Grid-based movement of symbols
I searched some information on the subject, I read this:
http://musescore.org/en/grid-based-movement-symbols-and-staff-text
and tried to apply it (Vista - 3d61a7d).
When selecting All Similar Elements (eg. chord symbols):
-Ctrl dragging move the selected elements only horizontally, all togheter;
-Shift drag move only one element vertically.
To move it all togheter:
- selecting All Similar Elements;
- Shift dragging one element vertically;
- Esc;
- right click same element, selecting All Similar Elements;
- Ctrl drag, a small shift: all the other move vertically togheter.
Is this the correct system?
Regards, Franz
Comments
Yes, sounds good.
This doesn't seem to always work. The final small Ctrl drag sometimes messes up the position of the other elements. Try it with dynamics instead of chord symbols and you'll see what I mean. As soon as you start the Ctrl drag, the dynamics all collapse on top of each other. I assume that's a bug, but I'm not sure what the expected behavior of constrained dragging with multiple selections is. I mean, I know what *I* expect, but I don't know if the facility is actually designed to handle it.
Other ways to achieve the basic goal of controlled alignment of symbols:
Currently, the most efficient way to accomplish this is probably to use the Inspector. Select the elements, and if they are all of the same type, you can control horizontal & vertical offset for all at once and see the effect in real time as you change the values in the spin boxes. The ability to do this without needing to open and close a bunch of dialogs is one very nice advantage of the Inspector over the old mechanism.
Another possibility is to use keyboard nudging, which as far as I have seen now is possible for all element types (some require double click to enable, others single click, but I can live with that). You can to move the elements one at a time, but if there's just a few, I find this convenient enough. I just count how many Ctrl+ I am moving by.