Crucial characters not available in MuseScore fonts character map
This problem is not that critical, however makes MuseScore less user friendly...
I need to write lyrics with special characters (mostly Czech and Slovak) i.e. ď, ť, ň, ľ and so on. I am using FreeSans, not even some fancy font, but those characters are not even listed in MuseScores special character map, however it is possible to write them down. When I first write i.e. ď, it displays correctly, but then, when I try to write down i.e. ť a ď displays again. I have to write i.e. Ď (or probably any capital letter) and after that i can finally write down ť.
It is quite irritating when I have to use some times even three such characters in one word to always write one I don't need, then erase it and write the one I actually need.
As I found out, the MuseScore uses its own database of fonts independent of fonts available in OS. Is there any way (or even will) to fix this behavior, or do I need to download a GIT version, include my fonts and compile MuseScore on my own?
Thanks,
Max
Comments
On my system (UK QWERTY, ubuntu) I can get some of those characters as follows:
ď or ť or ň or ľ
Press and hold [Alt-Gr]
Press and hold [Shift]
Press ' (apostrophe)
Release keys
Press d or t or n or l
If you remain unable to generate them from your keyboard, you can copy and paste them from this site:
http://czech.typeit.org/
But is there a bug somewhere? Or is MuseScore living in the 80's, thinking it's enough for the user if there's a special menu with special characters. Guess what. They are no special characters today. On this very phone keyboard I'm using now there are the keys å, ä and ö, ordinary letters in Swedish. And so is it on my computer. And on every computer in Finland. And in other countries they have other normal characters on their keyboards.
When I use FreeSerif to write lyrics, å ä and ö look fine on the screen, but are missing when I print. Changing the lyric font to some standard like Times New Roman, everything works. Since FreeSerif seems to be built in MuseScore, I can't say whether the error is in MuseScore how it deals with a built in font and å ä or ö, or in the font itself. If it is the latter, the font could perhaps be replaced by a bug free font in next release.
In reply to But is there a bug somewhere? by jotti
1/ The OP, @ tydor.maxim, has problem typing diacritic characters. This has probably nothing to do with the font. How do you type them exactly? On which OS, which version of MuseScore?
You mention that these characters are not even listed in MuseScore. Are you sure about this? Did you try to select All, Codemap 1 if you use MuseScore 2.0.2 ?
2/ @jotti, it seems you are able to type "special characters" but they don't appear while you print. This is completely different... What's your OS? Which version of MuseScore do you use? Do you see the characters when you save to PDF?
Keep calm and happy new year :)
In reply to 1/ The OP, @ tydor.maxim, has by [DELETED] 5
Ooops, my bad, I didn't notice the option to change the character page. The characters are there on page 1.
Although, obviously, this is not only my problem and I think it will be worth to fix it, because I didn't say, it is impossible to insert those characters, but it is not very user friendly to copy-paste every fourth character or search for it in character map or to use some finger crossing keyboard combination that work on UK keyboard and write the rest on CS or SK keyboard or to write first one upper-case, erase it and write the right lower-case one...
I know that my problem is difficult to understand for someone english-writing and I don't know how many "decorated" characters does french alphabet has, but when you need to write a lyrics few pages long, it will be more convenient to be able to write directly the character I need without looking somewhere else.
On czech and slovak keyboard, when you need to "decorate" some chracter a key next to "backspace" selects the decoration. Without shift, it writes ´ (it is not apostrophe) i.e é, í, á, ĺ and while holding down shift it writes ˇ i.e. č, š, ľ, ď, ť, ě, ř (it is still the same decoration)
I'm using MuseScore 2.0.2 and Win7 OS. Everything works as expected in OS, but not in MuseScore. I am very satisfied with MuseScore in almost every aspect (except the troubles with loading custom style and propagation of changes to every element and keyboard input)
Thank you all for your replies and suggestions.
Happy new year to you all, too!
Max
In reply to 1/ The OP, @ tydor.maxim, has by [DELETED] 5
I use 2.0.2 on Windows 7. If I recall correctly, å does come out properly, but ä and ö just leave an empty space. This happens when I output to a big Konica Minolta printer/copier as well as to a small Canon Inkscape MP160. And it happens with different computers (Fujitsu and HP, laptop and desktop). So I would focus on MuseScore and FreeSerif.
I think the problem started with 2.0. FreeSerif wasn't present in 1.3, was it? And I remember I had problems with pdf files, too, but can't recall how they behaved. It might even be that the pdf files showed ok on screen but not on print, as if the enbedding of the FreeSerif font in the pdf output would have enbedded the bug, too. Which perhaps would imply that one should focus on the font, not on MuseScore.
Perhaps if I could extract the font file, the exact version of it, from MuseScore, install it in Windows and try it with any software.
In reply to I use 2.0.2 on Windows 7. If by jotti
äöü work just fine for me and ever did
In reply to But is there a bug somewhere? by jotti
Having read all the contributions to this thread to this day, (jan 5 morning in France)
Using Kubuntu with a French BÉPO keyboard,
typing usually choral scores
It is understandable that anybody fits his keyboard to his usual needs.
It seems that all OS give access to UTF-8 table
So I suggest that Mscore developers don't bother to include char maps within Mscore, but that they just check that any UTF-8 from OS-char map is correctly represented ...
perhaps imagine some way to clip the OS charmap to the text zone in use....