Need to be able to change local staff abbreviations for instruments

• Dec 4, 2018 - 16:58
Reported version
3.0
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S3 - Major
Reproducibility
Always
Status
duplicate
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project

3.0 supports transposed instrument changes mid-staff and using voices to generate parts, which is awesome, but we need to let staves equal the awesome.

When I change an instrument - flute to piccolo, oboe to English horn, clarinet to Alto sax, or even Cl I in Bb to Cl I in A, the staff instrument abbreviation remains the same, and incorrect. This is a major problem for conductors, especially the ones like mine who can transpose and will notice it's wrong.

When I - or anyone - uses voices to keep different parts on the same staff, it is industry standard that the labelling of that staff changes according to who it is playing. If it's a2, label should be Cl I& II. If it's clarinet solo, the label should be Cl. I.

Without any voice or staff changes, if a string part calls for 2 soli, the staff should reflect that. Same if it calls for Solo.

Easiest way to fix the problem - I think - is to simply allow users to change staff abbreviations for local staves.

Thank you!


Comments

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

That's good, but I don't think it quite covers this? We need to be able to edit staff names outside of instrument changes.

For the record, I don't think a fancy dialogue is necessary here. Why can't we just click on an instrument abbreviation and edit what it says in the inspector? Is it the XML layout? I'll have to go look at that when I get back home.

But yeah, it's not just official instrument changes - it's voices, tutti vs. Solo, all of that. I don't think it's quite a duplicate, because it's a larger scope of request.

I'll hold off changing the status back until you decide, though.

In reply to by Laurelin

We can already edit it by double-clicking the text (at least in 2.x) but then it changes everywhere.

If the change would just stop propagating past an Instrument Change, that would help.

But I doubt this can happen without a change for the file format, which is too late… :|

The linked request is also larger, and I know my PR only partially addresses it.

Right now the Inspector has no way to edit instrument name, and there is also no way to click much less double-click instrument names. So making that possible would indeed be some work. Not impossible, but we'd have to re-look at whatever it is that made us disable this in the first place. Might be easier to add fields to the Change Instrument dialog.

Wait, now I'm cofused. The needs info thread seems to only be addressing instrument changes, right?
But really, we need it per system, regardless of whether there is an actual instrument change or not - things like your usual grand staff cello part going from simple divisi to Cello 1,2 on top staff and gli altri on the bottom. Or labeling a staff in a score as Fl. I when only Fl 1 is playing, and Fl 1, 2 when both are.

In reply to by Laurelin

There was a change in the results when you change instruments. The short instrument name is changed to the instruments.xml default, so doing another instrument change back to the initial instrument voids any modifications you made to the instrument's name. If you want to make the name at the beginning of the part invisible and use staff text for the name...forget it. It can't be done. The only workaround is to make a staff text with a white background large enough to cover the unwanted name. Staff text defaults to transparent background and "C.A." won't cover "OB. III." without some extra spaces.