Line fonts change unexpectedly

• Jan 17, 2012 - 22:26

When adding a fret position indicator from the lines palette, it preserves the correct attributes present in the XML definition (as expected). If I then edit the line attributes to change the text, e.g. from "VII" to "XIII", when I click "OK" the text font changes from the XML stored attribute to some default whose source I haven't determined; in my case it goes from the 9pt type specified in the XML to 10pt. However, if before applying the change I click on the ellipsis button next to the text to set the font, my correct font (9pt) appears listed, and if I then OK twice the line retains the correct font size.

Evidently somebody is trying to apply a style or other default, but this is only occurring when I edit the text without first editing the font. Obviously the whole issue of styles needs some TLC.


Comments

What version are you talking about? The whole style mechanism has been completely revamped for 2.0, to work more like it does in word processors and so forth where changing a style automatically changes the appearance of text to which that style has already been aploed. styles in previous versions are indeed, shall we say, a bit more ad hoc than that.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Oh, duh, I guess I should be keeping more up to date with where the project is going. I have been working with the current stable release, 1.1. I didn't realize 2.0 was close. Sorry if my comments are passe. Glad these issues are getting scrutiny.

Is there now, or will there be, a reasonably stable beta of 2.0 suitable for real use (with suitable caveats of course)? I realize that using the nightly builds has some inherent risk, and at the moment I'm more concerned about protecting the music I'm notating than about testing prerelease tools. (I'm expecting the answer to be "No...for serious work, wait for a stable release and stop complaining.")

In reply to by spinality

No particular reason you should have known about 2.0, but it does get mentioned here in the forums from time to time, also if you check out the developer mailing list or if you follow the issue tracker. Last I heard, they were talking about end of this year. There are already nightly builds, but while they can be stable enough to play around with, you're right - I wouldn't recommend using one for serious work.

The improved handling of text styles is one of the semi-major things I am looking forward to from what I have seen in my own playing around. But one reason I wondered if you were already using a nightly build 2.0 is that one of *really* major features is TAB support, and I think other guitar notations may go along with that. Some of the things you've describe trying to do in recent reports here I didn't know were even possible with 1.1, so I thought perhaps you were using a nightly build.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

...to hear that I haven't been overlooking something that everybody else here knew. "End of this year"...gosh that's a long way from now. But I will try to resist getting involved with the development side of things because I MUST focus on music this year!

BTW TAB support is actually of zero interest to me, I really don't like tablature. (Unless you're talking about field tab order, which is of interest but obviously a minor topic.) The other things I've been mentioning have been either done using the vanilla interface, or by editing the palette XML files to add palette entries. Well, though obviously the things I mention in my 'feature request' comments I haven't been doing at all...but wishing I could.

Thanks much for the helpful input. I've been hoping I haven't been duplicating comments by others but didn't see any of these topics addressed, at least with the limited searching I did.

Trevor

In reply to by spinality

I expect you don't really need this warning, but "end of this year" is certainly not a promise, though perhaps an aspiration (I'm not involved in development). On the other hand, the progress that has been made over the past couple of years is quite impressive, so we can hope!

In reply to by spinality

While I recognize that what you are talking about is not tab, it does seem you are trying to create chord block diagrams, and when I said that the tab support in 2.0 is supposedly going to also provide "other guitar notations", that is going to include chord block diagrams: http://musescore.org/en/node/13008. See the video preview in particular. Looks like dragging lines around will be thing of the past!

I now have the most recent nightly build install, and found "insert fret diagram frame" under the create menu, but when I added one, it gave me what looks like an empty "vertical frame", and I couldn't figure out how to get to the fretboard editor shown in the video. Maybe it's not hooked up yet, or I just need to learn how to do it.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

> it does seem you are trying to create chord block diagrams

Actually, I'm not doing that at all. I'm just using standard classical guitar notation, via the line palette entries that are already provided in the standard 1.1 system. There is a line that says "VII" with a hooked end toward the bottom of the palette. This indicates playing at the seventh fret position. The VII can be edited as part of the line text. I have added some more fret position indicators in the palette for convenience. So no chord blocks, just lines indicating position plus fingering indicators on individual notes.

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

I know, it's tried and true, and I do have to use it, especially with old lute music of course.

But I'd just rather read notation. It's purely a matter of what I'm used to seeing. If I used tab more, no doubt I'd be more open minded about it. I suppose it's partly a reaction to the many sources of tab-only scores. I just don't "see" the music in tab form.

Though what I really dislike, inexplicably, is reading interlinear scores with both tab and dots. I don't know why it annoys me, but it does. :) Reading this now I realize I sound like a goofball, but there it is.

In reply to by mtherieau

> to go back to your original posting, you may want to download a nightly build

Yes, good point, I have been making a flurry of suggestions arising from the scoring I've been doing; but I really need to get more organized about checking the development situation. I hope I haven't been wasting people's time by going about this a bit bass-ackwards. My main take-away here is that the system is under active development, and many issues are indeed getting attention. (I had no idea what level of activity was occurring, nor how many people were involved. A lot of open source projects make good progress for a while, but then kind of stall.)

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

> The idea of trying to create your own block diagrams by dragging lines around did not sound fun at all.

But we've all done it. :)

   X  X  X                      
+--+--+--+--+--+--+
1  |  |  |  |  |  |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|  |  |  |  2  |  |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|  |  |  |  |  3  |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|  |  |  |  |  | 4
+--+--+--+--+--+--+

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.