Staff Text or System Text is the general purpose text, it is also the foundation element on which a few other types of text are built on.
Different types of text-based objects are not interchangeable: They have distinct property fields that serves different purpose besides engraving or visual display. To decide which type of text you want, see Text types.
To add a Staff Text or System Text to the score, use one of the following methods:
This will create an empty bounding box for text entry. Press Esc or click on an empty space outside the box to exit.
Apart from their indicative use, staff and system text also have optional playback properties: see below.
Summary of differences:
Text style | Applies to? | Playback (if applicable) | Appears in Instrument parts? |
---|---|---|---|
Staff text | Staff only | Staff only | Staff instrument only |
System Text | All system staves | All system staves | All instruments |
Staff Text is applied to one staff (or Grand staff) in the score, and is indicative only for that staff; any playback effect associated with the text is limited in the same way. The text will appear in the corresponding instrument part.
If you choose to hide empty staves, any staff text belonging to an empty staff will also be hidden.
The regular properties of the text, such as font, size, italics etc, can be viewed and updated directly in the inspector, but staff text can also have properties related to playback.
Staff text can, for example, be used to apply indications such as Solo or Pizzicato to one staff in a score. Depending on what the instruction of the staff text is, playback of that staff at the text location can sometimes be altered to match the instruction. The playback properties of a staff text can be accessed in two ways:
The dialog window that opens contains tabs for the following playback properties:
When staff text is copied and pasted elsewhere in the score, or if it is added to a custom palette, the playback properties are also copied.
System text is applied to one staff in the score, but is indicative for every staff in the system. Any associated playback properties are applied to the whole system. The text will appear in all instrument parts.
System text is never hidden by the hide empty staves feature.
To add or edit Swing: