"Mark Irregular Measures" should be a Global Preference
This new feature in MS3 adds plusses and minuses to show when the duration of a bar has been lengthened or shortened accordingly. Sometimes this can be useful, but especially in pickup measures and in measures where the length is intentionally changed by hand, these marks are not necessary, and what's worse, they masquerade as markings which in fact have established musical meanings:
- minus = tenuto? ( also microtuning and comma shifting although that's not as established )
- plus = pizzicato? percussion note? horn stop? ornament? (also microtuning, not as standard )
These markings clutter up the score and are misleading. There is value in being able to turn on the markings to check a score, but the markings should not be on by default. Since it seem you don't want to change the default to FALSE (off), then please make it a Global Preference so those of us who are annoyed by this can turn it off once instead of having to do it every single time for every new score we write.
Comments
Having it off by default is a one-line change in libmescore/score.h, line 427
Getting this setting saved needs the fix for #287699: the setting of "View > Mark irregular measures" isn't saved into scores and there the existing PR needs to get modified to only save that setting when not set to this changed default (see here)
Related issue: #291849: Changing some score settings don't make score 'dirty'
See the 2nd commit to https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/4920
Thank you kindly for your attention to this matter.
I disagree with changing the default - it should be on. The majority of times people would want to know if they've accidentally added or deleted beats. Those few who don't wish to see these can disable it. It's no different from line breaks, frames, or other unprintable elements.
"accidentally added or deleted beats"? That is really your response to the valid musical syntax and typesetting concerns about these unnecessary and misleading symbols?
"Those few who don't wish to see these can disable it." If this is really your conclusion, then make this a switch in the global Preferences and not a score by score property. If it can be turned off for all scores, then everyone can be happy and there is no need to argue about it. I've changed the OP accordingly.
That's not what my PR is doing.
And i don't find that logical, as none of the similar settings are global. And trying to make those global would create a compatibility issue with existing scores, so would probably get postponed MuseScore 4.
Okay, well I adjusted the request based on Marc's comments, which I guess was not the right thing to do. Anyway thanks for your help.
Of course there are valid reasons to sometimes have irregular measures. But there is no typesetting concern - the symbols for print and are just information, like the depiction of the frames or breaks.
On the other hand, I would also be fine with making it possible to set a personal default here, as one can do for style settings. Either actually making it a style setting, or adding checkboxes to set defaults in Edit / Preferences / Score.
In reply to Of course there are valid… by Marc Sabatella
They are also BLUE and thus highly unlikely to be mistaken for anything else.
The new default is grey (badly "design", for me!), see: #291284: The "Breaks & Spacers" palette has lost its colors
But this can be customized in Preferences/Advanced and: /ui/score/LayoutBreakColor.
So, indeed, highly unlikely to be mistaken for anything else.
And rather an argument now to revert (or change) this new "design"
In reply to The new default is grey … by cadiz1
Agree, grey seems a step backward.