link notes feature
Sometimes, especially if voices cross, I need to help the eye finding its´ way, not being misleaded by other voices.
Sometimes the direction of a stem doesn´t indicate enough where a line / voice goes on.
There is a "line" tool in the line bar, but honestly I don´t understand for which use at all. It´s the most clumsiest thing I ever encountered.
So can´t there be a "hooking line tool" ... if you select two notes, press on "line" and then a drawn line appears from one of the notes´ center to the others´?
If you change the notes´ high the line would change automatically, following its´ two center - points it´s bound to.
Comments
Use the (pretty well hidden and much under-estimated) "Note achored line" from the Add > Lines menu
It does exactly what you're asking for here.
In reply to Use the (pretty well hidden… by Jojo-Schmitz
yes, I just won the lottery xD
The Lines on the palette, btw, are great for what they are designed for - drawing lines above / below the staff, like to mark a passage with a label. For example, I just used it the other day in creating a musical analysis where I wanted to label a particular phrase. But indeed, it's not intended for what you are talking about, which is why it would have seemed clumsy.
In reply to The Lines on the palette,… by Marc Sabatella
Surely this is a usability issue though, in fact I couldn't find the "note anchored line" command the other day when I was trying to figure out something similar.
It's not very clear why the Add|Lines menu doubles up 4 of the lines that are in the palette, then has an extra one that isn't.
In principle the "line" tool on the palette could simply behave like "Add note anchored line" if two notes were selected (I'd also suggest the "Add note anchored line" behaviour when more than 2 notes are selected isn't intuitive, I'd expect separate lines between each pair of notes, rather than a single line between the first and last).
In reply to Surely this is a usability… by Dylan Nicholson1
Not clear indeed. I suspect the reason is that when the note-anchored line was added (it seems the feature snuck in overnight one day some years ago, no one really knows where it came from), someone must ave felt there wouldn't be a clear way for the user to understand the difference between the two lines based on just a palette icon. Clearly, that issue could have been solved somehow, but anyhow, that's how it is now.
I would not favor having the same palette add two different types of lines depending on how many notes are selected, though. How would one ever add a normal line that happened to span two notes? Pretty much has to be separate icons I think. As for trying to pair up notes when using the note-anchored line, a complication is figuring out which notes to pair in the general case where the notes are kind of scattered through different voices, different staves, different measures, etc. We do a version of this for slurs and hairpins, but it's simpler because these are more like normal lines, we only need to find the start & end of the range.
In reply to Not clear indeed. I suspect… by Marc Sabatella
My thinking was that the note anchored line is a) very similar to a slur which is in the same palette and b) the likely expected behavior if you select two notes and then click a "line" on the palette, but I suppose if there was something in the icon images that made our clear which was which then two icons would be better.
I don't think the more-than-2 notes problem is all that algorithmically problematic though there are one or two corner cases if notes in different voices but at the same time position are selected. But that could be a secondary feature anyway. Haven't checked where the command is in the MU4 menus/palettes yet!
In reply to My thinking was that the… by Dylan Nicholson1
The thing that's different about slurs is you can select a whole range of notes, including multiple voices, and potentially an odd number of total notes, and the slur can ignore all that and just connect the first note to the last. What you are proposing would involve needing to establish some sort of algorithm to guess how the user wants to pair notes. I can't see such a guess being right very often in any but the simplest cases, but certain;y, it wouldn't hurt to try to implement one.