Toggle key for Hide empty staves?
I'd like to be able to write directly into a full score, but I'm doing this on a laptop. I therefore set the hide empty staves feature in the Format ->Styles page. It'd be very useful if there were a single key toggle on/off for this function, as otherwise it's necessary to change the Format.>Styles entry every time a hitherto silent (or recently silent) instrument is added in. Is this possible now, or would it be a useful feature request?
If it comes to it I could use one of my other machines with a much larger screen, but a feature like this could help many people I think.
Ah - just spotted a solution. Switch to Continuous View, which brings up the whole score - and then revert back to Page View. I think that works.
It would be good to have shortcut keys to switch between or toggle Continuous View and Page View.
Comments
Please add this to the Issue tracker as a Suggestion
I'd second this, would indeed be quite useful to be able to assign a shortcut to it. Not sure whether it should come with a default shortcut (and if so which) though.
Actually 2 issues I guess, one for the view modes and another for hide empty staves
For the view modes, I agree on shortcut usefulness.
Less so on one for Hide Empty Staves; I'm not against making the action something that you can assign a shortcut to, but I definitely would advise against a default shortcut.
You're simply "abusing" this feature to cater to your smaller screen size. IMHO it would make more sense to make use of the possibility to toggle instruments visibility alltogether; for example by using the timeline (F12: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/timeline#Hiding_instruments)
What you might not be aware of, is that you don't need to turn off Hide Empty Staves to start entering notes on a hidden staff. You can from a visible staff make use of the next/previous staff commands (Alt + ↓/↑) (pay attention to the status bar) which will also move to those hidden staves. Then go into note entry mode (if you weren't already) and start typing. The staff will appear as soon as the first note is entered.
In reply to For the view modes, I agree… by jeetee
I probably agree about default shortcuts.
Is there not a way for an end user to assign a custom shortcut to any action? Maybe, as I'm using MacOS I can do it there instead, but it would be good to have some form of shortut or macro assignment within Musescore.
In reply to I probably agree about… by dave2020X
Is there not a way for an end user to assign a custom shortcut to any action?
There is as long as it is defined by MuseScore as an "action"; which many things still aren't. See Edit → Preferences → Shortcuts for the list of currently available actions.
Hiding empty staves isn't one of them yet; so feel free to add that as a suggestion into the issue tracker.
EDIT: see below, I misremembered and the action is available as something to assign a shortcut.
In reply to For the view modes, I agree… by jeetee
Well, I have a gigantic screen (30" CinemaDisplay, 2560x1600), and I've been going into "Styles" to toggle "Hide/show empty staves" all the time. The Alt-up/down arrow shortcut is cool, but I won't always remember where the empty staff I want is, so I'm delighted to learn there's a way to create a hot-key for it.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it is possible to define shortcuts for both of the requested actions. In Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts, type "hide" into the search box, you'll see the "Toggle 'Hide Empty Staves'" command there ready for your custom shortcut to be defined. Type "view" into the search box, you'll see "Toggle 'View Mode'" command there, with a shortcut *already defined: Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows (presumably Cmd+Shift+V on macOS).
And as noted, the keyboard shortcuts for navigating staves work well for entering notes onto hidden staves, I use this all the time. I've got "[" and "]" set as custom shortcuts for this because I do this sort of navigation so often.
In reply to Maybe I'm missing something,… by Marc Sabatella
Oh, wonderful! Now "Hide empty staves" is Alt+V for me
In reply to Maybe I'm missing something,… by Marc Sabatella
I'd looked under "H" for "Hide"; I'd overlooked the search box.
On macOS, the relevant menu/tab path for defining shortcuts is MuseScore --> Preferences --> Shortcuts, and it is indeed Cmd+Shift+V for changing the display view.
I have a shortcut for both Hide empty staves and Toggle between page and continuous views. I assigned these in Edit->Preferences->Shortcuts.
In reply to I have a shortcut for both… by mike320
This issue seems to have come back to bite me (and the one to find a particular stave within a score). Do these "tricks" still work in version 3.6?
The option down arrow to locate a particular staff doesn't seem to work for me now - but I'm sure I had that working last year. This is in MacOS. It's kind of frustrating.
In reply to This issue seems to have… by dave2020X
Alt+arrows still work for me in 3.6.2 on Windows.
In reply to This issue seems to have… by dave2020X
What do you mean by "locate"? Alt+Down will move the cursor to the staff below, but that implies you have a cursor, or at least a single note selected while note in note input mode. Works fine for me, but check you shortcuts dialog to be sure you didn't change it.
In reply to What do you mean by "locate"… by Marc Sabatella
OK -- that does seem to be working now. One other thing which doesn't though is the name for each instrument line (shortcut) at the start of each new line. There seem to be two flavours of this.
If the instruments are in an ensemble - such as a string quartet where the lines are bracketed together - then the individual names don't appear. There isn't even a generic name, such as "Str. Qtet".
If there is just one instrument playing. This is as though the box for "Hide instrument name if there's only 1 instrument" has been ticked/checked - but it hasn't been.
This is in 3.6.0.487915347 rev 1977cb3
In reply to OK -- that does seem to be… by dave2020X
Update to 3.6.2
Then provide a sample score (perhaps in a new topic) for your missing instrument names issue
In reply to OK -- that does seem to be… by dave2020X
If you are using the string quartet template provided by MuseScore, it indeed disables the short instrument names in accordance with tradition (usually only larger ensembles use these). If you prefer to see them, just add them back in Staff/Part Properties.