Ability To Create And Control Edit Points

• Sep 25, 2012 - 17:32

It would be helpful to be able to create and control a number of user-established "edit points". Granted, the Documents Side By Side and Documents Stacked features allow one to easily move between two points in a score, but some long, complex pieces would benefit from the ability to let the user establish a number of edit points. These Edit Points should be easily settable, modifiable and clearable. For example, when cutting and pasting in a long work two or more edit points could be established for the spots where copies are made and additional edit points could be created to define where the copied information is to be pasted.

Comments

• Sep 26, 2012 - 10:41

Let me see if I understand:

1) Are you speaking of something like " score bookmarks"? For instance, you select a note (would be notes enough?), and a command would allow to create a bookmark on it; then a list somewhere would allow quickly jumping to it. Correct?

2) Is your copying and pasting example implying that some operations should automatically create bookmarks? For instance, after a copy operation, two bookmarks could be create, labelled "Start of last copy" and "End of last copy", and so on.

M.

Reply

• Sep 26, 2012 - 11:42

I think he means something akin to the markers you can set in most MIDI sequencers.

This gives you the ability to mark sections and navigate between them at the press of a key (or click of a mouse)

During my backing track programming days I used this a lot for marking out song structures: Intro, verse 1, chorus1, bridge etc.

This meant I could navigate between sections easily when I needed to edit, or copy material.

Reply

• Sep 27, 2012 - 16:56

Yes, CO, that's exactly what I mean. The ability to "teleport" rapidly around in a long score by setting edit points would be a very helpful feature. Not only would it be helpful to those in the thick of editing a large piece; I could foresee it being used for playback as well. For example, three motifs in a piece each assigned an edit point (control point?) would allow the user to quickly compare or audit the results.

Personally, I would tend to use this feature mostly for editing but I'm sure other users will find novel ways to employ this ability.

I thought I read somewhere on this site that a vast number of users fire up MuseScore to create and edit and produce lead sheets and short pieces. Folks like that will probably never deploy this feature. But those who need to get from page 16 to page 3 in a hurry will find it very handy.

Reply

• Sep 27, 2012 - 16:55

"Score bookmarks" sounds like a good name for what I'm suggesting. Your Number One comment succinctly describes what I'm suggesting. If implemented, I think it could be handled through a right click sub menu.

For example, I select a note (or a bar, or a rehearsal letter), right click on the sub menu to set it as an edit point. The right click menu could also display any other edit points I've established (and perhaps I could even navigate to one of them right from within the sub menu).

Perhaps each edit point is coloured (for quick recognition), or simply numbered or lettered in order of creation? Whatever the form it takes it should not require typing (unless user sets a keyboard shortcut?)

Your Number Two comment is not what I intended. I think it could get pretty messy if it were automated in this way. Although, in fairness it might be something to think about. Whatever the outcome, these edit points (score bookmarks) need to be easily created, selected and dismissed.

Reply

• Sep 27, 2012 - 17:39

I have been itching for something like this for a while.

Anyone who is producing multipage structured material is going to love havng this facility, and it would hve been most helpful during my last project in 1.2, an arrangement of Margaret Rizza's Mass for the Bread of Life for voices, various instruments and organ.

Personally I would like to have the option of bringing up a window with the list of assigned bookmarks - perhaps there is room at the bottom of the Inspector?

Another idea would be for the rehearsal marks you put in to this kind of score to act as bookmarks. Presumably this would save on coding as MuseScore is already keeping track of their location - all that would be needed is for the code to jump to them added.

Reply

• Sep 27, 2012 - 20:09

While I can imagine people saying they might want to have a bookmakr that *wasn't* tied to a rehearsal mark, I have to say i do really like that from a UI design and implementation standpoint. If I think about it as a user, about half the tome I might want this it actually is during rehearsal, where someone asks me to check their part 4 bars after "W" or whatever. Or where I have made a change on a paper copy of my score and want to go back and make it to the original file. In those cases, rehearsal maka would be fine as a mode. But another case is where I'm actively creating the piece, and I'm trying to copy a bunch of stuff from one spot in the score to another, but is't contiguous to the point where I can just copy a whole region and get it over with - I'm either copying staff by staff (to paste them in a different order, say) or measure by measure (to skip certain measures. But in that case, I could live with adding a temporary rehearsal mark I'd expect to delete later. I like the rehearsal mark idea because it means I don't need to take any extra steps to have permanent bookmarks added.

All that would actually be needed then is a "find" command that let you specify text and it searched through your rehearsal marks looking for it. Possibly tie this in with goto measure number.

Reply

• Oct 3, 2012 - 19:05

We already have Ctrl + F and enter the measure number to go to this measure directly, even in 1.2. What if it could search for Rehearsal mark too ? And if the rehearsal mark is let's say "A", something like "A+4 " or "A-4". The main problem with this implementation would be that it will be up to the user to use different label for rehearsal mark... if you create several A, MuseScore will have to choose...

I like the idea of having a full blown feature like in MIDI sequencer but I think it's more UI and make the program complex. Especially if you add colors etc... And it's better if it's tied to something you will see on the score itself.

Reply

• Oct 3, 2012 - 20:28

Thanks for the heads up on Ctrl+F, lasconic. I don't know how I overlooked this since thousands and thousands of applications use Ctrl+F as a standard for search. I will certainly begin to put it to use. It's not quite what I had in mind when I made my proposal but it will do for now.

Reply

• Oct 4, 2012 - 10:36

I'd forgotten about CTRL+F

Linking this to search for Rehearsal marks would be a major improvement on what we have now, but sometimes you need to switch back and forth several times between sections, so ultimately it would be good to have a list of Rehearsal marks you could click on.

Reply

• Oct 4, 2012 - 16:06

I'm starting to see the rationale behind all this. I understand how it would be useful for the usages described above.

Now, in my usage of MuseScore -- and I bet I am not alone in this -- I almost never use rehearsal marks (I remember having used them in one piece only): the stuff I do is made of several short pieces, usually 1 to 3 pages, strung together: either collections of short independent pieces (instrumental like ricercari or fantasias, or vocal like madrigals, and so on) or movements of a sonata.

In the first case, each has a title (in a VBox and qualified and styled as such for typographic consistency); in the second, each has a tempo mark.

I wonder if the searchable feature or clickable list feature could include not only rehearsal mark, but also titles and tempo marking...

Thanks,

M.

Reply

• Oct 4, 2012 - 19:10

I'm sure that's s technically possible, but I wonder, wouldn't the new 2.0 mechanism for marking movement breaks (I haven't tired it out yet and don't what it's called or how it works) be a more natural thing tonbe able to search on? That way you wouldn't mecessarily have to have a title. It wouild just be a matter of attaching a name to the section break (?). You could also add an invisible rehearsal mark. Not that i'm opposed to having titles be part of it, just trying to think in somewhat more general terms.

Reply

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