1a) Do you need to possibility to mark individual fret marks as bold / italics / underlined
OR
1b) "Just" turn the whole font bold / italics / underlined?
2) Underline: I would rule it out ruthlessly! Underline has no place in typography, it is an unfortunate left-over of the typing machine time, when there was little else available for emphasis. In particular, in tablatures, the added line segments below the fret marks -- running along the string lines -- would make for a very cluttered and confused output.
3) I have quite a poor sight myself; I doubt that either bold or italics would make the text any clearer in general, and in particular in tabs, where there is no word context to help. The upright normal is, in the great majority of cases, the most readable style of a typeface. If the text is hard to read for a particular usage, the "real" solution is to make it larger, not fancier.
@Saitenpicker : thanks for the additional clarification.
In principle it would be relatively simple to add check boxes for Bold and Italics, pass the additional properties to the font engine and leave to it to sort out the details.
In practice, with the exception of FreeSerif, for which the bold and the italics fonts are installed with MS, for all the other typefaces used in MS tablatures, the bold and the italics would be synthesised by the engine, with quite sub-optimal results (in particular for the italics, which is almost impossible to synthesise decently).
In addition, for the historic typefaces (6 out of 8 currently available) which are exampled on historic sources, those variants would make little sense and would certainly look 'odd'.
With these assumptions, I can probably arrive at an extended tablature configuration dialogue box, but I expect the results to be in most cases unsatisfactory, which would make the change itself debatable and cause for more arguments (and not particularly compelling to implement :( ).
If the main reason for this is reading ease (which I would perfectly understand), I still suggest experimenting with the staff space size (I regularly use 2.0mm for tablatures) and font size (10pt?).
Here is what I did, but your mileage may vary. I right clicked on the staff and went to "Staff Properties". By changing the scale in "Staff Properties", you change the size of whole thing. If you go into "Staff Properties" and then click on the "Advanced Style Properties" button, you can change the font and the font size without making the actually staff bigger. I have just figured this out and am playing around with it, so I don't have it looking just the way I want yet.
+1 Bold checkbox for the tab text. But thanks yonah_ag for the tip about making the staff properties line color gray. It does help for tab-only scores.
Thanks but that doesn't work here, (MS 2.3.2), as although all tab numbers can be selected there are no font settings available to apply. That's why I wondered if it may be easier in MS 3.
Hello, first post on a Musescore issue. Hope this one isn't dead yet...
I would dearly love to have the ability to bold individual tab numbers to indicate what should be played by the thumb. When I learn or write a song, I like to enter the entire thing with as much help in the score as I can put in, and having the ability to bold certain tab "notes" would be awesome. For an example, I have a couple finger style books by Mark Hanson ("The Art of Solo Fingerpicking" and "The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking") that use this in the tab... very useful!
@agfrag: That's another good case for bold TAB although individual bold numbers may be harder than simply using a completely bold TAB font. In the meantime you can either use colour, (easy), or text bolding, (tedious) as these examples show:
I want to register something here too. I work with one of the largest guitar publishers in the world, and have done all my books with them with Sibelius, which I have never been happy with. So I changed to Musescore, and this is MUCH better! BUT, the publisher is not happy with how light the tab numbers are, and if not fixed I might have to go back to Sibelius! Otherwise they love what they are seeing. So, please, please, please, give us the choice to make the general tab bold.
The Renaissance lute tab is GREAT! Very bold, and a nice font, but the publisher doesn't want that font for this project.
Best wishes to all who work at Musescore, you are doing incredible work for the music community!
Comments
1a) Do you need to possibility to mark individual fret marks as bold / italics / underlined
OR
1b) "Just" turn the whole font bold / italics / underlined?
2) Underline: I would rule it out ruthlessly! Underline has no place in typography, it is an unfortunate left-over of the typing machine time, when there was little else available for emphasis. In particular, in tablatures, the added line segments below the fret marks -- running along the string lines -- would make for a very cluttered and confused output.
3) I have quite a poor sight myself; I doubt that either bold or italics would make the text any clearer in general, and in particular in tabs, where there is no word context to help. The upright normal is, in the great majority of cases, the most readable style of a typeface. If the text is hard to read for a particular usage, the "real" solution is to make it larger, not fancier.
In reply to 1a) Do you need to… by Miwarre
1b): I need "Just" turn the whole font bold / italics
2) "Underline: I would rule it out ruthlessly!" I agree
3) I have made different experiences
thank you
@Saitenpicker : thanks for the additional clarification.
