Copy & Paste a *single* stemless note in single selection does not copy stemless property
If start with a single stemless note, e.g.:
And then copy it to clipboard, and then paste it (here I've pasted on that rest):
Then the note appears with a stem, but it shouldn't have a stem.
However, if I select more than one stemless note (or even select a mix of stemless and non stemless note), and copy and paste them, then the respective stemless properties are copied correctly into the pasted notes. So the issue is with just a single note.
on b9befd8 x86-64 AppImage
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I'm not sure this isn't by design. If you Shift-click the note to make it a one-note-long range selection, it's copied exactly as it is, but remember that single-selecting a note and copying doesn't even include the duration.
>> "If you Shift-click the note to make it a one-note-long range selection, it's copied exactly as it is"
Ok, I understand, and I can reproduce that.
>> "single-selecting a note and copying doesn't even include the duration."
Umm, I'm not able to reproduce that. If I single select and copy a half note, then select some non-half note rest to paste over, then what gets pasted is a half note. So durations are copied.
I've discovered what is going on. The result of pasting a single note is that that it will utilize whatever stem properties are of the note being pasted over. So if I copy a stemmed note and paste it ontop of a stemless note, then the result is stemless.
On further inspection, when I look closely at the blue-selected parts of the note when I've selected it for copying, I see that only the note is being selected, not the stem:
![single-note-selected.png]( "single-note-selected.png")
So the fact that it is not actually copying the stem part of the note is consistent with the behavior I'm observing, and I can understand how this is "by design".
I think part of the confusion comes from the fact that when I've selected the note head of a stemless note, there is no visually way for me to know that the stemless property is not actually selected, since the entire thing that I'm copying is blue when there is no stem. So although I think I've selected and copied this stemless note, I have not actually selected the entirety of the stemless note.
The reason I bring this issue up, is because frequency I deal with jazz lead sheets, where I'm moving around stemless slash notes, e.g. If I have the following and want to copy a selected slash:
![jazz-break.png]( "jazz-break.png")
![jazz-break-after-paste.png]( "jazz-break-after-paste.png")
Then when I paste it into the rest, I get a slash note with the unwanted stem (and also missing the "fix to line" and don't play properties:
Regarding your comment about durations not being copied, I can verify that behavior only occurs when pasting onto an actual note. But when pasting onto a rests, the duration is copied, however.
Now that I know what is going on internally, everything makes sense. I'm wondering this this can be made more intuitive to a new user. I can't think of how at the moment. Although I think I'm going to add a note at the end of https://musescore.org/en/handbook/copy-and-paste-0 explaining that if a single note is selected, then the properties (including stemlessness) are not copied.
Ok, so I looked closely at that copy & paste handbook page, and realized that I would be better off putting my Caveat clarification in the page for https://musescore.org/en/handbook/selection-modes as a sub-bullet under "Selection of a single object":
Interesting that pasting into a rest applies the duration. It doesn't if you paste a copied notehead onto another note with a different duration.
There is still one aspect of this note-only selection business: If I select, copy, & paste a single notehead, then the following "Note" properties listed in the inspector are NOT copied:
In fact the only "Note" property that is copied is the note head type, in addition to the pitch (and duration if pasting into a rest)
Edit: actually now I see what is going on...those note properties are not copied when pasting to a new note, for example copying the following:
![note-before-copy.png]( "note-before-copy.png")
![note-after-copy.png]( "note-after-copy.png")
yields the following when pasted onto a rest:
But if I paste onto an already existing note, then all those properties are copied. I don't know what the reasoning is for this, but please explain to me why. I say that all properties listed under "Note" in the inspector should be copied regardless of whether pasting into a rest or onto an existing note.
At first glance I would agree we should copy all Note properties when pasting a note, as this seems logical. But when push comes to shove, I'll take "useful" over logical. I don't really know what real qworld scenario would come up where someone would be trying to copy noteheads around rarther than actual notes (except by mistake). If there are valid real workd use cases - and I assume there are - I'd like to look at them to see what the expected behavior would actually be for those cases.
The case I experience quite a bit is and why i brought this up is when making jazz lead sheets where I'm using stemless slashes to denote rhythmic hits. When I decide to cut/copy and paste a single slash, whenever I paste it then have to manually remove the stem and the is played toggle via inspector. However, now I know to select the full chord, not just the notehead, and I made that caveat note in the handbook selection page.