Blocking

Blocking is recorded as yellow notes on the page (Ent PS, X To DS OP, [CJ] Rise). Lx1go composes them from buttons so you rarely need the keyboard.

The Add Blocking panel

Tap the Blocking button (the walking figure ) in the tool bar. While the panel is open, the left rail shows a Time button for dropping a timestamp without leaving blocking placement (see Text & Timestamps). The panel builds the blocking text from your selections, previewing it at the bottom:

• Actor field: the narrow box to the left of the modifier chips. Type an actor’s initials (e.g. CJ) and the composed label gains a [CJ] prefix. Leave blank for a blocking with no named actor. Tap All under the field to fill it with ALL for company-wide blocking; the small ✕ in the field clears it.
• Modifier chips, in three rows:
  • Row 1: Ent (enter), Ex (exit), mutually exclusive.
  • Row 2: ∫ (sit / down), Rise, mutually exclusive.
  • Row 3: X (cross), To, mutually exclusive. Selecting To prefixes the position with To … (X To DS PS); it un-ticks itself after each placement since “To” describes one move.
• Position grid: a 3×5 stage map (upstage at the top). The two intermediate columns (OP/C, P/C on the OP template; SR/C, SL/C on SL) sit between the sides and centre for finer placement. One position at a time; tap again to clear. Edge buttons above and below the grid select a whole region: US across the top, DS across the bottom, and Full Stage for a whole-stage move. Every label on this grid, and every modifier chip label, is customisable in Settings; blank a field to hide that button.
• Custom text: anything the buttons can’t say (a character name, “slowly”). It’s appended to the composed text and persists between placements until you clear it.

Then tap the script where the move happens. The blocking box centres on your tap, snaps to its page edge (opposite side to cues), and connects with a faint straight line.

The first time you place a blocking, a card at the top of the page reminds you to tap the script; tap Got it and it won’t show again. Your selections stay put after placing, so repeating Ent PS for a crowd scene is just tap, tap, tap. When you reopen the panel it starts from the last blocking you placed in this show during this session.

The panel header has a drag handle , a pause button and a close button. Pause (the button flips to play ) stops page taps from placing blocking, so you can select, scroll or tidy the page without closing the panel. Drag the panel by its header and on release it snaps to the nearest of 8 positions around the edge (the four corners, top-centre, bottom-centre, left-centre, right-centre) and reopens there next time. Docked at top-centre or bottom-centre, Add Blocking switches to a flat layout: two columns side by side, modifiers (actor field, chips, custom text) on the left and the stage-position grid on the right. Every other position keeps the taller single-column layout.

A placement fires when your finger lifts, not when it lands, so bringing in a second finger to pinch-zoom while Add Blocking is open cancels the tap and hands the gesture to the pinch instead of dropping a stray blocking. As with cues, a tap in the gutter (the margin outside the show’s left/right axes) never drops a new blocking: it selects an existing element there if your tap lands near one, otherwise it does nothing. Anchors only drop in the text area between the two axes.

Blocking lines

Blocking lines are faint and straight so they stay legible next to cue lines. Line opacity, width and colour come from the blocking’s style preset (Blocking by default). Edit that preset in Setup → Styles to adjust every blocking that uses it at once. Turn a single blocking’s line off with the Connecting Line switch in its properties.

Blocking styling

Each blocking has its own style preset, like cues do. If you want all Act 2 blocking in a distinct colour so it stands out during rehearsal notes, open the blocking’s properties dialog and tap the Style tile to pick a different preset. If the preset’s Word highlight is anything other than None, blocking anchored on a recognised word gets the same word mark cues do. See Styles.

Overlap-safe placement

If your tap would drop a new blocking on top of an existing one in the same column, Lx1go nudges it up or down (whichever keeps the anchor closer to your tap) into the first clear slot. Blocking in the opposite column is ignored, so the two sides can share the same line of the script without shifting.

Update Selected

Fix an existing blocking by tapping it on the page while the Add Blocking panel is open, adjusting the buttons, and tapping Update Selected . The blocking is updated in place with the new text and button choices, keeping its style and connecting line.

Editing any blocking

Two equivalent routes:

• From the bottom menu bar: tap a blocking to select it, then Edit . The Edit Blocking dialog opens with the style picker and the same actor field, modifier chips, position grid and custom text field. Changes apply live, and are kept even if you close the dialog right after typing. Duplicate copies the blocking, button choices included; Delete confirms then removes.
• Double-tap a blocking on the page to open the same dialog directly.

The button choices (actor, modifiers, “To”, position, custom text) are saved with the blocking, so reopening it (from Edit, double-tap or Update Selected) shows exactly the buttons you last picked. Blocking from older versions of the app is read back from its text instead.