Add "Apply to SELECT parts" button for system breaks

• Jan 6, 2019 - 14:21
Reported version
3.0
Type
Functional
Frequency
Few
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project
MuseScore

One complaint I hear a lot is that you cannot set the number of measures in a system for all parts at one time. Adding an "Apply to parts" button like is in the Style and Page settings would allow users to apply this setting to all parts at once. As stated in the discussion in https://musescore.org/en/node/272479, it is asked for a lot and should be considered more than a routine priority for a suggestion.

Comments

• Jan 6, 2019 - 15:39

I was trying to simplify the request. Most people we've heard from want all of the parts to have the exact same page layout, and this would accommodate that desire. If there are some parts that the user doesn't want to apply this to, they will need to go back and remove the system breaks.

I have no problem having MuseScore show a list of parts and let the user check the parts they want system breaks applied to, but this would complicate the feature request. Other opinions on this are more than welcome. I'm really trying to get the ball rolling for those who want the feature. I will probably never use the feature for myself.

Thinking out loud to myself:

  • The way I'm requesting would require one button to be added to the current dialog box that's activated only when in a part like Styles currently do.
  • If the user is presented a list of parts they can select for applying the changes, there would likely need to be code to create a list of parts. If this list already exists, it's not used outside of the tabs used to select a part to view and/or the parts dialog. You would also have to create a new dialog box from scratch since there is nothing else that gives you this option. If the code to generate the list were written, it could be reused in other feature requests, like a dialog box that lists all of the open scores (or in the case of a singe score all of its parts) and allow the user to choose which score or part to make active.

There would of course need code to be written for any new functionality, but I believe my initial request requires a relatively small amount of code.

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• Feb 8, 2019 - 17:46

Quote : "I will probably never use the feature for myself"
The uses of Musescore are very diverse.

I hadn't seen that answer. Here's what I think about it.

I understand that not all users need this feature. But those who create scores + parts for big band and concert band should understand what I mean. I don't know the problem of symphony orchestras, but it's quite possible that they are concerned. I am surprised that they are not manifesting themselves more. Perhaps they prefer to repeat manually and laboriously the same layout of three or four parts in the homorythmia or use another software...

This is one of the specifications of a famous commercial software (Sibelius) that brought me a lot and I think the users mentioned above who would discover it in Musescore without ever having thought about it would probably be delighted. Note that Sibelius extends this possibility to all formatting (texts, etc.)

In any case, the idea of giving the same breaks to all the displayed parts and then formatting those not concerned differently does not correspond at all to my wish. It may be difficult to achieve, I agree. I don't know if this can be done with a plug-in but it might be an elegant solution.

If the development were to progress in the wished direction, I would like to explain to the developer the goal to be reached (possibly by giving a score + example parts and, why not, a video of Sibelius... if I can remember how to use it...)

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• Sep 7, 2021 - 08:17

Might be an easy thing, but also a mostly useless one. See the discussion above and elesewhere in the forum why most of the time you'd not want this. Surly never (!) with page breaks (parts having less instruments, less stafes per system), and only rarely with system breaks, mainly due to parts, by default, using multimeasure rests.
Anyway, the workaround is even easier, apply them manually or use https://musescore.org/en/project/export-layout-breaks-parts

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• Sep 7, 2021 - 14:18

I would say that having all parts have the same breaks as each other would be uncommon but not unheard of. For example, in an extremely simple arrangement of a basic AABA tune, with no multimeasure rests anywhere, you might well want four bars per line in all parts. But what's much more likely is similarity by section: all trumpets sharing one layout, all saxophones sharing another. There wouldn't be a consistent number of bars per line - that rarely happens in published music due to things like multimeasure rests, voltas,and more - but the specifics of how that plays out are often similar among all instruments in a section.

So to me, the much more valuable command would be one you executed after manually formatting one part the way you like - possible with some help from Add/Remove System Breaks, but much more likely involving setting breaks by hand. This command would popup a dialog to copy the formatting to all other parts in the same bracket group, with perhaps an option (what most people would likely never use) to copy to literally all parts.

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• Feb 20, 2023 - 15:30
Title Add "Apply to parts" button in Add/Remove system breaks ⇒ Add "Apply to SELECT parts" button for system breaks

Hi,
I really don't get how this is not a feature yet. I'm writing bigbands scores and if I were able to only make the manual system breaks for one instrument per section that'd save me.. well, 3/4 of the time. I downloaded Musescore 4, hoping this was in the package. I really hope it will be soon because spending time "system breaking" is horrible.

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