Selective Paste

• Sep 4, 2012 - 11:49

Such a function would be used to control what is pasted.

This includes things such as lyrics and breaks.

What do others think?

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• Sep 4, 2012 - 12:54

Sibelius doesn't have a special paste or special copy I think. But they have 4 types of selections. Depending on the type of selection, some things are copied or not. If you select one or more staves but not the full system, things like time signatures, key signatures, rehearsal marks, Tempo text, line beaks are not copied. They are only copied if you select the full system. More over, selecting a full system, copying it, and then pasting it somewhere will insert the music and not override the existing music. So new bars will be created. Currently MuseScore doesn't have this distinction and you have to insert measures before pasting.

In Finale, there is also a two types of range selection for full system (stack) or not. The closest thing of special copy/paste seems to be Filters. A filter is set as a preference, and you can activate, deactivate, or change it any time. The filter is used during copy paste. Another relevant page in the Finale manual is about copy and pasting

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• Sep 4, 2012 - 14:07

As someone who used Finale for years before MuseScore, I would say that I loved having the ability to control what got copied and pasted, but there was nothing particularly elegant about the speicific way Finale accomplished this. It worked, but I have no doubt we could come up with (or "borrow") something better.

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• Sep 5, 2012 - 03:37

I've never used Sibelius' system, but would be totally willing to believe it is better than Finale's. Still, since Finale's is what I know, it's what I'll use as a basis discussion.

Off the top of my head, I think the most natural time for me to think about what gets copied and pasted is during the paste operation. I don't want to have to think about it before the copy, and I especially don't want to have to remember to *change* it before the next copy operation.

So my first cut at a proposal would be, have two different paste commands. One that brings up a filter dialog allowing you to choose what gets pasted and then does the paste, and another that simply pastes using the current filter settings. The filter dialog should have buttons to automatically select certain common sets of things - "everything", "notes only", "everything but notes", etc.

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• Sep 8, 2012 - 09:11

Overall, the suggestion is quite sensible, as Michael said. There are a few points to note, though:

1) I think a 'normal' "Paste" command should remain: to paste 'simple' things (text, for instance), or just 'everything'.

2) In point 1) above and in Marc's suggestion, what 'everything' may mean is not so obvious:
- if the copied excerpt has an initial key signature, it should not be pasted if it matches the key sig in effect at the paste point;
- if the copied excerpt was in a different key than the one in effect at the paste point, should the pasting force a key change or not?
- same for clefs;
- same for time signatures;
- pasting should never paste tempo marking (at least I think).

3) 'Note only':
- do slurs belong to notes or not? (I would say yes). In other words: does it make sense to copy notes without the slurs which come with them?
- do ornaments and articulations belong to notes? (I would say yes too, but possibly other would have a different opinion).

4) 'Everything but notes':
- I assume this means to 'overlay' existing notes at the pasting point with articulations, dynamics, lyrics, etc, in the copied excerpt; what to do if the rhythmic pattern of the excerpt to paste does not match the pattern at the pasting point?
- this applies to any kind of (filtered) pasting where the copied excerpt contains notes, but they should not be pasted;
- the only exception to the previous point is when the copied excerpt contains only one segment; in this case, the copied excerpt would have at most only one element of each kind which could be easily pasted to the segment at the pasting point, ignoring differences in duration.

I am sure there can be other details, but these are the points I can think of on the spot.

Thanks,

M.

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• Sep 8, 2012 - 15:54

I also agree - having normal Paste behave differently depending on what you did recently is a bad idea. I retract it. But I do like the idea of having just two different paste commands - one that applies the defaults (whether that is everything, or just some things as it is now) and ne that pops a dialog asking what to paste. Maybe have the dialog default to the last used settings, so performing repetitive filtered paste operations would still be fairly simple (paste-filtered + Enter).

And yes, we'd need to fine tune what "notes only" and "everything but notes" means exactly, but the basic idea is as you are describing. I wouldn't expect "everything but notes" - or any custom scheme in which you are copying any particular items without copying notes - to do anything in particular if the rhythms don't match. Probably just ignore any such notes.

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