Staff size scaling baseline
When enabling “Size follows ‘Staff space’ setting”, what is the scaling relative to? That is, which Spatium (in mm or imperialistic units) corresponds to a 12 pt text being set in exactly twelve PostScript points (1/72th inch)?
The other three programs seem to document this (see https://www.scoringnotes.com/tips/spaces-and-the-units-of-measurement-f… for the article which pointed this out to me), but for MuseScore I can’t find it either with a site search, in the handbook or in the code really (only magic numbers like DPMM and SPATIUM20 with no documentation whatsoever). This ought to be in the user handbook.
Comments
If you want to avoid any and all scaling, leave your staff space setting at 1.764mm, or better yet, never change it from the default. I have a history of trying to fix unwanted scaling that is waaay to long at this point. Hopefully I can get a PR merged some time this year...
SPATIUM20 is the default, no scaling, spatium value. But it is in pixel units at 360ppi.
Do you mean the "Follow staff size" checkbox in the Edit Text Style part of the Styles dialog? I am not familiar with that particular feature, but I do know about the Staff Space setting in the page settings dialog box and how it generally affects scaling. This checkbox defaults to OFF, which makes me think that it is not working. I always see text scaling with the Staff space (spatium) value setting.
In reply to If you want to avoid any and… by sideways
The checkbox works fine. It defaults to on if it's set, off if not, as one would expect. It's on for almost all text styles except for headers, footers, and the things that would normally appear in a title box. So by default most text scales, but titles etc do not.
In reply to The checkbox works fine. It… by Marc Sabatella
Of course I looked at the first item that displays, which happens to be Title.
In reply to If you want to avoid any and… by sideways
No, I don’t want to “avoid scaling”, I just wish to know the baseline for the things given in pt. I am aware of your work and just now figured out where those weird 1.764 mm come from (1.7638̅ mm is 5 dpi).
The “Follow staff size” checkbox defaults to off only for the top VBox (score name, composer name, etc.) but to on for things like lyrics, and it is therefore very relevant.
Perhaps the scaling is relative to the default spatium?
In reply to No, I don’t want to “avoid… by mirabilos
The scaling is indeed relative to SPATIUM20. Which is 25dots at 360dpi or approximately 1.764mm
In reply to No, I don’t want to “avoid… by mirabilos
...or yes, 5pt in Postscript points at 72ppi
DPI_Fis the scaling factor that gets MuseScore to 360dpi from 72ppi. You'll see that constexpr defined in the same block as SPATIUM20 and the others.In reply to ...or yes, 5pt in Postscript… by sideways
...and it's 1.76389, not 1.7638 :)
I know that from memory. You can tell that I've spent way too much time dealing with the specifics of this :)
In reply to ...and it's 1.76389, not 1… by sideways
No, 1.7638̅ not 1.7638 (you could write it as 1.7638888888888888888888888888888888…), with a period overline (don’t know the right English term).
In reply to No, 1.7638̅ not 1.7638 (you… by mirabilos
Yes, but that rounds to 1.7639 if you only use 5 decimals. I use 6 decimals because that's the way MuseScore stores it if you never open the page settings dialog.
In reply to Yes, but that rounds to 1… by sideways
Yeah, the rounding is a problem (which is why I use 1.675 / 1.75 / 1.8 mm for spatium in my vocal scores).
In reply to No, I don’t want to “avoid… by mirabilos
Part of what I've been trying to get merged recently is the ability to use Postscript points as the units. That's what I use for most of my scores. In my branch(es) of the code, I can set the Staff Space in points. That certainly simplifies make the math for understanding the scaling being created, having a whole number as the baseline. But I haven't been able to get it merged yet.