Stave Text Autoformatting problems

• Dec 25, 2018 - 02:09

Does anybody out there know if it's possible to disable Stave Text (Ctrl T) autoformatting globally so the Stave Text can be placed manually? I do accordion music, and the button indicator text (chord symbol text) goes underneath the notes on the Bass Clef. Autoformatting puts this text all over the place.


Comments

To place something manually, you can disable automatic placement in the Inspector, but you almost certianly shouldn't be doing that here. For example, if you want chord symbols to be placed underneath, simply change the Placement to "Below" in the Inspector, then hit the "Set as Style" button and all chord symbols will go there. If you want further assistance, please attach your score and describe what the goal is and we can help better.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi Marc,
thanks for getting back to me so quickly at this time of year. I know that I can reset the placement of Button Symbols (not chord symbols) underneath the G Clef using the inspector. The problem was the text not being in alignment as I would normally do manually in Musescore 2. Also, Musescore 3 puts a second text entry under a note below the first text entry. I've found I have to enter what I want 'on top' first, now so no problem there.
On accordion, there is redundancy in the left hand, unlike the piano. So the score really needs to specify which button to use. For example in the attached score, 'C' doesn't mean 'play a C major chord'. It means 'play the C button in the fundamental row of the C column'. And 'F#' with a bar above it (that looks like a tenuto) means 'play the F# button in the counterbass row nearest your current position'. And so on... It would be nice to be able to set the default for the Stave Text to 'underneath' so I don't have to do this for every score.

Likewise, notice that everything in the G Clef for accordion is played staccato by default. It would be nice if I could set this to staccato rather than have to do this repeatedly while I'm working a score. (I know I can write the score legato, then select the whole G Clef and make it staccato from the palate.)

Attachment Size
Brendan Tonra's Jig.mscz 29.75 KB

In reply to by davechristie94

So, can you explain more specifically what you want different here? You mention the text not being in alignment and doing that manually - what do you mean?

If the goal is to have a bunch of text elements below the score all at the same vertical position, I'd recommend using the Inspector do this by adjusting one manually then hitting the "Set as Style" button next to the offset. Or using one of the "User" text styles.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc, see the attached score for an example of what I want a score to look like. I can select a piece of Stave Text, then view inspector, and then disable the autoformatting for that individual piece of text. This allows me to place the text wherever I want it. But I have to do this for every piece of Stave Text. I'm not sure if I can edit the Stave Text Style to uncheck the Auto Placement box.

Attachment Size
A_Hundred_Pipers.mscz 27.79 KB

In reply to by davechristie94

Sorry, but I'm still confused. You didn't disable autoplace for this, and I'm not understanding how disabling would have helped. On the contrary, your alignment is off because you adjusted everything automatically rather than simply setting appropriate style settings as I suggested. Disabling autoplace would just make it worse. Unless you are saying you want the markings to not be aligned? Even so, you don't need to disable autoplace to get unaligned text - you can continue to create as jagged and unaligned a layout as you want even with autoplace enabled, just as you have done here. But if the goal is to align things, again,t he easiest way to do that is to simply set the style setitngs you want. Then, no need to disable autoplace and no need to manually adjust anything - every single marking will be placed perfectly by default.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi Marc,
I can live with the 'jagged' placement of button indicators. I'm not too bothered about this. The formatting on Sibelius made that application unusable for me, because the formatting threw the button indicator text off the page entirely. At least this is readable. My problems may be due to using Windows7.1

In reply to by davechristie94

What I am saying is, I don't understand the problem at all then. If you prefer jagged to aligned, then it's perfect already. If you prefer aligned, simply make the change to the style as I suggested, then it will be perfect from then on. Either way, everything works well, no need to prevent autoplace form helping. Windows 7 won't have anything to do with it.

So can you please try to explain again what the actual problem is?

In reply to by davechristie94

You can select several pieces of text and make the same edit in all of them at once using the inspector. To select all staff (stave) text in a selection, you can

  • select the measures,
  • right click one text
  • use select>more from the pop up menu
  • check the appropriate boxes to limit the selection to stave text in the selection
  • click OK
  • Make the adjustment (auto place, above/below) in the inspector

In reply to by mike320

Hi Mike,
thanks for this info. This doesn't work on my PC. I can select multiple stave texts with CTRL and click. I can select Format Style in the menu bar, then select Stave Text. And I can view the inspector when I have Stave Text selected and choose 'below' rather than above. This puts the button indicator text on my scores underneath the G clef where I want it to be. But when I close down Musescore after saving the score, it scrambles up the alignments again. I think it may be a problem with Windows7.1

In reply to by mike320

Hi Mike,
yes, I'm getting windows with no save button on them. I can't resize or move them. That's why I said it may be related to Windows7.1 and may not be a general problem for users, most of whom will use Windows10. As to why I'm using Windows7.1, this is because my broadband service was 0.2M on a good day, and 0.02M on a bad day (8Km telephone cable, no mobile phone service, no mobile broadband). Basically my home is a lead box in a hole in the ground surrounded by hills and trees. So when my new PC came with Windows10 installed, as soon as it was connected up and switched on, it went into auto update, sat for 9 hours, then crashed and corrupted the operating system. So I had the guy who built it for me reformat the drives and install Windows7.1, that allows me to turn off auto update.

Thanks for you help with this, and good luck with Musescore3.

In reply to by davechristie94

Format / Style has nothing to do with what is selected - it sets the defaults for all elements using that style.

Sounds like you are having a with above/below setting not being remembered? There are some other reports of this, and I have seen some cases too, but so far no reliable steps to reproduce the problem.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi Marc,
no I don't want the text jagged. I want the bottom of each piece of text aligned together. I enter the text by selecting a note and entering CTRL T, then typing the button indicator. (Or if there's a bar above the note/chord that first, then the note/chord name.) The view inspector, position the text where I want it, with position set to Below. Then set as style. But the text has to be adjusted for multiple text selections, and when the application is closed, then opened up again, the text is out of alignment again. I think there's a Save button somewhere that I can't see. But don't worry about this. It's not a major problem, and I'm sure you have better things to do than try to fix this.
Have a nice Hogmanay.

In reply to by davechristie94

It is a major problem if adjustments you make don't save, so it's important we work together to understand the problem. Thanks for working with us; I think I do have it now.

Using your score, I did the following:

1) right-click the first "G" indicator below the staff
2) Select / All Similar Elements
3) Ctrl+R to reset everything to default

This is where you would have started from had you not made any manual adjustments. RIght away you can see everything is now aligned almost perfectly. You can then manually adjust the staff texts you don't want treated this way, like the "Roland FRX..." text at the beginning. So I selected that set it back to "Above", and all was as I wanted it to be.

However, when I saved and reloaded, I find things are back to being messed up, and that is a bug we need to fix. I think the problem is that when you use the "set as style" button on the "Offset" in the Inspector for a staff text that has been set to "Below", MuseScore is getting confused about whether you are setting the offset above or below the staff. I can reproduce this in a simple case and will file a bug report on this - thanks again for reporting and explaining the problem!

Meanwhile, you can work around this by not using "Set as style" in the Inspector but instead going to Format / Style / Text Styles / Staff Text and setting the offset there. This seems to set the correct offset.

BTW, it probably would have been better to use chord symbols for the button indicators rather than staff text, because even if they are not all actual chords, they still represent notes and you want the flat signs and sharps to be processed automatically and for them to be transposed with the music, etc. Had you entered it this way, it not only would have been much easier to enter, but then when you did the "set as style", it wouldn't have also affected the "Roland" text.

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