Add ability to explicitly break links between linked staves/parts
Type
Functional
Frequency
Many
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
GIT commit: 6c5b016
Right now, elements and edits are either linked or not; users has no choice in the matter. If MuseScore fails to link something you want linked, it's easy enough to workaround - just make the change manually in both place. But iof MuseScore links something you don't want linked, it is not so easy - you would have to resort to creating duplicate items and hiding them. An explicit command to break a link would be helpful.
Comments
See http://musescore.org/en/node/25261 for further discussion. In a comment there, I suggest having an option to break all links for an entire part as a fallback. I rather like this thought. You keep the convenience of having the part open with the score, but with no worries of changes to score having unintended effect on part or vice versa in those cases where you really want to keep them distinct for whatever reason.
Now I have an idea - all objects could be linked but in independent destinations could be invisible and no space occupying. Then, if you want to activate their link just set them on. To set them off you could have two ways - if you want to set it off just on one document, set it off on this document; if you want set them off on all document except selected one, set them off from the document you want have it to be visible [visible only here].
Here would be only one problem - how to access the invisible objects for switching visibility, if they are no space occupying, or problem how to orientate in many objects over each other stacked.
Just want to second the motion. I've been having some frustrating times with this myself, and I think this should definitely be a feature.
I might add that creating duplicate items and hiding them, as Marc says, doesn't necessarily solve everything. If one part has a multi-measure rest, than even a hidden object belonging to the rest of the score (by the way, I'm glad someone else thinks of it as "hidden" rather than "invisible") causes an empty measure to be separated from the rest (no pun intended). I know 'cause I tried it.
Can you post an example of a problem you treid to solve this way? I guess you are talking adding a marking to the score that you don't want to appear in the part, but the presence of the marking is breaking the rest in the part? I am having a hard time picture a case where this would be needed. It's more the reverse case I'd expect - an element that should appear in the part but not in the score.
Seeing examples of the real world problems people would be trying to solve would help in deciding how such a facility could eventually be designed.
Sure. Suppose you want the entire ensemble to go to a certain dynamic level all together. To avoid having to put the dynamic marking in each part individually, you put it in once and check the "System flag" box in Text Properties. Now it's in all the parts. But some of the instruments are resting at the point. So there's a marking in the score that you don't want to appear in the part. So you make the marking invisible, but it still prevents the measure where the element is from merging with the rests on either side.
Good, thanks. This particular case you can solve by other means - such as by adding the marking to just one staff and setting the "Dynamic range" property to "System", or just adding it to the non-resting staves. But in general, yes, system text that makes sense to add as system text but only appear in non-resting parts is a good use case. I guess it could also be solved with an option to say "Display in non-resting parts only". Finale has this whole "staff list" abstraction to control which staves a marking appears on, whihc is a good idea I think soemtimes feels like overkill. The simple ability to remove a marking from a part without affecting the score would be nice, and feel very natural.
I would regard this a rather significant issue that would be rather simple to take care of, but I'm becoming worried that it's not going to happen.
I am quite sure it will happen, but almost definitely not for 2.0. It's *conceptually* simple, but the details will take some work to get right. High on my list for 2.1, though.
Meanwhile, if your main use case is wanting a "system" marking that doesn't break rests, the workaround I suggested above seems the obvious way to go - just add the marking to all non-resting staves. You can always hide it if it bothers you to see it duplicated, but FWIW, published music normally includes markings on all staves. And it's normally pretty easy to add a marking to a whole "vertical slice" of music at once - just select the slice and double click the marking.
This might look like a quick fix, I have already raised some problems that arise with linking, rather than copying, note stem direction and clefs and the number of threads concerning linking and copying strategies tends to suggest that the underlying issue is rather fundamental.
In the true spirit of creating more work for others, would it be reasonable to have two types of links, hard links where changes in staff and linked staff both affect the other (note pitch and length, tempo?) and soft links where changes in a linked staff do not affect the parent staff (just about everything else) - making changes in the linked staff automatically breaks the link.
In combination with Add linked staff, this would totally solve the multiple transposition problem #62416: Changes to staff transposition (and other properties) not reflected in linked parts.
For the moment, MusesScore allows me to produce parts with logically organized multibar rests, well positioned page turns, etc. better than any commercially produced parts that I have played from in the last couple of years - it takes a bit of work, but I think its worth it.