Make Concert pitch button tell you its current state
Reported version
3.0
Priority
P2 - Medium
Type
Graphical (UI)
Frequency
Many
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
Currently, the state of the concert pitch button is confusing. There have been a number of discussion on this, see https://musescore.org/en/node/272384 for the latest and a list of related discussions.
I suggest one of two fixes be employed for this
-
Change the toggle button to a drop down like Page View/Continuous view so it will say Concert pitch and Transposed pitch. This is the preferred method.
-
Change the text you get when you hover over the button to tell you what will happen if you click the button. When Concert pitch is on make the text say "Click to show transposed pitch" and "Click to show concert pitch" when it's off.
Comments
In reply to 3 is done already by Jojo-Schmitz
Excellent. I hadn't realised. That's great.
There are other toggle state buttons in MuseScore, such as the "repeat in playback yes/no" button.
It is important that the toggling visual effect of these buttons are all the same and not specific by button.
Otherwise that would feed the impression that MuseScore has inconsistent UI.
Sure. The whole point is that the Concert Pitch button does not look and behave the same as all those other buttons. Those do show their 'pressed' state by changing color
It seems we have three patches, from @Peter Vu, @mattmcclinch, and @mirabilos. Did you also have one, @Startled Bee?
How do we proceed? Three major different points have been discussed:
- Changing the text colour on toggle. There seems to be a clear consensus in favour.
- Changing the text on toggle. There is no consensus for that, is there?
- Updating the tooltip: @Jojo-Schmitz wrote that the tooltip has been updated for 3.1 so that's dealt with.
Does one of the patches only change text colour on toggle? Then perhaps we should go with that for now.
In reply to It seems we have three… by RobFog
Mine changes only the status line (to indicate the sounding pitch when in transposing mode) and thus should be applied anyway, independent of any PRs regarding the icon bar. (The idea of just changing the text colour to match the other buttons, as a first fix, is good IMHO.)
In reply to Mine changes only the status… by mirabilos
Indeed the button color change in dark mode and a hint in the status bar, along with the already changed tooltip is pretty much consensus here
My PR #5045 changes the colour of the text when the button is pressed down. It also adjusts the height to match the icon height - this matters if icon height is set high. Basically makes the text only button behave like an icon button.
Which is why I think it should go in
So in summary, @dmitrio95 or @anatoly-os should merge @Startled Bee's https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/5045 first and then consider @mirabilos' https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/5036.
I agree Startled Bee's PR should be merged. I still don't like mirabilos' plan.
@mike320 why, precisely?
All it does is to add another piece of information (the actual sounding pitch) to the status line, which is really nice to have even independent of the rest of the discussion.
Instead of the current
%1; Pitch: %2; Duration: %3%4, it'd print"%1; Pitch: %2 (sounding as %3); Duration: %4%5", so just adds that(sounding as %3)if, and only if, the score is not in concert picth and as such seems fine to meIn reply to I've thought that too. … by Marc Sabatella
“I personally think the button should be a switch, with written pitch on one end and sounding pitch on the other.” Quaver Crafter. “I've thought that too. Takes more space is the main objection” Marc.
But the ribbon is already a double height line so putting the words one above the other with a switch at the side, or even radio buttons, would not take that much extra space.
I do not remember this being a problem with V2, so what is the difference? In V2 “Concert Pitch” was highlighted when active (white background) in V3 “Concert Pitch” is greyed when active (dark grey background) which I find very confusing.
Is the simple solution to revert to highlighting “Concert Pitch” when it is active?
If two texts are used, my vote for the English would be “Concert Pitch” (as currently) and “Transposed”
@mirabilos,
Because when an alto sax plays a C it sounds like an Eb, sounding pitch is the wrong word. When the Concert pitch button is not pressed, you see the transposed pitch. As I've previously said, I refuse to support any change that redefines established terms in the English language.
In reply to @mirabilos, Because when an… by mike320
If not in concert pitch the status bar us not change at all, check the code in the PR
@mike320 I really don’t understand what you’re writing.
Assuming we have a transposing instrument that, as you say, notates a C that sounds as E♭, then the status line shows:
in Concert Pitch mode
This is unchanged by the PR.
when Concert Pitch is disabled
before the PR:
with my PR:
I fail to see how this is in any way anything but an improvement.
Now that you show what it looks like, I don't care one way or the other about it being merged, but I don't think it really solves the initial issue. If merged, this line should only and always be included for all transposing instruments only.
There was talk somewhere that there should be a group of settings on the status bar (between what you show and the current location on the right) that shows the status of things like the concert pitch button, show invisible and a couple of other things I can't think of right now. I think that would be an excellent solution. Changing the color like every other selectable button to me is a no brainer, so Startled Bee's proposal should have been merged already in my opinion.
“Now that you show what it looks like, I don't care one way or the other about it being merged” → thanks…
“but I don't think it really solves the initial issue.” → which I said when I proposed this; the change was inspired by the discussions in here, but is largely independent of them, and a separate patch to fix the UI issue is still merged.
“If merged, this line should only and always be included for all transposing instruments only.” → no, that would just confuse the users; the line is included always anyway, but, for consistency, the part “(sounding as Eb4)” is included for all instruments that have sounding pitches, but only in transposing mode (so it can double as indicator).
PR got closed