Flow headings automatically display the number and title of each flow immediately above their first system. Templates for flow headings allow you to achieve consistent formatting by applying the same arrangements of flow heading frames to multiple flows in different layouts.
Flow heading templates exist as part of page template sets. By default, Dorico Pro provides a single Default flow heading template in each page template set, which contains tokens to display the flow number and flow title; in a new project, this appears as “1. Flow 1”. This is used automatically for all flow headings.
By default, flow headings use the Flow Title paragraph style, which you can edit in the Paragraph Styles dialog.
You can customize the default flow heading template, such as by changing the tokens it contains or by adding extra frames, and create new flow headings. You can also change the flow heading template used for whole pages and override flow headings for individual flows.
Any changes you make to flow heading templates in the flow heading editor are automatically reflected on the pages that use those flow heading templates. For example, if you delete a token from a flow heading template in the flow heading editor, that token is removed from all the pages that use the flow heading template, so long as those pages do not have page template overrides.
Flow headings are automatically inserted inside music frames above the first system of the flow to which they apply, meaning they do not have a fixed vertical position on the page like other frames and follow the music if it moves. They also occupy vertical space within music frames. You can change the margins for the gap above/below flow headings for whole layouts, for whole pages by inserting flow heading changes, and for individual flows by overriding their flow headings.
Flow headings only appear in page template music frames, they never appear in layout music frames.
When Frames
is selected in the Engrave toolbox, frames in flow headings appear with dashed lines instead of solid lines to help you identify them. You can move flow heading frames in the same ways as moving any other frames.
Changing individual flow headings in layouts is considered a page template override in Dorico Pro, which is a type of page format change. This includes, for example, deleting a token from a single flow heading on one page, rather than in the flow heading editor. Pages with page template overrides no longer get updated if you edit the page template or flow heading template and are not automatically deleted, even if they are empty because the layout became shorter.