Multimeasure rest regressions in MuseScore 2.0

• May 3, 2015 - 15:28

Two issues here—one with selection, one with display.

A standard way to select a range is to click one note or rest, hold down the Shift key, and use the right or left arrow key to extend the selection. (I'm all the more likely to do this because holding down Shift and clicking not exactly on a note head now leads to a multiple note selection, not a range selection—perhaps something I should file a bug report for? Never mind for now.)

However, in MuseScore 2, if the initial note or rest is just before a multimeasure rest, attempting to select to the left—that is, holding down Shift and hitting the left arrow—actually ends up selecting the entire score to the right. Bug No. 1.

Bug No. 2: in MuseScore 2 multimeasure rests are much wider than they are in MuseScore 1, or in any printed sheet music I've ever seen. Aside from the obvious compatibility issue—layout in a score from 1.3 being different in 2.0—this makes for ugly and difficult-to-read music, with the multimeasure rests often taking up most of the space on a line. It may not be entirely erroneous to think that the number of measures in a rest should have some effect on its width, but in MuseScore 2 this is taken way too far. I'd rather have them all be one measure wide again.


Comments

I don't understand what you are saying. I remember a bug where trying to extend a selection into a multimeasure rest would extend to the end of the score in some of the earlier nightly or beta builds, but this was fixed months ago, and I can't reproduce it now. Can you post a specific score and precise steps to reproduce the problem?

As for the width, I'm also not following. Multimeasure rests were not only "one measure wide" in 1.3, nor is that the norm in printed music I am familiar with. Width of a measure is proportional to contents, for one thing, so "one measure wide" is meaningless as a measure. The default widths in 2.0 look pretty standard to me, but you can always change the default minimum in Style / General / Score / Minimum width, and you can always override for any given multimeasure rest with stretch.

Here for example is what I see if I turn on mmrests for the score I have open right now - all default settings:

mmrest-width.png

I can't imagine wanting these much narrower?

Again, if you have a specific score where you think there is a problem with the defaults, feel free to post. It has been suggested that a "Maximum width" style setting would make a nice enhancemewnt, I agree, but lack of such a setting isn't a bug, and there was no such setting in 1.3 either.

In reply to by Isaac Weiss

Well, you have a line break set, so everything is being stretched to fill thew width of the page. The rests wouldn't be that wide if you didn't do that. To me, the 1.3 version looks like a bug that was fixed - the stretch was applied equally to the measures with notes rather than keeping them a more sensible width and letting the mmrest take the bulk of the stretcvh.

If you really prefer extremely wide measures, you can decrease the stretch of the mmrest, but I think it looks better as is. In practice, this wouldn't be an issue very often, because you presumably wouldn't be placing line breaks at arbitrarily odd places like this.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

But I think it's wrong for the multimeasure rest to "take up the bulk of the stretch." Note that I didn't say that I thought the width of multimeasure rests was ideally handled in 1.3, but that I'd rather have that than this. The ideal lies somewhere in between.

As a matter of fact, reducing stretch (and increasing the stretch of the other measures on the line) is exactly what I've been doing. And I don't place line breaks at arbitrarily odd places, but rather at sensible, consistent places to get the nicest-looking sheet music—specifically, to get an approximately consistent number of measures on each line, counting a multimeasure rest as one measure (the Add/Remove Line Breaks tool gets confused by this).

In reply to by Isaac Weiss

I would say what you are doing *is* arbitrarily odd. Deliberately underfilling systems to get the same number of measures per line is counter to standard engraving practice, which calls for you to try to fill systems consistently according to note spacing, not number of measures per system. The current algorithm for stretching mmrests is optimzied to work well on a line that is close to full - which would be the default if you weren't deliberately underfilling systems. Changing the algorithm to work different in the cases where you are deliberately choosing to underfill systems would almost certainly produce less optimal results in the default case, which would not be good.

So for epople who simply use the defaults, they won't see a problem. Only those who choose to deliberately underfill systems may have to play with stretch - and then, only if if they prefer seeing unnecessarily stretched out "regular" measures. If that sort of stretched out is the look you are going for throughout the part, you should consider changing the minimum measure width and/or minimum note spacing settings in your Style options.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

FWIW, though, there probably *is* room for improvement in these algorithms. It seems when multimeasure rests are present, the minimum distance settings I mentioned don't really have any apparent effect. And the rests don't just take some of the stretch - they take it all. Most likely, if improvements were made on these counts for the sake of the default cases, it would also have a beneficial effect in the cases of underfull systems as well. Probably worth filing an issue to flag it as something worth looking at down the road.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

The process that Zack takes is the same process I take as well. I was noticing the difference in mmrest as well and thought it was a bug. Maybe we are odd in the process we take in producing our music, but I think there should be some option for controlling mmrests regardless of if they are correct as is.

