Sharp shortcut

• Dec 28, 2013 - 21:30

I don't know if this already exists. One would think it does.
I looked at keyboard shortcuts but couldn't see it.

Entering chord symbols, say G#.
Shouldn't we be able to hit the number 3 key (above 'w') and have the sharp symbol appear?

TIA


Comments

Do you mean literally pressing 3 as opposed to "#" (Shift+3)? That doesn't work indeed, But using "#" does. In fact's, it's the only way to enter a sharp sing - trying to use the Unicode character directly screws up the chord recognition system. I can't tell if you are literally requesting that "3" work also, or perhaps you are trying to use "#" but are finding it doesn't convert to a true sharp sign. In the latter case, that would be because something else about your chord symbol isn't recognized, like if you are using the wrong abbreviation for major or minor given your selected chord description file.

For 2.0, MuseScore will be much more forgiving about how you type chord symbols - any of the common abbreviations for major and minor work, for example - but you still need to use "#" and not "3" for chord symbols.

Extending the parser to allow "3" as a substitute for "#" might not be such a hot idea. There are enough hacks and special cases as it is without trying to get it to understand that the first "3" in Bb1335 really means "3" but that the second is a sharp.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for the info Marc.

Yes I was referring to just the number 3, (not shift 3) to get the sharp sign.

If *lowly* Band-in-a-Box (BIAB) can handle it, I assume Musescore can too?

Here's what happens in BIAB when you want to enter Bb13#5.
You enter 'bb1335' and you magically get 'Bb13#5'.

How does it do it?
I would hazard a guess; when three is following one, it knows to enter '3'.
When three is entered in all other cases it knows to enter '#".

In reply to by ScoreMark

Oh, no doubt it's possible. I'm just saying, knowing the parsing code as I do, it's already full of ugly hacks to support all the illogical but common things that it *has* to support, and this would make it that much uglier. A lot of work that would also make the code that much harder to maintain, just to save an occasional press of Shift in cases where anyone who hasn't used BIAB would probably never even think to try omitting, doesn't seem worth it to me.

FWIW, one of the things that allows BIAB to handle this is that its parser is much simpler than the one in MuseScore 2.0. It's nowhere near as flexible in terms of being able to recognize all the variations that MuseScore will support. All that flexibility comes at price - the parser is at this point already much more complex than I'd like. But again, no doubt it is technically *possible* to do it in MuseScore.

In reply to by ScoreMark

You have to remember that all keyboards do not have # above 3.

My UK keyboard has the £ sign above 3 and # next to Enter.

I suspect that other language keyboards will have other variations.

In order to accomodate your request a mechanism would have to be found to overcome this hardware fact of life.

At present I think the programming team's efforts would be better spent on solving more serious issues, although I'm not against the idea per se.

Just don't regard it as a priority :)

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

Completely agree it isn't a priority, but for the record if you have the standard wireless Mac keyboard that comes with most iMacs, it doesn't have a hash sign assigned specifically to a key that you can type directly. You have to type 'alt 3' - so currently I have no easy way to type a sharp (I am doing a lead sheet that needs F#mi for example).

In reply to by samduffysinger

Are you saying Alt+3 does not work, then? What country's version of the iMac is this? There is a known issue getting the "#" character on some particular models - the ones sold in Belgium and/or the UK, perhaps?

Or maybe you are saying you don't find Alt+3 "easy"? But I don't see how it's any harder than Shift+3, which is how most of the world would type a "#".

EDIT: btw, I see the score you uploaded to musescore.com. Looks like you successfully entered the # character. Hiwever, it was nit converted to an actual sharp sign because the rest of the chord symbol you type is not recognized. You typed "-" for minor, whereas the chord description file you have loaded expects "mi". See Chord name in the Handbook for mire on the available chord description files and the abbreviations each uses.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi Marc, wow that was quick, it is Sunday night!

Thanks, I noticed the issue with chord symbols not being recognised and fixed that - I have reuploaded the score. I have previously only used musescore for classical scores but recently started to use it for jazz lead sheets.

The only way I could get a # into my chords was to copy it from another chord (a helpful suggestion from another musescore user on the forum), luckily I had another chord that included it after I transposed from concert, otherwise I would have been really stuck!

I am using musescore 1.3 on an iMac running OS Mavericks in the UK using a british keyboard. Typing alt 3 doesn't result in anything and my keyboard doesn't have a hash key as I mentioned. This is common with the small compact wireless mac and MacBook keyboards. I find 'alt 3' easy as it is how I have to get a # on everything, so if it worked here that would be great.

Sam

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Hi,

Always using 'alt 3', which works largely everywhere, except when I am sitting in any text fields in musescore. So if I have highlighted a note and pressed cmd K to enter a chord symbol, I can type the letters and numbers but when I press 'alt 3' nothing happens - it just isn't recognised. It works fine elsewhere e.g. in MS Word, on Twitter, or here posting in an online forum # # # : )

hope that helps

Sam

In reply to by samduffysinger

There is an open issue for this: #13896: [Mac] Cannot insert sharp on chords. I don't know if it's been definitely determined whether this works in the nightly builds of the development version - what will eventually become 2.0. Can you try downloading one and trying (see Downloads link in menu at right of this page)? It won't mess up your current installation in any way.

I would imagine another workaround would be to just copy and paste text from any other application in which this *does* work.

I wonder if the problem is inherent in the Qt libraries used by MuseScore (as well as a number of other programs)?

Hi there, good thought but I tried deactivating the alt3 shortcut for 'enter 3rd above' and it didn't work, even when I restarted Musescore and checked that the shortcut preference change had been saved.

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