separate above/below settings for staff/system text styles
Type
Functional
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Status
closed
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
I would love the ability to have separate settings for staff text elements to be placed above versus below the staff. Ditto with system text. Or the ability to add custom categories to the list of text styles. The idea being to have an easy way when placing a new element to get it to line up with other elements above the staff or below the staff as desired.
Comments
I particularly like the idea of text custom categories. I encountered cases when I had to assign to (staff) text at least three different kinds of strings: real staff text (performance indications), links to critical notes, special cases.
1) One possibility could to actually allow the user to add new text categories each with its text style.
2) Another, simpler, could be to include by default, say, 5 or 10 categories, simple called Text type 1, Text type 2, ..., leaving to the user what to use each for (in case he needs them).
Particularly important would be that:
3) The "Select similar items" right-click menu item would select only items of the same text category, to allow to format, move, delete all of them together and consistently.
Thanks,
M.
Could you describe some use cases (scenarios) for this feature?
I'm not sure if your talking about the general idea of something about Maurizio's specific elaboration, but my use case is quite simple. I'm entering some staff text, and I want to be able to choose whether it displays above or below the staff. Currently, some types of predefined text items show up above, some show below, and within each type, they line up nicely, because they all follow from the their own text styles. That's great for predefined text elements. I'm just asking fstaff text to fork into "Above Staff Text" and "Below Staff Text" (ditto with system text), so I can have some semblance of this with my own text elements.
I do like the idea of providing customizable text style categories above and beyond that, so you can can have a group of markings for, say, specifying specific mute types of bowing techniques, and all elements within a group would all share a text style. The customizable palettes that apparently are supported in newer versions is a step in the right direction for sure - all we really need would be for each newly added palette to also come with its own text style. Maybe that's already coming, but if not, I think it's a natural way to address this.
Marc, so you are wanting to assign a different style to any give staff or system text (similar to how you can make your own styles in Word)? And you would have different text styles for mute and bowing techniques that you would for other staff text?
That's the fancy version, yes. The basic version I originally asked for is just to have an "above" and "below" style, which at least helps in lining things up. But I'm getting greedy now, because custom styles seem like such a great idea. Consider: we have different text styles for dynamics versus chordsnames versus tempo markings versus measure numbers versus voltas, etc. No one questions the need for different styles for these specific purposes. I'm just saying, there may be other specific purposes that MuseScore cannot possibly foresee (my examples of mute and bowing markings were off the top of my head, but I'm sure every user would have his own list).
A model similar to how one defines one's own styles in Word would work well, I think. And even better would be if it could be tied into the customizable palette mechanism, as I suggested. Create a palette and it automatically creates a style, and adding an element to the palette automatically applies that style to the element. The end result being a palette containing a grouping of related marks that are all styled the same way, and there would be one place to go to edit the style applied to those elements.
One use case is I am setting some drum set exercises for a friend. Some need lots of L's and R's directly above or below the note and they need to be all nicely aligned in order to look good. Also there are times to help with noting rhythm wanting to add e's and a's below notes (to help indicate which 16th note they are falling on) this is the same basic idea. Having a style that could place them at the same height below or above would be helpful. Although there may be times that I would want to do multiple rows of fingerings below a row of notes in nice orderly lines (so a way to align multiple selected items would be nice instead). I'll attach an example.
I think it was requested here too?
Custom text styles are implemented in V2 since long.
Can we consider the issue fixed?
M.
Well, you can create the style, and you can add a palette item to add text of that style to your score. All that is needed to complete the picture would be a way to define keyboard shortcus for palette items. Without that, it remains harder to enter staff text above than below (or vice ersa, depending on the default Staff Text style.
If allowing custom palette items to have user-definable keyboard shortcuts just isn't in the cards, then I would say, this particular use case is important enough that we should consider defining a new pre-defined text style with a pre-defined keyboard shortcut. In fact, I'd siggestthat this use case is important enough that we should comsider making this an "official" text style whether or not we also allow custom palette items to have user-defined keyboard shortcuts. Why make every user re-invent this particular wheel?
I think the issue is well understood at this point. Note there is a separate issue just for lyrics, but since they are "special", I think leaving this open separately is not a bad idea.
Well, you can create the style, and you can add a palette item to add text of that style to your score.
It doesn't work, or no longer works, with recent builds. When we add text with a custom style to a palette, and drag and drop this new palette item in the score, the custom style is not applied to the newly added text.
I think that predefined above/below settings would be very useful. Adding text below a staff is a very common task.
Related discussion: //musescore.org/en/node/22612
I believe Miwarre had actually implemented some sort of facility to allow each text style to have above & below settings at one point, but it became too out of date with the trunk to maintain. I'm still hopeful to see that revisited at some point in the future.
But meanwhile: how about simply adding a new predefined style in MuseScore, "Below Staff", and create a new palette item "Below" to allow texts of this type to be added easily? This would be a very easy fix, and there is no reason it wouldn't be compatible with whatever facility gets added later. After all, it would just be another text style like any other.
But meanwhile: how about simply adding a new predefined style in MuseScore, "Below Staff", and create a new palette item "Below" to allow texts of this type to be added easily?
Yes, I think it would be a very good idea. I personally searched a while in the built-in functionalities for such a style when I started using MuseScore, because I thought it was basic enough to be somewhere in the properties.
Use case example: indications about pedal below the bass clef staff, like ped. simile, Con pedale, Senza pedale, etc.
Yes, I did implement an Above/Below setting for several (not all) types of elements; it was reasonably functional by May 2013, but at some point, it was deemed too big a change by the core group of developers and dropped.
The relevant branch (now greatly out of date) is still on my github space, though.
M.
For reference: https://github.com/mgavioli/MuseScore/tree/Placement_above_below_staff
This has been in place for quite a while.
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.