How to select measure numbers but not tuplet numbers (deselect tuplet numbers only)

• Mar 1, 2017 - 02:40

I would like to select measure numbers only so I can adjust their position. However, using "select all similar elements" also selects tuplet numbers.

It is difficult to de-select tuplet numbers, at this point in the process, because I am using many of them, and they do not select easily with "Ctl-click".

Do you have any advice how to select measure numbers only without including tuplet numbers in the multiple selection list?

Thanks for your kind ideas either way.


Comments

Right click a measure number and chose Text Style... You have the ability to move them in various ways (horizontal and vertical offset, center, justify, up, down...) and change the font (size, italics...) as you like. This will only affect measure numbers.

In reply to by mike320

Your comment misses the point about selecting all measure numbers without selecting tuplet numbers.

Your comment "This will only affect measure numbers" is actually not true. Every selected text is affected by Text Style. I would like to move measure numbers without moving tuplet numbers, so I need to find an easy way select only measure numbers and not tuplet numbers.

Thanks for trying! :)

In reply to by Thom Kurtz

I just tried Mike320's advice and Thom is right.

However this is interesting:

Scenario 1:

- Take a score with triplets in it
- Control-Select a measure number
- Choose select similar elements.
Result: Both measure number and triplet labels are selected and I can't find a way to deselect either individually.

Scenario 2:

- Same score
- Control-Select a triplet label
- Choose select similar elements.
Result: Only triplet labels are selected

Weird, no? Is this a bug? Worth worrying about? (I can't imagine a scenario where it would matter).

In reply to by azumbrunn

You must both be doing something wrong. I tested in both 2.0.3 and 2.1. If you right click a measure number and use change Text Style... you get to exactly where the text style dialog takes you mentioned below. The only thing that changes is the properties for the measure numbers. It doesn't matter if i have all similar items selected or nothing and right click measure number.

In reply to by mike320

I tried it in 2.0.3.1, MacOS Yosemite. Being surprised at the apparent inconsistency I double checked.
On my machine the effects are as I described. And I can confirm that both the triplet numbers and the measure numbers move if you try to move them in the inspector.
Marc has now explained how this works and the style menu is always available and the correct choice for the purpose of formatting measure numbers (though not triplet numbers; I recently would have liked to make them small for small notes in cues but could not find a way).
So I think the question that started this thread has been resolved.

In reply to by mike320

Correct. The Inspector is how you change *which* text style gets associated with that element. Like, to switch a particular selected staff text element from the Staff Text style to the Dynamics style. And thus, this change affects only the selected element(s). The Text Style option in the right click menu is how you actually alter parameters of the style - like changing font size - and this affects all elements that have that style.

In reply to by mike320

Yes, but with right click > text properties you get to move only one number, even if you select a all of them via select all similar elements. Only the one you happen to right click will move (same for dynamics etc). And the question clearly was how to move all of the numbers.

This is a change from version 1, which did not have an inspector and probably for this reason allowed editing multiple items with the right click > properties method.

In reply to by azumbrunn

Also, 1.x did not have a true text style facility, so selecting elements and adjusting them manually was the only way to change positions of existing elements. Meaning if you wanted to change the position of all staff text elements (or whatever), you needed to modify the *properties* of the existing ones as well as the *style* in order to affect new ones. Now, a simple change to *style* takes care of everything in one step. So indeed, the whole system changed fundamentally for 2.0, such that modifying *properties* is no longer the thing to do if you want to change a bunch of elements at once. That was the only way to do things in 1.x, but it didn't work well, so now it is replaced with a text style facility that is far more powerful.

Probably the people reading this right now realize that, but I figure it's important to be clear about this for anyone stumbling upon this discussion later.

Nice bug find.
Suggestion: file an issue in the issue tracker about the selection bug, because it's definitely a coding bug and shouldn't be the case. Maybe the team has fixed it in the more recent versions?
 
In the mean time, why not just change the measure number positioning parameters of Style→Text→Measure Number if your measure number positions are desired to be uniform? This would leave "unscathed" the tuple numerals.
 
A more tedious option is to select All Similar Elements of the measure number like you've been doing, change their positions, and then afterwards click a tuple number and do the All Similar Elements followed by pressing the Reset To Style in the Inspector to bring the tuple numerals back to their original position.
 
{syntaxhighlighter SPEC}Chordially{/syntaxhighlighter}

In reply to by worldwideweary

Your suggestion, "why not just change the measure number positioning parameters of Style→Text→Measure Number if your measure number positions are desired to be uniform? "
is good. I have not used that option before but it suits exactly what I needed.

Thank you for the suggestion.

To be clear:

If you want to change the position of all measure numbers, the correct way to do this is using Text Style. Attempting to select them then move them manually is a bad idea and basically won't work, since the measure numbers are generated on the fly. It will work only as long as the score layout doesn't change, and then if new measures get generated, your adjustments are gone. So, do use Text Style. No need to select anything - just right click a measure number and choose Text Style from the menu. When you make a change, only measure numbers will be affected.

