Copying and pasting bars with chord symbols does not overwrite existing chord symbols
I have the following issue on 3.6.2 (and also the 4.0 nightly)
When pasting chord symbols onto a bar that already has chord symbols, it does not overwrite the existing symbols, e.g.
- Bar 1 contains chord symbols Am (blank) C (blank) (and notes that match them)
- Bar 2 contains chord symbols (blank) B (blank) Dm (and notes that match them)
- How to reproduce: Copy and paste contents of Bar 1 onto Bar 2
- Expected result: Bar 2 is an identical copy of Bar 1 (notes and chord symbols)
-
Actual result: Bar 2 contains the notes of Bar 1 (correct) but the chord symbols of Bar 1 and Bar 2 (e.g. a union - incorrect), Am B C Dm
Additional notes
- "Swap with clipboard" exhibits the same behaviour.
- Staff text and fingering symbols do not exhibit this behaviour.
Workaround: clear/delete/remove the contents of the bar(s) you want to paste into, before pasting.
(If someone can confirm that this is indeed a bug and a new one, I will log an issue)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| chord symbol join.png | 154.81 KB |
Comments
Yes, I can confirm I get the same strange behaviour. Maybe it is because it is a piano score - copying and pasting works all right for me on a lead sheet.
In reply to Yes, I can confirm I get the… by Brer Fox
It looks like notes are overwritten by rests, but chords are not overwritten.
The question is whether this is a bug or a feature.
In reply to It looks like notes are… by Mr Fox
I have logged #327989: Copying and pasting bars with chord symbols does not overwrite existing chord symbols.
In the highly event that this is a feature, one of those "in the know" can close with "by design" or "won't fix".
In reply to It looks like notes are… by Mr Fox
Chords are overwritten too, but not chord symbols.
Even chord symbols do get overwritten, if there is one at the same spot, just not if there is none at that beat in the target measure
In reply to It looks like notes are… by Mr Fox
As I note in the issue, it's a feature - at least, it was the consensus best compromise over the course of many years of back and forth and refinements here. There are many different use cases for copy/paste of chord symbols, and the current behavior works well for the most common ones one championed by the people who participated in those discussions
Hi, Riaan,
In your bar "expected result", should the first chord symbol be 'Am' rather than 'A'?
I agree that, as earlier suggested below, likely the issue here is that there was nothing in the paste at beats 2 and 4 and thus at the destination the existing symbols at beats 2 and 4 are not disturbed.
Whether that is a desirable behavior is another matter altogether. I suspect that having the existing content of chord symbols in a bar into which a measure-wide paste is done all be eliminated in favor of whatever is in the paste is the best plan.
Happy New Year.
Doug
In reply to Hi, Riaan, In your bar … by Doug Kerr
"should the first chord symbol be 'Am' rather than 'A'?"
Thanks, yes, corrected.
As noted in the issue that was filed, this is currently by design. Existing chords get replaced if and only if there is a new chord at that exact time position. This perfectly handles the two most common use cases - replacing a passage that has chord symbols with another passage using those same chord symbols, and replacing a passage that has chord symbols with another passage that uses no chord symbols whatsoever Both cases are extremely common in real world usage.
The downside is, the behavior can seem a bit arbitrary in the cases where the source and destination both have chord symbols but they aren't related in any particular way. That's case indeed where the results seem counterintuitive - here would want all destination chords deleted. But in real world usage, this tends to be far less common than the cases for which the current behavior works well. Another case the current approach doesn't handle as well as it might is combing a standard and alternate set of changes, but in that case, the desired behavior is to delete nothing.
So the current behavior - delete only the destination chords at the same relative time position as the source - was found to be the best compromise. But no doubt, other solutions might be possible, including ones that might involve giving the user control via the Selection Filter or other tools.
In reply to As noted in the issue that… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you Marc. Happy with the explanation, and closing the issue as "by design".
In reply to Thank you Mark. Happy with… by Riaan van Niekerk
That's fine, but I'd still love to see some discussion of other possibilities, perhaps as part of a broader discussion of select filter and related improvements in general!
I understand and support the current implementation with copy and paste.
However I somehow would have the expectation that "swap with clipboard" would not be affected by this and indeed act as if the old measure was "cut" away to the clipboard, thus also removing its old chord symbols.
In reply to I understand and support the… by jeetee
Without thinking about it too hard, that does seem to make sense.