things you can't do during measure selection

• May 11, 2019 - 19:47

I am using MuseScore-3.0.5-x86_64.AppImage on Debian 8.11.


[1] If I click on the whole rest in an empty measure

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 10-55-32.png

[2] and then type 5, I get a quarter rest on the first beat of the measure.

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 10-55-53.png

[3] However, when a measure is selected ("measure selection"),

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 10-56-11.png

[4] and I type 5, nothing happens.

Similarly for "measure selection" across multiple staves:

[5] when I select a measure, then type alt+down-arrow,

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 10-57-12.png

[6] then type 5, nothing happens.

I would find it useful if [5] and [6] above resulted in this:

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 10-58-58.png

[7] I've also noticed that after pasting a copied selection,

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-00-36.png

[8] I cannot use alt+up/down arrow keys to move up or down a staff; rather, I first have to left/right-arrow key out of the selection.

It would be great if this extra step was not necessary, i.e. if alt+up/down-arrow was functional in "measure selection" mode.

Regarding selection for the purpose of copying/pasting,

[9] when I select measure 1 in the topmost staff,

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-07-26.png

[10] then use shift+down-arrow to add the staff below to the selection,

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-07-29.png

[11] then copy, then type right-arrow to exit the measure selection, I now have a rest selected in the second staff rather than the topmost staff.

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-07-34.png

Hence if I am doing [9] through [11] in order to copy and paste measure 1 into measure 2, I cannot prepare to paste simply by right-arrowing out of the copied selection; rather, there is an extra step (presumably alt+up-arrow) to move back to the staff where the "measure selection" process started.

Hence, seems to me it would be more satisfactory if, when exiting a multi-staff "measure selection" using the left/right arrow keys, you exit into the staff you started the selection with (in my example, the topmost staff).

It is true that you can eliminate the nuisance alt+up-arrow maneuver in my example if, whenever copying/pasting multi-staff "measure selections," you always start by selecting the bottommost staff. To me this is counterintuitive, though, since the pasting destination for such selections is quite often the topmost staff.

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-35-28.png

I think it's relatively uncommon in such scenarios for the destination to be the second/bottommost staff.

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-40-08.png

[12] Finally (for now), if I select a "measure,"

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 10-56-11.png

I cannot enter any kind of text; rather, I get the dreaded dialogue, "No note or rest selected: Please select a note or rest and retry."

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-18-54.png

[14] Hence in the event that I have pasted a "measure selection" into another measure where I intend to add new text,

Screenshot from 2019-05-11 11-00-36.png

once again I must first (a) arrow-key out of the "measure selection" into note/rest selection, then (b) arrow-key my way back to the original paste location. (Why does neither left- nor right-arrow nor ctl+either of them take me directly there?) Seems to me that it is not ideal for copying/pasting ever to result in a mode where entering text is not immediately possible.

In short, while I certainly understand and appreciate the utility of having different selection modes, here I've listed what seem to me to be some arbitrary limitations of "measure selection" mode which add keystrokes to some simple/common processes.


Comments

Hi! Thanks for your feedback.

It's important to realize there is no such thing as "measure selection mode". What you are showing is range selection, your pictures just happen to often involve ranges of exactly one measure, and in many cases an empty one. But for example, if you have a range selected that consists the last three notes of one measure and first two of the next, then you try to enter text, does that really make sense? How would MsueScore know which note or notes within the selection you mean? Similarly, it's not intended that you can press a number key to change duration with a range selected - consider, what if you have 7 measures selected across 4 staves?

That said, 3.1 will include the ability do change durations across staves in those limited cases where it does make sense. 8) was reported recently, good idea. And similarly, it's certainly possible to tweak the navigation shortcuts further, such as what happens when pressing "Right" after selecting a range across staves. Feel free to post individual suggestions (one per post) to the Issue tracker so they don't get lost. Probably better without the images, or at least use smaller ones.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi Marc,

Thanks for your quick reply. Yes, "range selection" is what I meant.

Re: text, for me there are enough instances where a passage recurs with the same notes/rhythms but different performance instructions/tempo/mute/number of repeats/etc. that it is annoying not to be able to go directly from pasting to text entry. And "range selection" is almost always the preferable way to copy and paste conventional notes+rhythms notation...right? Secondarily, when mousing it is sometimes easier to click the empty part of a measure (a bigger target) than to click on a rest or notehead (depends a lot on the zoom; and I do try to mouse as little as possible, e.g. by using ctl-F to navigate to the general area where I want to make a selection, but there's a 50/50 chance that I'm either working around measure numbers or that they're not relevant; in that case I have to guess the number and then do a lot of arrow keying; also have noticed that after a section break the visible measure numbers reset but the ctl-F feature doesn't, hence the new measure 1 might actually be measure 258).

