Allow user to select beams with keyboard, and to get out of the selection via keyboard
Reported version
3.2
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
And not only this, but those things that require MS to 'guess' at where to start next in Note-Input should be updated to not restart at the beginning of a score but to at least take the user at the beginning of the measure in which the element is within, or even better before/after the element. Examples of this behavior and a small discussion is given in this thread: https://musescore.org/en/node/293115 along with some screen-casts for examples.
Hope this helps the app accessibility/efficiency in the near future.
Comments
Let's say the user has selected a notehead. There should be a shortcut key to toggle the selection between the notehead, the stem, the beam/tail, and back to the notehead again.
In reply to Let's say the user has… by shoogle
Agreed.
Actually, I'd go one step further: allow for a sort of 'vertical' cycling of everything to do with the note, so not only the note-head/stem/flag/beam, but also articulation like if there's a staccato or stress. Those things also aren't really accessible as it stands with the keyboard, so to include 'everything' about a note in a sort of 'vertical' cycle like this, even staff-text in a sense could be included here but have the command cycling only on that particular note rather than moving horizontally as with next/prev element, but that's just my opinion of course.
Good idea! There is already Alt+Up and Alt+Down to move vertically between staves, voices, and notes in a chord. Maybe this should include the chord's stem, tail, and any text or articulations, etc.?
On second thoughts, adding the text and articulations is OK, but adding the stem and tail makes it asymmetric with Alt+Left and Alt+Right (which don't include those things). Perhaps there should be a separate shortcut just for moving within a chord and its stem, tail and elements, but not to other voices or staves.
In reply to On second thoughts, adding… by shoogle
The more intuitive keys to do that are simply up and down arrows.
Old users of MuseScore used to the current default actions linked to up and down arrows (change pitch by half tone) will never accept that default changed.
That's ok, but one should be free to reassign them in preferences.
Leaving the shortcut unassigned for the user to select his own never hurts. A good shortcut to select these things might be ctrl+alt+s for the stem and ctrl+alt+f for the beam/flag.
Two shortcuts to cycle between three items is a waste of keyboard keys. One shortcut (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+E) is enough to cycle between a note and it's elements, including stem, flag and augmentation dot(s).
In reply to Two shortcuts to cycle… by shoogle
Agreed that a simple cyclic command would work practically fine for this, though the idea has been brought up from time to time throughout the years (ability to select stem etc. via keyboard). Maybe this is an opportunity for one of us on the side programmers. . .
In reply to Agreed that a simple cyclic… by worldwideweary
P.S. It wasn't realized until just recently that the [prev/next element] commands (alt+L/R) now include staccatos and stresses (this wasn't the case in 3.2.3), so if a shortcut were implemented for the purposes of this conversation, it would more than likely not be appropriate to have it cycle through whatever is reachable by these commands.