Some improvement suggestions

• Dec 15, 2012 - 16:35

1. Allowing the double bar in the middle of a bar. The double bar is for ending a phrase and it could be put anywhere in the bar. I saw in at least two pieces of printed music - by Oxford University Press - where double bar are found in the middle of a bar. Please consider this in the next release.:
2. The playback of individual voices, so if a track has two voices, soprano and alto, one could select a voice to playback (or suppress the other voice, which ever is easier to implement).
3. When jumping to the next page, in note entering mode, pls make it so the software shows the last bar of the previous page (or the last part of it), to let user see what has been done before, and whether the entered note was accurately recorded or not. Just showing the new page, as the current implementation, forces the user to zoom out or go back, which is very annoying.
4. Desperately need a way to moving text around and re-attach words to different notes and yet still maintain the horizontal position on the same line. May be a text editor, or a lower level editor is required. Also allowing external text to be imported into the music line. Format and control characters need to be defined (ie. white-space for word separation, hyphenation for word splits, underscore for extending a word, or a splitting part, to a number of notes (each for an extra note)).
5. Facilities to allow changing text's font, format, size and alignment (left, right, center) - this is particularly useful for songs as people often put verse's numbers on the first bar. Allowing also for the repeat of numbering on the break of the page (next page), as there are songs, where one phrase of music is repeated on a different verse of lyric, and when it gets to the next page, if this distinction is gone, it is very confusing to relocate the verse that you're on. A background highlight of the currently active verse could also solve this problem when playing back on computer.
6. Update the content of palette with user's additions of symbols, such as 4/2, 3/2 etc.. Pls consider tabular docking for palettes (horizontal/vertical tabs), and allowing add/removal of individual palette on the docking window. This is to accommodate the screen size limitation on Linux (ie. GNOME 3).
7. Besides the default working directory, could you also allow the use the currently active document's path to be the working path when "SAVE" or "SAVE AS" command is issued. The only time the DEFAULT working directory is used, is when the current working document is the ONLY new file. Use the last working document's path when saving is very useful. So the order of search for path should be:
a. If current active document already has a path, use it.
b. If not, use the last path that a file was saved or accessed.
c. If not, use the default document path in the settings.
8. There should be an edit mode and non-edit mode. The current behavior is edit mode. In non-edit mode, mouse and keyboard activities will only allow to move between pages for reading. This will avoid some accidental undesired editing actions / changes taking place. This is extremely useful when editing and viewing a long document.


Comments

1/ it's already possible. If you just one a visual result you can select a note and double click the double bar in the palette. If you want a better result, you can change the actual duration of each measure and use a normal double bar. See http://www.screenr.com/ms4

2/It's indeed not possible to mute a voice in a staff, they share the same midi track. There is an open feature request #13584: Playback should be able to select voices, not just instruments. However, you can delete a voice easily or copy it to its own staff. See http://www.screenr.com/hJ8s

3/ Next version of MuseScore will have a panoramic view with a long never ending system. That should solve this issue.

4/ Did you try copy paste lyrics or text?

5/It's already possible to change text font, size, color. When you edit a text, check the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. There will be better support for verse number in next version.

6/ You can already delete palette. Addition of custom symbols will be introduced in next version. You can read more about it here http://musescore.org/en/node/14974

7/ a/ it's already the case, if you save it. If you save it AS then there is no reason to save it in the same directory... it's your preference but another user might prefer a default path.

8/ Locking the screen could be indeed a additional feature. However if you accidentally change something, the file will have pending save and a star is displayed close to the filename. You can use Ctrl + Z to undo accidental changes. Moreover, you can use scroll mouse and Shift/Control to navigate without clicking, and that should also remove any accidental changes.

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