Re: "it's not intended that you can press a number key to change duration with a range selected - consider, what if you have 7 measures selected across 4 staves?"
Well, say that these 7 measures x 4 staves are ostinato accompaniment, written as steady staccato eighth notes. Indeed, the concept of typing 6 to make each note a half note is ambiguous; but typing 3 to make them all sixteenth notes IS at least an imaginable concept, since their metrical positions could be maintained even as their durations are shortened. The result of the latter action as I'm imagining it would be that, wherever there previously was an eighth note, now there is a sixteenth note followed by a sixteenth rest. This could be very useful if, say, you change your mind mid-process regarding staccato eighths vs. sixteenth note+sixteenth rest. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've seen a number of old threads here requesting various types of batch editing for note duration; e.g. https://musescore.org/en/node/269317, where you wrote "There are plugins that attempt this but don't work well"; seems to me that many simple cases, like the one I just constructed, could (potentially) be resolved by making the number keys functional during range selection; of course non-"simple" cases would require decisions to be made about outcomes, e.g. when you select a 4/4/bar full of eighth notes and type 6, do you get two half notes or eight of them?)

I will see what's shaking with the issue tracker, and will forgo the pictures unless/until my prose manages to confuse someone badly enough.

In reply to by kacattac

Also see the Timeline and Navigator in the View menu for easier ways of getting about.

I can't say I can recall many times when I've wanted to paste a section then put different text at the start of the copy, but if there was already text there, why not simply edit it? To me, after pasting, it's considerably more likely I'm going to do something after the pasted region. Feel free to attach an actual score to help us understand.

Anyhow, do try 3.1 beta, as I said, it does have limited support for multiple durations changes where it makes sense.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Here is the specific scenario I'm thinking of:

TheGreatPilling_BotC2.mscz

Here the vamp at m. 20 ("B") returns at m. 45 ("H") and m. 48 ("I"). Notes/rhythms are the same, but different system text is needed each time on account of (1) differing numbers of repeats, and (2) different tempos/tempo changes. This was a reworking of an existing small-group composition imported from another program which unfortunately did not preserve any system text, so I actually was ready to enter it on the spot. Admittedly that in and of itself is not super common for me; but in more experimentational processes I do like to use text to mark places I need to come back to and fix, i.e. so that I can keep going with the "creative" work but don't forget about the grunt work.

Re: Timeline and Navigator, I'm dead set on avoiding the mouse at all costs, whenever possible. I have done irreparable damage to both my wrists via baseball, bicycling, tuba playing, and computer-ing, so I have to be really careful about this. I'm not seeing any indication in the handbook entry for these features that they are anything but mouse-based. Am I missing something?

For the [9-11] scenario of repeating entry:
Select the range to be repeated, press R as many times as copies are required.

In reply to by jeetee

Great, thanks. And when you arrow-key out of this R process, you exit to the first staff you selected, not the last one, which is the opposite of what happens in my original example. So, someone at some point thought that it made the most sense to exit to the first staff and implemented this in the R command. But if you are pasting somewhere other than the very next bar and you arrow-key out of your selection, you'll be in the bottommost staff, not the topmost like with R.

From what I can tell, the issue is that "range selection" using shift+up/down does more than just select: it also behaves like alt+up/down (don't know what to call this..."moving up or down a staff?") I think this makes sense. But if R is used, this behavior is somehow overridden. How about also overriding it if ctrl+C is used?

P.S. How did you get the R key icon in your post? And special formatting in general? Code it in the body of the post? I'm not seeing any built-in formatting tools at all in my browser window, just a text field and a "File attachments" feature.

In reply to by kacattac

I agree that arrowing out of range selections could be more intuitive and using the top staff for left & right is sensible. Do you also have an idea on how up and down should behave? I personally feel that that one is more subject to personal preference.

As for styling your posts; this forum uses a flavor of MarkDown.
Showing key sequences can be done by double nesting of a kbd tag.
Typing<kbd><kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>A</kbd></kbd> results in Ctrl+A
See also https://musescore.org/en/filter/tips

In reply to by jeetee

Much appreciated, thanks.

Personal preference indeed. Mine:

I do like that unadorned up/down moves notes in a range selection.

I don't like that you lose the range selection itself when you do this, and that left/right-arrowing out of this does not take you anywhere remotely near where you started out making the selection.

I really don't like that alt+up/down is nonfunctional when a range selection is made. I would like this to take me to the staff above/below. Or it could do this just for single-staff range selections, and for multi-staff range selections it could take you to the topmost/bottommost staff in the selection.

I freely admit that this reproduces (almost?) exactly the behavior of another program that I used intensively for 15 years and that I'll never be capable of full objectivity on account of all that muscle memory.

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