Things that Bug Me about Musescore
Just let me start with saying Musescore is amazing. I keep finding new things it does, and it is awesome.
However, there are a few irritations, mostly to do with the initial data entry which continue to be annoying. There might be ways past them already, so I thought I'd open with a bit of a discussion before moving to specific improvement requests or raising an issue.
Lyrics - are hard, especially if you make a mistake. I know how the paste feature works, but it can be really unforgiving.
* Allowing Ctrl-Z while pasting, and have it restore the clipboard to the previous state, would take a lot of the sting out of it.
* Having the 'Copy' put lyrics in the clipboard in the way the 'Paste' is expecting would also make life easier.
* Having a data entry mode for lyrics similar to Noteworthy, where you can edit the lyrics in a memo and it lines them up with the notes, sounds clunky but works very well once you get the feel of it. (I have provided a plugin which sort of does this, https://musescore.org/en/project/text-editor-lyrics but the current Musescore doesn't expose more than one line of lyrics, limiting its usefulness)
Note entry:
* When entering notes using keyboard shortcuts, especially in page mode, and you go into a new page (or change the note length and go back to the previous page) the cursor will often be twitched out of the visible area.
Dragging the view area
* It's REALLY EASY to accidentally click on a note, or a text element, or something other than the page background when moving the view area around, and suddenly you've changed the pitch of the note or dragged a text notation somewhere really odd. A Ctrl+Z will sort this out, but if you aren't paying attention you can get some really odd effect. Changing the draggable page to a different colour than the other selectable elements would help a lot.
Any feedback appreciated.
PS: Am a programmer, have contributed stuff, happy to implement at least the suggested lyric changes, want to make sure others think it's a good idea.
Comments
I would say that anything that make lyric entry easier would be greatly appreciated by anyone who has tried to enter them.
Every so often ideas for adding a lyrics editor get proposed and even worked on, but so far nothing concrete has come of it. To me it's something that would indeed be very valuable but just hasn't quite made the cut yet, and I have no doubt it will some day. If your serious about wanting to get involved, do check in on IRC (see the Development page under the Contribute menu above for more info).
Not sure what you mean about copy and paste, though. In general, it should work pretty well to cut a group of lyrics then paste them a note earlier or later to correct an error (assuming that is what you mean). Can you give a specific example of what you are looking for?
In note entry, it's an unfortunate fact of life that after entering a note that completes one measure/system/page, MuseScore has no way of knowing if you plan to keep working where you were or to move on. So whether we moved the view to the next measure/system/page or not, it's going to right half the time and wrong half the time. FWIW, the nightly builds for 2.3 include a new feature where if you disable the "Pan score" button on the toolbar, no automatic repositioning happens at all. Feel free to play with it and let us know if it works for you.
Dragging the view - simple solution is don't do that. Like, ever. Use the mouse wheel and/or cursors to navigate. See https://masteringmusescore.com/quick-answers/navigate-through-a-score/