Add option to preserve all staves of multi-stave instrument

As discussed in http://musescore.org/en/node/10771, there are times when one behavior is right, and times when the other behavior is right. Meaning, there should be a second option underneath "hide empty staves" to control whether the "substaves" of an instrument are hidden. One would normally want that option turned off for scores, but depending on the genre, you might want it turned on for parts or for "scores" consisting of a single intrument (eg, leadsheets)..

In the absence of an option, though, I'd much rather have it *always* hide empty staves within an instrument (the 2.0 behavior) than *never* hide them (the 1.0 behavior). I can always force MuseScore not to hide an otherwise empty staff by placing invisible elements there. That's how I generally did it with Finale. Of course, you can also get MuseScore to hide the unused staff by creating two instruments rather than one (which is how I do it in 1.0), but that seems more kludgy to me.

The default behavior is, I believe, the more desirable one, since it is easy to force a staff not to be hidden by placing invisible elements there. But an additional option would be nice - either a style option "don't hide staves of multi-staff instrument", or a staff property "don't hide this staff even if empty" - would be nice.

I think in an orchestra , multi staff instrument could have staff hidden, but only if the two are empty .... no ?

Yes, if both staves are empty, they should both be hidden - in a score anyhow (different story for parts). The question is, what happens if one staff of a multi-staff instrument is empty and the other is not. Sometimes you want all staves of the instrument shown even if some is empty. Other times, you want only the non-empty staves shown.

Currently, only the non-empty staves are shown. I am proposing we add an option to force all staves of the instrument to be shown if any are non-empty.

i think that's the best Idea
maybe it could be decided from instruments, usually two stave intruments (like piano harp) sould have both staff empty to be hidden , and instrument like wind linked (like two flutes) could have only playing instrument shown (if they are numerated)

There is now a "never hide" option in staff properties, which could be useful in this context. It doesn't completely address this issue - it would still be nice to have an automatic way of getting the 1.3 behavior where we either get both piano staves (if either is non-empty) or neither (if both are non-empty). But as noted, this can still be accomplished by adding invisible / silent notes.

I added an option for this in https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/2311

Fixed in branch master, commit e1192b54bd

fix #10217: option to only hide staff if instrument empty

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

This seems to have been fixed. Does any one know how to enable it? I expected this to be in the score section of the general style under the 'hide empty staves' radio button.

It's fixed in "master", which will eventually become MuseScore 3, by pr9viding an option in Sraff Properties. For 2.x, best you can do is enable "Never hide" for one or both staves in that same dialog.

However, we might look at adding it to 2.3 too?
Hmm maybe not, it seems to change the file format.

It creates an incompatibility - scores with this option set would not look the same. Not a deal breaker to me, but it's something we need to consider carefully.

Same as for crescendo lines and jumps with repeats.
As long as 2.0 can load a score using that new settit and not crash on it, it should be OK, IMHO.

Same in principle, but maybe different in degree. A score that has crescendo lines displaying hairpins is not "significantly" different and people are probably more OK with that than a score that has totally different staves appearing / not appearing. But actually, I'm with you, I personally would be OK with this. For what it's worth, a number of other things I did for master years ago I wouldn't mind seeing cherry-picked or backported for 2.3 - system dividers, improvements to handling of staves with non-standard staff line spacing, the "cutaway" staff option.

Marc, can you explain what you mean by "For 2.x, best you can do is enable "Never hide" for one or both staves in that same dialog."? In 2.3.2, in Style -> General -> Score, I don't see an option to specify "never hide" for any specific staff, just an option to "Hide empty staves" and "Don't hide empty staves in first system".

I'm trying to prevent MuseScore from hiding the treble staff of a piano instrument that only has notes in the bass staff.

This option is found in staff properties. Right click the staff, and select Staff Properties...