One and only one request

• Jun 9, 2012 - 06:38

First, many thanks to the folks who worked hard to bring MuseScore to its wonderful present. Also, special thanks to those who worked on the micro tonal features which really enhanced the global use of MuseScore. When it comes to the note names, it seems that only the diatonic sounds are named. Is there a way to name the half flat and half sharp notes? That will bring MuseScore to perfection and I am not exaggerating for a fact. Almost all of the music notation programs out there lack this micro tonal power which makes MuseScore quite unique. Its accidentals palette is a testimony of that. Thanks again.

Comments

• Jun 9, 2012 - 16:50

What do you mean by "naming" these notes? MuseScore shouldn't care what you call them. are you sayung, you want a keyboard shortcut for entering these notes?

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• Jun 9, 2012 - 19:15

Hi Marc,
Let's say you wrote a piece of music that has flats, sharps, and quarter tone accidentals such as half flats (crossed b) and half sharps (crossed equal sign that looks like =/). When you go to plugins and choose the NOTE NAMES, only the flats and sharps are named (i.e. Ab, C#, Eb, etc...) but NOT the quarter tone notes. You get : E instead of E crossed b.....or F instead of F crossed equal sign. Sorry I cannot display these symbols here because they need a different processor. When you look at accidentals you will recognize them. Is there a way out? Thank you.

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• Jun 9, 2012 - 21:27

Ah, I see, you are talking about the Note Names plugin, not MuseScore itself. Plugins are kind of separate, and they are mostly user-contributed. You should be able to customize this yourself - just go to the plugins folder on your system, find the JS file, and edit the lines that control this to also handle the accidentals you use. And then perhaps you could contribute your changes back to the main source for this plugin. Even if you're not normally a programmer, you may find this is something you can figure out by examining the file. Here is the page that documents how the accidentals are stored:

http://musescore.org/en/plugin-development/note-object

I haven't tried it, so no guarantees, but I have to imagine it would just be a matter of adding a test for userAccidental.

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• Jun 10, 2012 - 17:30

Guess I could try to extent that plugin to show these too, watch this space ;-)

Edit: seems the table in the documentation is wrong and incomplete, the numbers don't match the textual description of the symbols from the palette?

Here's the code snippet I'm trying to use: 

                        switch (cursor.chord().topNote().userAccidental) {
			      case 0:                                         break;
			      case 1:     text.text += "#";                   break;
			      case 2:     text.text += "b";                   break;
			      case 3:     text.text += "##";                  break;
			      case 4:     text.text += "bb";                  break;
			      case 5:     text.text += "natural";             break;
			      case 32769: text.text += "(#)";                 break;
			      case 32770: text.text += "(b)";                 break;
			      case 32771: text.text += "(bb)";                break;
			      case 32772: text.text += "(##)";                break;
			      case 32773: text.text += "(natural)";           break;
			      case 16:    text.text += "flat-slash";          break;
			      case 17:    text.text += "flat-slash2";         break;
			      case 18:    text.text += "mirrored-flat2";      break;
			      case 19:    text.text += "mirrored-flat";       break;
			      case 20:    text.text += "mirrored-flat-slash"; break;
			      case 21:    text.text += "flat-flat-slash";     break;
			      case 22:    text.text += "sharp-slash";         break;
			      case 23:    text.text += "sharp-slash2";        break;
			      case 24:    text.text += "sharp-slash3";        break;
			      case 25:    text.text += "sharp-slash4";        break;
			      case 26:    text.text += "sharp arrow up";      break;
			      case 27:    text.text += "sharp arrow down";    break;
			      case 28:    text.text += "sharp arrow both";    break;
			      case 29:    text.text += "flat arrow up";       break;
			      case 30:    text.text += "flat arrow down";     break;
			      case 31:    text.text += "flat arrow both";     break;
			      case 32:    text.text += "natural arrow down";  break;
			      case 33:    text.text += "natural arrow up";    break;
			      case 34:    text.text += "natural arrow both";  break;
			      case 35:    text.text += "sori";                break;
			      case 36:    text.text += "koron";               break;
			      default:    text.text += "?";                   break;
		  	      }

Anything wrong with it?

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• Jun 11, 2012 - 19:20

translate is hard (to me, for any language other than German), encode may be impossible, most of those signs may not be defined by unicode and/or part of an available font (some are, like # and b, but already bb and ## are not).
Just take the plugin and play with it to your heart's content and see whether you can come up with something that is usefull, at least to you?

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• Jun 13, 2012 - 08:29

I managed to get the half flat with the letter "p", initial of the French "petit" and is actually a "b" with the line down meaning "less". Now E half flat becomes "Ep". Also, I replaced the half sharp with the letter "z" which looks like the symbol itsef. And now we have Fz for F half sharp.. The Note Names plugin works wonderfully. The sol-fa plugin also works great. Thanks again. The network of support around MuseScore is really superb. It has made this program so versatile and adaptable to various genres of music. I know there is always room of improvement but it's a great leap. Well done!

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• Jun 13, 2012 - 10:01

I've now fixed the documentation (@ http://musescore.org/en/plugin-development/note-object)

Using p and z for half flat and half sharp might work for you, but I don't like that idea to much and also it leaves some 20 more with those overly long names, so I'm not going to put this into the 'official' version of that plugin.
I could put it in, but leave it commented out, so anyone with a need has less problems adding it back in?

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• Jun 14, 2012 - 11:12

I wrote a score that has quarter notes, flats and sharps. I used your Plugins to name the notes. Then, I used the text editor and added the quarter notes symbols using a music notation fonts that I downloaded. The half flats and the half sharps were added to the names beautifully. Thank you for your support during this exploration.

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