In principle it would be relatively simple to add check boxes for Bold and Italics, pass the additional properties to the font engine and leave to it to sort out the details.
In practice, with the exception of FreeSerif, for which the bold and the italics fonts are installed with MS, for all the other typefaces used in MS tablatures, the bold and the italics would be synthesised by the engine, with quite sub-optimal results (in particular for the italics, which is almost impossible to synthesise decently).
In addition, for the historic typefaces (6 out of 8 currently available) which are exampled on historic sources, those variants would make little sense and would certainly look 'odd'.
With these assumptions, I can probably arrive at an extended tablature configuration dialogue box, but I expect the results to be in most cases unsatisfactory, which would make the change itself debatable and cause for more arguments (and not particularly compelling to implement :( ).
If the main reason for this is reading ease (which I would perfectly understand), I still suggest experimenting with the staff space size (I regularly use 2.0mm for tablatures) and font size (10pt?).
I found this thread because I was searching for how to make the fret marks font bold.
So, +1 from me.
Here is what I did, but your mileage may vary. I right clicked on the staff and went to "Staff Properties". By changing the scale in "Staff Properties", you change the size of whole thing. If you go into "Staff Properties" and then click on the "Advanced Style Properties" button, you can change the font and the font size without making the actually staff bigger. I have just figured this out and am playing around with it, so I don't have it looking just the way I want yet.
+1 for bold TAB numbers option.
Notation already looks bold compared to the TAB numbers
![bar5-mu.png]( "bar5-mu.png")
For a TAB only score the numbers can be made to look bolder by setting the staff lines, barlines, stems, beams, hooks etc. to grey
![bar5-grey.png]( "bar5-grey.png")
Any chance of this getting added to MS 3.X ?
In reply to +1 for bold TAB numbers… by yonah_ag
+1 Bold checkbox for the tab text. But thanks yonah_ag for the tip about making the staff properties line color gray. It does help for tab-only scores.
Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/288538
In reply to +1 for bold TAB numbers… by yonah_ag
... or by hiding the feet numbers and replacing with bold stave text, as per first 4 notes below. Then it doesn't need to be a TAB only score.
In reply to ... or by hiding the feet… by yonah_ag
… but this is really tedious!
How hard is it to enable bold tablature fonts in MS 3?
Doesn't "Select similar" work here to select all tab numbers and make them bold? It's a workaround, but still.
In reply to Doesn't "Select similar"… by Anatoly-os
Thanks but that doesn't work here, (MS 2.3.2), as although all tab numbers can be selected there are no font settings available to apply. That's why I wondered if it may be easier in MS 3.
Hello, first post on a Musescore issue. Hope this one isn't dead yet...
I would dearly love to have the ability to bold individual tab numbers to indicate what should be played by the thumb. When I learn or write a song, I like to enter the entire thing with as much help in the score as I can put in, and having the ability to bold certain tab "notes" would be awesome. For an example, I have a couple finger style books by Mark Hanson ("The Art of Solo Fingerpicking" and "The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking") that use this in the tab... very useful!
In reply to Hello, first post on a… by agfrag
@agfrag: That's another good case for bold TAB although individual bold numbers may be harder than simply using a completely bold TAB font. In the meantime you can either use colour, (easy), or text bolding, (tedious) as these examples show:
Any chance of this in 3.5.x?
We only need the numbers 0-9 in a bold font, not the entire character set.
3.6 maybe
In reply to 3.6 maybe by Jojo-Schmitz
:-)
Relates to #311175: [EPIC] Engraving issues and suggestions and #270551: [EPIC] Tablature issues
In reply to Relates to #311175: [EPIC]… by Jojo-Schmitz
Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/321440
Related post here requesting that Musescore users be able to choose any system font as a tablature staff font.
I want to register something here too. I work with one of the largest guitar publishers in the world, and have done all my books with them with Sibelius, which I have never been happy with. So I changed to Musescore, and this is MUCH better! BUT, the publisher is not happy with how light the tab numbers are, and if not fixed I might have to go back to Sibelius! Otherwise they love what they are seeing. So, please, please, please, give us the choice to make the general tab bold.
The Renaissance lute tab is GREAT! Very bold, and a nice font, but the publisher doesn't want that font for this project.
Best wishes to all who work at Musescore, you are doing incredible work for the music community!
In reply to I want to register something… by robmackillop
PS I did get some help here: https://musescore.org/en/node/321440 but BOLD is really what is needed.