Hi all! I am beginning to write my third method book for drum set. I’m new to Dorico, but am hoping to write the entire book within the dorico software and avoid Adobe. As I dig deeper into it, I wonder what is the best set up for writing a lengthy book (100 or so pages) complete with columns of exercises, text, and some graphics. I would love to hear from the Dorico wizards what might be the best workflow for this, as in;
Is it better to create each page as an individual file? Or best to use one giant dorico file?
Should I treat each exercise as its own flow?
Is there a simple way of creating a master file that would allow me to change the font of an entire book? Sorry I have so many questions! Also if there’s a Dorico guru on here that wants to teach me a few lessons, I’d be ever so appreciative.
Welcome to the forum. Be warned: it’s possible, but this is not thhe best tool for the job. You’ll do a lot of fiddling with layout, and it’s easy to lose layout work if pages shift.
Thank you! So are you basically saying it’s better to use another program entirely for a book project, or better to use Dorico for the notation stuff, then export it to a layout/design program like Adobe?
Yes, exactly. InDesign or Affinity Publisher.
Ok cool! So when you’re exporting columns of exercises from Dorico, and moving them into InDesign, would you use the “slice” tool? Or some other method of exporting? In this setup would you basically use Dorico strictly for notation and then paste all of the text into InDesign from something like Microsoft Word? Thanks again!
It depends. Sometimes I export export entire pages as PDFs. Other times I export graphic slices as PDFs of partial pages.
And yes, I would do all (or nearly all) of the text elements using the Text Tool in InDesign.