Question regarding text styles

• Apr 2, 2020 - 09:52

Why are there 12 "user" styles in text styles? See screenshot:

Bildschirmfoto 2020-04-02 um 10.50.00.png

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Comments

Jojo-Schmitz

• Apr 2, 2020 - 09:54

There used to be just 6 (see #277501: individual text style is not imported from V2-score), this wasn't enough to some users, so got increased to 12.

RobFog

• Apr 2, 2020 - 10:27

Thanks. Oh, yes, I recall https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/5396.

But I think what I'm trying to get at is: why are they there by default instead of allowing the user to create them as required?

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 2, 2020 - 17:21

In order to make text style / properties available in the Inspector in a seamless way, it is necessary to attach them to specific named style tags for each (e.g., user8FontFace or whatever that is what actually gets written to the score). That means a finite set that is compiled into the code. This wasn't necessary in MsueScore 2 because we didn't support accessing these properties from the Inspector, we had this hacky text properties dialog for it.

Realistically, a redesign of how this works internally could someday eliminate this need for pre-compiled style tags, but for now, that's why it is how it is.

RobFog

• Apr 2, 2020 - 20:34

Thanks, Marc. Yes, I think a rewrite could definitely help to make this easier to figure out for the average user like me.

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 2, 2020 - 22:05

Well, no, it would actually make it harder to use, since you'd have to explicitly create a new text style, It's actually easier now than it was before, you've got twelve styles right there available to use as you see fit. Not sure what you're finding hard now, but it was assuredly more work and harder to discover. The tradeoff would be making it possible to create more than twelve of these custom styles. Not at all convinced it's worth the effort, especially since that also means another break in compatibility.

RobFog

• Apr 5, 2020 - 15:03

I think I'd prefer to "explicitly create a new a style". Ideally, you'd work from an existing style (like, for example, RNA, as you suggested), modify a few things, and then save that as a custom style. I've seen this workflow in different apps and it makes sense to me.

I've been finding the text style functionality frustrating to work with. Vertical offsets don't seem to stick very well.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Apr 5, 2020 - 15:23

The purpose of those 12 are mostly to serve those that used their own created styles in MuseScore 2, for those to import rather than getting lost. That was also the reason for increasing from 6 to 12 on a user's request.

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 5, 2020 - 15:36

Well, you can say you prefer having to do that extra work if it somehow fits your mindset better. But there's no getting around that it is indeed extra work in most cases, except for those where you just happen to be creating a variation on an existing style.

Not sure what you mean about being frustrating or offsets not sticking, feel free to start a new thread on that. I use text styles all the time, and they are a godsend. You do have to watch that some element types (as distinct from text styles) have both above/below offset settings in their style settings. There have been some glitches with some of these interactions, although I think the ones that have been reported are dealt with now.

RobFog

• Apr 2, 2020 - 10:54

And a related question: having modified the first in the list, I don't know how to use it. It does not show up in Add → Text.

Bildschirmfoto 2020-04-02 um 11.43.24.png

Jojo-Schmitz

• Apr 2, 2020 - 11:12

It isn't a separate text type, so won't sore in Add > Text, but a text style, so does show in Inspector, for you to change an existing text's style

RobFog

• Apr 2, 2020 - 20:37

Thanks, Jojo. [Edit: Nevermind, found it. :-D ]