not be as good.
I have just read the whole thread; it is strange, I have the opposite problem: Dorico defaulting to US Letter paper size, even if I live in Europe and use DIN A4 on a regular basis.
I have set my Dorico Installation to use English (for the GUI) and Paper Size to “International”.
I run my macOS in German though - the same for my System Preferences for Date, Time and so on. My Printers are all set to use DIN A4 as default Paper Size. Just Dorico is sticking to US Letter… and if I want to print from within Dorico, I will have to set all Paper Sizes to DIN A4 by hand. It makes no difference, if in Dorico Preferences I set the Paper Size to US Letter or to International, or Automatic.
Perhaps you should ask the NSA? Clearly they have hijacked your machine!
This thing has continued to be a problem. I recently went through all of my templates to make sure I had every layout set to Letter or Ledger size, and of course my preferences are set to North American. Most of my projects come our as letter now, but I still get a few that revert to A4.
I figured out one case that really needs attention. I had written a jazz combo chart for 5 horns. It was all on Letter – no problem. We will be doing this piece in collaboration with a string quintet, so I added 5 players. They came out as A4 !!!
I believe this is because I added them as a “string ensemble” rather than creating 5 new players. That is to say, there is a pre-packaged string ensemble that evidently is set up as A4.
This is no good. I can never use that feature because that tripped me up badly and I wasted an hour re-editing my final layouts for these parts once I realized they were incorrectly on A4. It seems to me that no matter HOW you add new players (either as individual players or by selecting a pre-packaged ensemble) the layout should adhere to your preferences for paper size.
Part layouts are generated with default Layout Options. If you’ve never overwritten them, each new part layout will use the factory defaults.
To be clear: if you’ve gone through all of the Layout Options and set the paper size for each individual layout to Letter, but not Saved as Default, then all Dorico knows is that you want Letter for each existing part. It does not know that you want Letter for any new part layouts you create.
- Go to Layout Options.
- Select an existing part layout in the right panel.
- Set the Layout Type dropdown in the bottom left corner to Part.
- Click Save as Default.
Now any new part layouts should conform to the settings you’ve saved. Existing ones can be updated using the Reset to Saved Defaults button at the bottom of Layout Options, if necessary.
(And yes, just to be sure I added a pre-packaged string ensemble to a brand new Big Band project. All of the part layouts - including the string ones - come out with the wacky Custom paper size I’ve been using for a project all week, and which I saved as default a couple of days ago. The method by which you add players to the project is irrelevant.)
One of the things that I have hopes for in future-Dorico is a better way of describing and managing defaults.
In lay usage, default is a slippery word; I don’t particularly like its use to refer to saved settings (ie as saved defaults) as it increases the slipperiness.
Depending on the settings and the context, I want to apply a setting or group of settings to just this project (ie all flows or individual parts in it), all projects for this client, all projects using this type/size of ensemble, or all projects ever. I don’t want to describe any of these saved settings as default.
Anyway, just a weekend morning thought…
J
I appreciate that information, but now it is making me very angry this is how the system works. I have wasted countless hours because of this bug. There is a PREFERENCES option for default paper size. Obviously that is what should AUTOMATICALLY be used on any new players added. Otherwise, what is the point of such a preference?
This design choice is unbelievably parochial. Sorry to rant and I appreciate you are trying to be helpful, but this is just wrong.
Now that I know the secret answer, I won’t have this problem anymore, but how many others from North America have been banging their heads on their desks because of this? I bet I’m not the only one.
I know exactly what you are saying. I haven’t set any defaults because I am fearful of what other unintended consequences I might cause. The whole “default” thing is really spooky, and really makes no sense to a person who might find themselves doing a wide variety of projects that vary widely from a visual aspect. This software needs a proper library/templates capability where subsets of settings can be kept on file and easily applied en masse as needed for a particular project.
yes & no. On the face of it, I agree with you: odds are that if you have set a default paper size and overridden the program default, that’s what size part you want. But this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.
On the other hand, you can have a preferred size to print (based on a printer restriction), but that doesn’t necessarily mean you will print everything 1:1 on that paper. For instance, occasionally I preview 2-up jobs on regular letter and only after reviewing a physical print with a red pen do I commit to printing it full-scale on my Ledger paper which is comparably expensive. Having dorico default to Letter is not a bad thing, even though I print many, many scores on ledger.
Think also of Americans who don’t have access to 9x12 paper, so default printing is our standard letter sized paper, but you still want your default parts to be 9x12 since you still design them, but simply send those files off to print houses to be physically made.
In short, I think you’re ascribing a meaning to default paper size that isn’t quite the intent of that particular parameter, hence, as Leo pointed out, there is an option for adjusting default “layout” separately. Perhaps the preferences dialogue could make this distinction more clear in future.
