Hand-positioned offsets are lost when combining scores into an album
I have been working on a four-movement orchestral composition. Each movement was done as a separate score, with a lot of hand-positioning of ties, cresc/dim hairpins, etc. to maintain clarity re which items belonged with which staves.
When I combined the four scores into an album, I found that most of my hand-positioned offsets had been lost, with the items restored to default positions, causing confusion between staves. Also, the layout of measures per page had been changed from what I had done manually. (I am using MS 2.3.2 rev 4592407 on Linux Mint 17.2.)
Is this a known problem? What would solve my problem is an option for locking the layout of individual pages when combining scores into an album - is there some way of doing this?
Or is there a way of adjusting the default positioning of ties, etc. to reduce or avoid the need for special positioning by hand or using the inspector?
Comments
In general, what you describe shouldn't happen. But if your scores were created with different Style settings, this could indeed end up having that result, as the combined score will all use the same style. So that's my best guess. If so, you'll need to go in to your individual scores and update their styles to be consistent and then reapply your adjustments as needed. And feel free to add line breaks to lock in your current measure layout (see Edit / Tools / Add/Remove System Breaks for a quick way to do that).
If that doesn't explain it, we would need you attach the scores that make up the album, and the album file itself, in order to understand and assist better.
Style setting, btw, are available to control the default position of many elements. Again, in order to understand which specific settings might help you, we'd need to see the scores. Manually adjusting ties in aprticulat shouldn't not be necessary very often - only in a few complex cases involving multiple voices and chords with seconds, etc. Otherwise, the defaults should already be as per common engraving standards.
In reply to In general, what you… by Marc Sabatella
I realize this is getting a bit off topic, but if I want to change a style setting - e.g., to position the endpoints of slurs and ties horizontally relative to the note head instead of the stem (as appears to be the case currently), where is this setting located? Is it in a config file somewhere, or does it require a change to the code?
In reply to I realize this is getting a… by dhfx
I'm not understaboing what you are trying to do, probably best to start a new thread to discuss that. I can say that slurs and ties are positioned relative to the notehead, not the stem. But the actual position is determined by a complex algorithm that takes into account the number of notes, the stem directions, the presence of seconds, etc - a single setting would not be helpful.
I checked the Score Properties on the individual movement files to see what version of MS I was using at the time. Two (mvts. 1 and 3) were done using 2.2.0 rev 21646c1, one (mvt. 2) using 2.2.1 rev 51b8386, one (mvt. 4) using 2.3.2 rev 4592407 which is the same as I am using to do the album.
I am attaching some screenshots so you can see the kinds of changes that occurred between the original and the album (note that mvt.4 and the album were done using MS version 2.3.2, which is the one used to view the scores for the screenshots). Note the shifts in the cresc/dim hairpins and the reversion (in the album) of the tie/slur positioning to the default, causing collisions between the staves. (If necessary I can send the individual scores and the album - the total is about 1 MB.)
I am wondering now if there is some internal MS function that causes a global auto-layout of a score, that may be initiated by the album creation, and if there is a way to disable it.
In reply to I checked the Score… by dhfx
In order to do more than guess at what is happening, we would indeed need you to attach the scores themselves, not just pictures of them. Searching the issue tracker, it does seem there are some reports of certain adjustments being lost on album creation, so it's possible you are seeing known issues, or there might be new ones.
FWIW, layout is always performed in the fly - exact positions of things are not generally recorded in the score. There is no other kind of layout except this, nor would you want there to be - imagine if, so imagine, you added a crescendo and it was locked into that position even as you added notes that caused the measure to which it is attached to move to another line. Of course you want the crescendo to move with the measure. Similarly you want slurs to move with the notes, etc. So positions of everything are always relative to the things they are attached to. Normally this relative positioning should be preserved at all times, but it does seem perhaps in some cases this relative positioning info can be lost when creating albums. I suspect it is mostly those adjustments that are recorded not just relative to the position of notes but that are dependent on the position of the system on the page.
In reply to In order to do more than… by Marc Sabatella
I don't understand why this conversation is lasting so long. From the MuseScore Manual: All style settings are taken from the first score, different style settings from subsequent score are ignored.
I've known for some time that manual adjustments are ignored in the second and following score and thought this was the explanation.
In reply to I don't understand why this… by mike320
It's not. Style settings are style settings, manual adjustments are manual adjustments. Totally different things. Style settings are score-wide; there is no possible way given the current architecture to have different style settings for different sections of a score, whether it came from joining or not. But there is no good reason manual adjustments to individual elements couldn't be preserved, and indeed some manual adjustments are. For the ones that aren't, those are bugs worth reporting.
My suspicion, again, is that it will turn out that the most of the ones that aren't are the ones that dependent on system-relative positioning. Not there is a good reason this should be true; just speculating about the likely causes of the bug.
In reply to I don't understand why this… by mike320
Digging a little deeper:
I see a closed issue #25905: Joined scores lose offset information from just before 2.0 beta 1 showing a change that fixed a problem where manual adjustments were not being preserved. Looking at the changed code, I can see this only fixes elements that "belong" to measures. So indeed adjustments to other elements wouldn't be addressed by this change. And there are open issues for lines (#81906: joined scores from album lose line alterations) and beams (#257791: Albums: joining scores resets beam adjustments).
However, that said, I just tried a test and it seems other adjustments are currently being lost as well. So it seems sometime between 2014 and now, the fix to #25905: Joined scores lose offset information ceased working. Not sure why, but hopefully someone else can take it from here...
In reply to Digging a little deeper:… by Marc Sabatella
Marc: Please let me know if you still would like me to send my files - it sounds as if you may have already located the source of the problem.
In reply to Marc: Please let me know if… by dhfx
Well, I don't know that I have found the source, but I can verify the problem. I'm not sure of the status of the Album facility for 3.0 - I had heard it was going away, but it seems to still be in the menu on the recent nightly build I have. If the Album facility is still going to be present, it would help if someone were to test this a bit more thoroughly and either file a new bug report or reopen the one that was closed back in 2014.
In reply to Well, I don't know that I… by Marc Sabatella
Album functionality in 3.0 is quite broken. It doesn't do anything useful.
In reply to Well, I don't know that I… by Marc Sabatella
So is there another way of doing what the Album facility does? If I have, say, four individual scores that I want to combine into a single four-movement composition, can I just create a new blank score and then copy-and-paste the individual scores to it in sequence, adding section breaks?
In reply to So is there another way of… by dhfx
Time and key signatures won't copy :(
In reply to So is there another way of… by dhfx
Nor will double bars, repeats, and a variety of other things.
My impression is that there will be something to replace the Album facility, but it's still a bit mysterious to me.