Automatic Text and Object Placement

• Sep 16, 2018 - 18:15

Inspired by this, I am revisiting the subject of automatic text and object placement.

In anticipation of developments (now present in 3.0) and discussions, I once collected excerpts (attached) from full scores (with hidden empty staves, etc), taken from various books but seemingly using the same typesetter (Amadeus Music Software). I tried to ascertain if there was a hierarchy (i.e. farthest-to-stave: tempo marking>chord>stave text>ottava>objects), but inconsistencies might be due to the software/operator, spacing efficiencies, or context.

Should we introduce improved defaults and a feature to address this? I would call it 'stacking', but something else exists with the same name.

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Automatic Text and Object Placement.zip 1.78 MB

Comments

• Dec 17, 2018 - 15:50

Thanks for doing this! Next step would be to go through with a current build and figure out where we fail. From what I can tell, we probably do the right thing in most of these cases. As far as I can tell, the defaults are already optimal, but if you feel there are specific recommendations to be made by examining these files, please, examine and recommend!

Also, it is worth noting that stylistically, these are all coming from one narrowly-defined genre; the defaults in MsueScore need to be more general. So at least as useful would be similar analysis from IMSLP etc.

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• Dec 17, 2018 - 16:06

Thanks, Marc.

Unfortunately, I'm not really able to test at the moment (latest betas/nightlies aren't available for my platform), but I hope others can find something.

I was not sure myself about what should be right/wrong, but I do agree, in that my set is somewhat confined, so I'm happy if people can find other examples.

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• Dec 17, 2018 - 21:04

Well, we already did a lot of research and ut a lot of effort into getting the default order the best it can be - following Gould wherever possible and wherever she expresses a clear opinion, looking to the literature for other cases (especially involving chord symbols). So we already think we have it right. If/when you do try a recent build, feel free to submit suggestions for further improvement.

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