Yes, I now realize that to be the case. But that means the parameter serves no useful purpose other than to confuse the issue. It is just plain wrong for a product shipping globally to keep reverting half the customer base to paper they will never use – unless they know the magic secret buried deep in the bowels of the program.
Paper size is such a basic thing that applies to every single user, not just advanced gurus. The system should not be doing this to people.
I now feel rather foolish for never understanding how it was working. All I knew was that I kept changing layouts to Letter but occasionally Acrobat would pop up messages about me asking for A4 when I only had letter paper in the printer. The documents came out decently, but always printing with wider margins than I had expected. I guess it should have been more apparent to me what was going on. But as I say, I had been rather deliberate in selecting letter paper in my layouts, so I thought it was some other problem with my system, unrelated to Dorico.
Any software product, especially those that want to take customers away from established products, really needs to get the basics right. Paper size is about as basic as it comes IMHO.
To be honest, I don’t think this is the issue you’re making it out to be.
Dorico tries to pick the obvious default size based on your locale/system prefs, and every layout can be resized to suit your needs. Layout options are comprehensive and well documented. Hopefully you won’t have any issues going forward.
No, I think we are talking about 2 different things. The article you linked is about PRINT, not about Layout settings. I never use the PRINT mode within Dorico. I always save to PDF and print using Acrobat.
The issue is that if one doesn’t know the secret trick of overriding the Layout factory defaults, they will keep getting some parts as A4, no matter what their locale settings say. As I now understand it, that will happen EVERY time you add a Player (which in turns adds a Layout,) and that will keep on happening until you learn the trick of disabling the factory default.
It IS a problem, That’s why this thread is 92 posts long and has been running for 4 years.
I will look into this and make sure I double-check what’s happening. If it is indeed the case (and I have no real reason to doubt you) that new layouts created automatically for new players are ending up with A4 page size chosen in Layout Options despite the preference being set to use US paper sizes, I would agree that is a bug and needs fixing. I will look into it.
Thank you. I think this is the scenario as I described above, but it may be something else. I know SOMETHING weird is happening and apparently I’m not the only one. If your testing doesn’t confirm this situation, I can try to recreate. However, as I have already followed Leo’s advice about setting my parts layout defaults, there is a chance that if I revert to factory settings it will not behave as it did before.
(As an aside, I must say I am highly impressed by the technology in this new forum system you are using. I started to compose this response at a restaurant using a rather undependable WiFi connection. The connection dropped before I could post it. I didn’t bother to reconnect as I was ready to leave. When I arrived home and returned to the forum on a completely different computer, the draft of my note was there waiting for me. Really clever stuff, that.)
@cparmerlee Its Discourse. It’s brilliant. I use it for all the forums I host and manage. It seems to be becoming a de facto standard. And open source!
Is there any update on this? Even after applying that “set as default” trick, it bit me again this weekend as I had to add a player to an existing score.
I have been systematically been going back through all my projects, re-editing layouts for letter paper, but more A4 layouts just keep showing up. I have probably had to change 50+ layouts so far and I’m finding more each week.
FWIW, I have my default part size set to Part (9.5"x12.5") and I don’t have any issues with it. (Yes, I know that’s not helpful in this thread, bear with me LOL) The Layout Option that I can’t get to stick is Bar Numbers / “Show bar numbers at rehearsal marks.” This drives me crazy as I often used to not catch this right away. I’ve saved it as the default for a Part layout, any part layouts that already exist in whatever template I’m using already have that setting selected, yet it still seems totally random if a new layout will have that setting checked. It’s now part of my routine that before I start work on parts I’ll select them all in Layout Options and make sure that’s checked.
Obviously this isn’t the same as the page size, but I just wanted to mention it in case there was some sort of bug with certain Layout Settings not being saved as defaults correctly, or not being correctly applied to new layouts.
I’ve tried to reproduce the problem and have been unable to thus far. I wonder whether perhaps you have the European page size saved in your saved default layout options? If you do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the zip file from the desktop here, that will include the saved layout options so I can take a look and see what’s saved in there.
I don’t believe I set any defaults in the Layout Options dialog until a couple of weeks ago in response to suggestions here. But still, whenever I add a new solo player, it is ALWAYS A4. If I click on Layout Type: Part, “Reset to Saved Defaults”, then that particular layout changes to Letter, but the next player I add is again A4.
A4 problem.dorico (720.2 KB)
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (2.0 MB)
Your saved layout options for parts definitely specify Letter-sized paper, and I find that if I use your saved defaults and start a new project, when I create new part layouts, they are indeed created with Letter-sized paper. So far as I can see everything is set up such that you should always get Letter-sized part layouts, so I’m not sure what might be going on for you, I’m afraid.