Stem length question; question about spacing of accidentals
I've noticed that two eighths beamed together get longer stems than four eighths beamed together. I don't find this visually appealing, myself, because my eyes don't see the logic in it. So, I have two questions about this:
1. Is this behaviour in line with the accepted practices of music engraving ? If so, I'm curious if someone can explain why.
2. Is there a setting in MuseScore that I can change to make the stems be the same length by default?
Second thing: I've noticed if the first note in a measure has a lyric, then it will be closer to the barline if it has an accidental than if it does not. It's as if the accidental takes up a negative amount of space. (This doesn't seem to happen in the absence of lyrics.) Again, same two questions:
1. Is this behaviour in line with the accepted practices of music engraving ? If so, I'm curious if someone can explain why.
2. Is there a setting in MuseScore that I can change to make the accidental push the notehead away from the barline rather than sucking it toward the barline? 
Comments
The rules for stem lengths & beam angles for beamed notes are very subjective and extremely complex. it's not exactly a rule that two beamed notes of the same pitch should be treated different than four, but the way MuseScore interprets and implements the rules, this does happen to turn out to be the case. Basically, for groups fo more than two notes, we employ more general rules, but for exactly two beamed notes, we do additional special casing to optimize that behavior. Realistically, I 'd love to see that whole chunk of code overhauled, but it's a big job, and it's very likely any change to improve some aspect of beaming would make other things worse.
As for the space between note and barline, the settings are in Style / General / Measure. You'll see a "Barline to note distance" and a separate "Barline to accidental distance". Normally, accidental don't actually pull the note closer - the accidental will be closer to the barline than the notehead would have been without an accidental, but the notehead will be further than it would have been without the accidental. What is obscuring that fact in your example is the lyric, which is pushing the note further from the barline than it otherwise would be so that the lyric does not cross the barline. It looks like the code that handles this is maybe a little too clever for its own good, as it is trying to align the left edge of the lyric with the same place the accidental or note would have been without the lyric, and that's two different places - closer indeed for the accidental. Probably the should be an additional setting for "Barline to lyric distance" which would be constant regardless of whether the note has an accidental or not.
In the experiment nightly builds for MuseScore 3, much about these aspects of layout is changed, but no change to these specific cases.
In reply to The rules for stem lengths &… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks, Marc. Yes, your description of what "normally" happens with the barline, the accidental, and the notehead is what I think ought to happen, and is indeed what happens when there is no lyric. So, you're right, it sounds like the code that handles lyric spacing is "too clever for its own good". I don't quite know what you mean about aligning the lyric to where the accidental or note would have been, but I'll trust that you do. :)
Meanwhile, the bug regarding the spacing of noteheads with lyrics when there's a melisma (https://musescore.org/en/node/118146) is still driving me batty... is this fixed in MuseScore 3? Any idea on when it might be stable enough for production use?
In reply to Thanks, Marc. Yes, your… by Solomon Douglas
For future reference, what I mean about aligning the lyric to where the accidental or note would have been is this:
Delete the lyric from the first note of a measure. You'll see that a note with no accidental is 1.2sp from the barline by default, but if there is an accidental, the accidental is 0.3sp from the barline by default (these are the default settings in Style / General / Measure).
If you add a lyric to the first note of a measure, you'll now see that the lyric itself is 1.2sp from the barline if the note has no accidental, 0.3sp from the barline if the note does have an accidental. In other words, we are still checking whether or not the note has an accidental even though that fact is irrelevant if there is a lyric.
Anyhow, regarding spacing in the presence of melisma - as mentioned in the thread you link to and the issue references there, yes, this is fixed in MuseScore 3, but it's a long ways from being usable. No idea when that might change, but personally I wouldn't be expecting anything this calendar year.