Above/Below System

• Sep 8, 2013 - 08:09

Partly inspired by this , what about an 'Above/Below System' function for elements?

It would be useful for tempo texts, I think.

Comments

• Sep 8, 2013 - 08:16

Would be usefull for pretty much every element, including lyrics, chord names, etc. but can't it already be influenced via style Settings?

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• Sep 8, 2013 - 19:11

Yes, you can indeed create custom text styles and apply them after the fact to elements to get this effect. If you know you'll do this a bunch, you could try creating a custom palette item. So say you want a "below staff tempo text". Define a "below staff" text style, add a tempo text normally, edit the text and give it your new style, then add that to your palette. Once on your palette, you can add these as easily as any other palette item. A bit cumbersome, but it works well enough that for everything except lyrics, this is perhaps good enough. For lyrics, though, there really needs to be a way to directly type them above or below staff.

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• Sep 9, 2013 - 16:48

So much so that the standard solution is to *always* place these above the staff for vocal scores by default. And that much is easily doable in MuseScore by customizing the appropriate styles.

On the other hand, for mixed vocal / instrumental scores, you really want only the vocal staves affected, and MuseScore doesn't currently support different defaults per staff (although eventually maybe it should).

Also, while the idea of X to flip above/below is nice and I'd certainly welcome it for more items, it doesn't in itself allow any control of exactly where these things go: how *far* above or below. Really, there needs to be as Miwarre has proposed - separate above and below settings in the text style. Then X would have a known place to flip to. And if/when there becomes a way to control defaults on a per-staff basis, it could just be a matter of saying, "for this staff, dynamics use the 'above' setting" - simple radio buttons to specify above/below for the various element types on each staff.

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• Sep 26, 2014 - 09:45

Direction is revealed in Inspector as Up or Down only for the elements that actually flip themselves, e.g., staccatissimo, marcato, fermata, etc.

For elements that do not change or reverse their shape, using x to 'flip' them is revealed instead in Inspector as 'Anchor'; Direction per se does not change.

I cannot say whether this is an important distinction for what's going on under the hood, but I did think it important to mention in the interest of clarity.

On a related note - at least I think it's related! - how is it that X and Y adjustments using a percentage relative to a reference point came to be eliminated from the dialog box for Text Styles?

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• Oct 3, 2014 - 15:39

"how is it that X and Y adjustments using a percentage relative to a reference point came to be eliminated from the dialog box for Text Styles?"

I, for one, am glad the extra Relx/RelY option is gone. I never knew which one to use (offset or Rel), MM or Space, to adjust things. Combine that with the "snap to grid" option in the Inspector and you have quite fine control.

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• Oct 3, 2014 - 17:05

Decisions to remove features are never taken lightly, but indeed, simplification of the interface is sometimes a valid reason, as long as there is still another way to accomplish whatever used to be done with the feature in question. With respect to relX and relY, I believe the perception is that the main use was to have differently-aligned text in different places within a text frame, and the better way to support that is by having frames within frames. Something like that.

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• Sep 26, 2014 - 08:20

@Marc Sabatella: I tried your steps but it doesn't seem to work. I want to have an item on a custom palette that allows me to drag and drop text below the system. Here's what I do:

  • I go to Style | Text... and create a new text style with custom offsets.
  • In my score, I add staff text.
  • I select this text and change its style in the Inspector dialog, so my custom text style applies to it.
  • I add this text on a custom palette with Ctrl+Shift+Drag.
  • Now I can use my new item. I drag and drop it in the score to add text below the system.

Result: the text is added, but it doesn't have my custom style. In the Inspector dialog, I see that its style is the first listed in the list box (that is Title). So I must choose manually my custom style, making useless the new item on my custom palette.

Is it a bug or my steps are incomplete?

Thanks.

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• Sep 26, 2014 - 16:08

Unfortunately, it seems custom styles are not compatible with plaettes. I guess because custom styles are specific to a score but plaettes need to be pervasive. So instead I've been creating the text normally then changing style via Inspector.

It would be worth considering adding "Below Staff" as a built-in text and adding a corresponding item to the palette. It's a very easy partial soution. But I also understand that partial solutions are sometimes not desirable because then you have be concerned about whether/how to support them when the full solution is implemented. I'm not sure there would be a conflict in this case though.

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