Now, it *does* happen to also be the case that attempting to select all measure numbers using Select / All Similar Elements will also get other elements as well. Not just tuplets, but also the title, composer, and a few other things. It's not a bug, really, but a result of the way these are represented internally. That's because internally, these *are* all the same type of object - plain text (not Staff Text, not Chord Symbol, etc). The only thing that differentiates them internally is their text style. Probably that should be made available as a "Subtype" in the Select / More dialog. And eventually maybe we should consider turning these into separate top level types.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

These should be different items since MS knows the difference, for example, between measure numbers and composers already. As a minimum they should be able to be selected as sub-types using the more... option. There is an inconsistency which should be considered a bug. Right click a measure number or title (et al), select all similar items selects SOME other text items (not staff or system text) while right click tuplet number does not select the same text items. This inconsistency IS a bug since it most certainly is not by design.

In reply to by mike320

Right, because as I said, Staff Text is a different element type from Text. Text is a generic type that includes a number of conceptually different things (title, composer, measure number, a few others). That's just how it is internally. I agree the design could be improved, but I'm just saying, given the current design, that is why "All Similar Elements" behaves as it does. As far as MuseScore internals are concerned, these *are* similar elements.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

MS has to know the difference between different types of text or it wouldn't be able to apply different styles to each different item. You may not have a predefined constant that you as a programmer can use in the selection function that differentiates measure number from title, but somewhere it knows the difference between them or changing the style on one would change all of them. Would fixing this cause incompatibilities with other 2.x versions? I don't know, but there is no reason this couldn't be fixed in 3.0.

In reply to by mike320

No, actually, MuseScore does *not* know the difference once the item is created. That's the whole problem - they really are the same internally. The command to add a title creates a generic Text item and gives it Title text style. The command to add a composer creates a generic Text and gives it Composer text style. But at that point, they are *both* just generic Text elements that happen to have different text styles applied. Their *type* is the same, only their *subtype* is different. You could apply the Composer text style to the Title text and now it is 100% indistinguishable from a Text element you actually add as a composer to begin with. And if you alter some parameter of the Composer text style, it will absolutely alter both - again, they are *not* different internally.

Measure numbers are different not in the *type* of the element, but in how they are attached. Titles and Composers are both attached to frames and are completely indistinguishable apart from their text style. But Measure Numbers are attached to measures. They are, agan, all the same *type* of element, they differ only in what they happen to be attached to.

*Text styles* are totally different than *element types*. You can apply the Composer text *style* to any type of text element you want - a title, a measure number, a chord symbol, a lyric, a fingering - literally any type of text you want. And if you then change some aspect of the Composer text style, it will affect *all* of those elements. That is because the *text style* mechanism doesn't care about *element type*. So the fact that changing the Composer *text
style* doesn't affect measure numbers by default doesn't mean they are different *element types* internally.

Anyhow, this design could indeed be changed for 3.0. I think these should probably be separate top level types, which would make it an incompatible change and thus not something that could be done for 2.1. However, it *would* be possible to improve the the Select / More dialog to honor the text style as a a subtype for elements of type "Text". We already do this for elements of type "Staff Text" (which is a different top level element type, not just a text style applied to generic Text elements).

It is *conceivable* we could even special case Text elements in Select / All Similar Elements, so that it actually selects on subtype, or at least differentiates "text attached to frame" from "text attached to measure", etc. This is kludgy and should be ripped out if we do re-design the Text element type hierarchy.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

"You can apply the Composer text *style* to any type of text element you want - a title, a measure number, a chord symbol, a lyric, a fingering - literally any type of text you want."

How I do from the program?

If I change the composer text style it's only applied to the composer that is already in the score, not the title or measure numbers. If I right click the composer and chose text style and then click Title, the title changes it style not the composer. MS already knows what it what some how.

In reply to by mike320

The Inspector is one way to change the text style assigned to a text element. You can also do it from within the Text Properties dialog. The ability to change the text style assigned to an element is a key feature in MuseScore 2, as it allows you to have different staff texts with different styles, or different chord symbols with different styles, etc. I do this oftem to have staff text above and below the staff, or alternate chord symbols in smaller print above the main ones, etc. Although I gather this mechanism is changing for 3.0; I haven;'t kept up with those changes.

Anyhow, again, in MuseScore 2, if you assign the Composer text style to a title, then changes to that text style will then affect that element. That is because *text style* is a completely different thing than *element type*. Totally different, 100%. Text style affects *all elements that have that text style*, regardless of element type. Conversely, "Select / All Similar Elements" selects *all elements that have that element type*, regardless of their text style. You can currently select based on text style using the "subtype" option within the Select / More dialog, but this is supported only for the Staff Text element type as far as I know. As I said, it probably should be for *all* text elements.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Yes, I started this thread and it has been answered very well.

To summarize, the answer I really needed was just to use the Page style editor where you can change the measure number style for the whole score, and avoid the problem with tuplet numbers and measure numbers being selected simultaneously if you try to use the Inspector tool.

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