Take a look at these excerpts from two different instrument parts I created using the new MuseScore 2.0.1:

MMresttest1.png
MMresttest2.png

Two different layouts at the same location in the music. Why does one have a longer mmrest than the other? I'd much rather have what is shown in the first one rather than the second one.

I have tried checking all the style options - even saved the style from one and uploaded to the other - and still no change. The only thing I thought of was that maybe it was because of the smaller cued notes, but it wasn't. I just couldn't get number 2 to look like 1.

I also noticed we can't click measure properties on mmrests anymore (I thought we could in previous versions, but I might be wrong about this.) If we were able to access measure properties for mmrests, then we could just reduce the mmrest stretch.

Attachment Size
MMresttest1.mscz 22.03 KB
MMresttest1.png 20.84 KB
MMresttest2.mscz 21.57 KB
MMresttest2.png 19.85 KB

In reply to by Sean Oliveras

I'm not sure why these come out different. Probably a bug somewhere, worth posting as an issue.

Anyhow, I don't quite follow your comment about stretch. Why would you need Measure Properties just to change stretch? Just do it directly using "{" / "}", or the Layout menu. So if you prefer your mmrests narrower / regulart measures wider, just change the stretch or either. Or am I missing something?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I tracked down why those two scores are different: it appears you have set the stretch on the mmrest in the first to 0.2 (eight presses of "{"), whereas the second is 0.9 (one press of "{"). Apparently "reset stretch" doesn't affect mmrests, so that's a bug worth filing.

BTW, regarding reasons for preferring one or the other: compare measure 56 to measure 49 in both. The two measures have similar content (two half notes) and thus should have similar width. That the what the current algorithm seems to be trying to accomplish, although as I mentioned previously, it's probably a bit overeager. It treats the mmreast as being equivalent to a measure with that number of beats, so it scales linearly with number of measures, when maybe it could be logarithmic or something.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I should apologize: I didn't really know about the { and } feature. That makes a world of difference and helps a lot. When I mentioned accessing Measure properties, I was thinking of just using the layout stretch feature in that menu. But, nvm.

And about the algorithm, though I wouldn't have any input on this specifically, maybe it's something that can be discussed further something later.

Thank you for looking into this. Shall I submit a "reset stretch doesn't affect mmrests" issue?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hmm, actually, now I see what you mean about the selection. it seems to be dependent on the order in which you do things, or whether your initial selection gets interpreted as a single element or as a range, and relates to your other observation about differences in behavior of shift+click. Can you submit this as an issue?

In reply to by Zynette

I'm curious if you have a source for your claim in #1. That's not my experience at all. I am quite accustomed to see longer rests take more space than shorter rests. Not *directly* proportional to length of course, but it isn't in MuseScore, either. It's only "slightly" proportional to length of rest from what I can see. The image I posted above looks very typical to me.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

i don't have here the right score to scann. it was a concerto for french horn and wind orchestra in my remembering... we had beetween some first reharsal mark in the begining a lot of mesure to count between 50-70 and it was the same space for each one...

here are some example of non proportionnal length multimesure rest length
http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usimg/f/f7/IMSLP14865-Fantaisie_Pas…
(flute scanned part, between the first two cue first 4 mm rest and then 6 mmrest that at my eyes semm to have the same length)

http://conquest.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/c/cd/IMSLP36525-PMLP2379…
non proportional but with "baton drawing " so that may substitute

http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/2/28/IMSLP37768-PMLP0357…
2 mm rest non proportionnal

http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usimg/e/e0/IMSLP54832-PMLP15393-Moz…
i think that is my best non proportional example where as numbers are 'big'...

i think that best example are found in concerto part score (not soloist !) , at begining of piece with a lot of silence, with rehearsal mark
when i find my part i talked at the begining of the message i scan it... (just the first page, i think it is still copyrighted..)

In reply to by Zynette

Maybe we are talking about different things. yu can't compare measure sizes between systems - I was talking about different multimeasure rests *on the same system*. That's the place I am aware of where MuseScore does proportional spacing, I found it to be virtually universal on the IMSLP parts I checked. See for instance this excerpt from Rite of Spring:

mmrest-ros.png

In reply to by Isaac Weiss

Not sure. I might have shift+clicked the first rest, or maybe used the keyboard to navigate to it. Just mention in the issue report that it does seem to depend on the exact sequence of operations. Maybe suggest stsarting by press Esc a couple of times to make sure nothing is selected already.

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