Score spacing compared to 1.x

• Mar 2, 2013 - 10:36

Has anyone else noticed that the spacing of everything is wider in the nightly builds of 2.0?

I have just noticed this because I opened a score from 1.x in the latest nightly build so I could export to SVG only to discover that my carefully prepared page-turns were destroyed.

On closer investigation it appears that MuseScore 2 is spacing everything more widely than 1.x.

Playing with the Bar parameters in the Style menu helps, but to get the same spacing as in 1.x makes it all look too crammed together.

As page turns are of paramount importance to keyboard players and other musicians using both hands to play their instrument, this is an issue of some importance, particularly if you are preparing scores to be read from a tablet.

Comments

• Mar 2, 2013 - 11:14

Not only the spacing…

I use both 1.2 and trunk. So I sometimes open 1.2 scores with trunk and see that a lot of details are not conserved and that the score needs a serious readjustment.

This should be investigated before releasing 2.0, at least to edit an advertisement about the best way to handle 1.2 scores under 2.0

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• Mar 2, 2013 - 12:43

Yes, I noticed an increasing widening in spacing in the last weeks? months? (Definitely, before than this week).

I did not spend time on specific tests, also because most of my scores are now in 2.0 (it is a risk, I know, but I prefer to risk it and use the new features) which cannot be 'counter-proofed' wih 1.x. So, I do not have hard facts, but I suspect this might be due to one or more of the following:

  • the recent increase in bar line spacing parameters (some of them were not configurable in 1.x, but were set to narrower sizes than current defaults)
    • a less-than-optimal spacing of accidentals (with down-stemmed notes more the with up-stemmed?) and other 'embedded' elements like changing clefs, which seem to take more space than required

      • NOT FOUND: 1

      • a different progression in space taken by the various note values?

      NOT FOUND: 2

      In general, I find the new decisions about proportional spacing less easy to understand than before. It would be useful to know which the current algorithm for proportional spacing is and/or where it is implemented (to try to understand it by myself).

      Thanks,

      M.

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• Mar 3, 2013 - 18:08

FWIW, I've noticed this quite some time (months?) as well. It's not just a few scores; it's practically everything. Trying to load the actual 1.X version of the "All Dudes" demo shows the problem very clearly. 1.X has no problems fitting measures 13-16 on one line, but you can't get 2.0 to do it, at least not just by reducing stretch. If you reduce it enough to fit those measures on one line, the last couple of notes extend off the right edge of the staff.

Most of my 1.X scores show similar issues. I use manual line breaks very liberally to make sure my page layout doesn't ever shift, but when I load the score in 2.0, some of my systems get split in two because the measures no longer fit on one system. Reducing stretch some times fixes it, but sometimes - as with All Dudes - it just can't.

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• Mar 7, 2013 - 19:25

Thanks for fixing this! I notice that the spacing issue has been fixed in the Windows nighly, but I am still getting the wider spacing in the Linux install I've compiled from source, despite doing a git pull, Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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