Key press for courtasy accidental
I know there is already a key to respell a selected note (very useful), but if there is one thing I miss from Finale, it's the ability to press a key to force the display of the current accidental for courtesy purposes.
I know you can simply select the note and press the appropriate accidental button on the UI, or drag an accidental over from the pallet box on to the note and it will display. So it's a very, very minor complaint. But I still miss it all the same when my mouse hand is on the keyboard entering notes.
Comments
You can customize keyboard shortcuts for most commands in MsueScore in Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts. So simply define a shortcut for "Note input: flat", "Note input: natural", and "Note input: sharp".
It's been suggested that a command to autoamtically figure out what courtesy accidental would be needed and just add that might be nice too someday, and I agree. What I'd like to see even more, though, is an automatic facility to add courtesy accidentals to an entire passage, based on some rule (perhaps customizable). The plugin framework almost makes this possible, maybe at this point now it does? But it used to be too limited. Anyhow, it's something I am definitely considering trying to add at some point.
Also, BTW, to add accidentals or other elements from the palette, drag is rarely required. The more efficient way is normally to select the note (or multiple notes) then double click the palette element.
In reply to You can customize keyboard by Marc Sabatella
Heuchi wrote a new version of his courtesy accidental plugin for MuseScore 2
http://musescore.org/en/project/courtesyaccidentals
In reply to Heuchi wrote a new version of by [DELETED] 5
Oh, wow! The old one I remember was limited in that it couldn't actually add the accidentals- just mark the locations. But this one actually works - fantastic!
In reply to Oh, wow! The old one I by Marc Sabatella
I'll have to try that. Can plug-ins be assigned to keystrokes too?
[Edit] yup!
As to having musescore figure out the accidentals in the future. Doesn't it already know the accidental of the note whether or not it is displayed?
It knows the pitch value of the note and it knows that an accidental has already been displayed earlier in that measure or in the Key Signature and so not to re-display it. What it doesn't know is whether you want all accidentals re-labelled, only the first of the next measure, all the firsts of all subsequent measures, also if an accidental was used on the other stave etc. i.e. you'd need a robust (and, possibly selectable) algorithm for different scenarios.
In reply to It knows the pitch value of by underquark
I see, thanks!
In reply to It knows the pitch value of by underquark
Right, and that's exactly what heuchi's plugin does. Well, robust / reaosnable, not selectable: anywhere in next measure, same octave only. Obviously, extending to be more flexible would be nice. But for now, I am beyond thrilled to have this. It will save hours of work for me - courtesy accidentals added throughout my whole score in just a couple of seconds! You don't even really need a keybaord shortcut for this, since you're likely to do it just once per score.
As for a built-in command to add an courtesy accidental to one specific note, this should not be difficult, and indeed, a PR was sunmitted for that once upon a time. It never got merged because we could never agree on the user interface. It was originally going to be tied to the parentheses icon in the Accidentals palette, but this isn't so good if you don't want parentheses. So the idea was floating to add an other icon in the palette, but things kind of fizzled.
Meanwhile, though, between adding the accidental manually after defining a shortcut - and certainly you know as well as MuseScore what accidental to add - and the plugin that basically does this for you score-wide in an instant, I'm much less concerned than I otherwise would have been.
In reply to Right, and that's exactly by Marc Sabatella
The plugin is nice, but still, I think something should be said for default behavior. Unless the plugin is going to somehow included with musescore. I think it would be good for everyone to benefit off the bat. For the record, finale doesn't put parenthesis around the accidental with their button.
In reply to The plugin is nice, but by Joshua Pettus
I'm am indeed inclined to incorporate similar functionality into the main program in a future release, hopefully with some customizability.