Suggestion: allow for custom shortcut for lines/slurs and their editing nodes

• Sep 28, 2019 - 02:21
Reported version
3.2
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project

As it currently is in 3.2.3, there are shortcuts that include multiple functions which include "Move text". Specifically:

  1. Go to previous cord or move text left
  2. Go to next cord or move text right
    The defaults for these are the left/right arrows.

  3. Pitch down or move text or articulation down

  4. Pitch up or move text or articulation up
    The defaults for these are the up/down arrows

Edit There's also
5. Go to previous measure or move text left
5. Go to previous measure or move text right
These correspond to that CTRL+Arrow motion of being larger motions.

This is nice, but here's the situation: these shortcuts don't affect lines or their editing node positions, nor do they claim to do so. For instance, in Editing Element mode, the nodes of a slur do not correlate to these, yet the keys that are set up are exactly the same as the shortcuts are: the arrow keys, save for the lack of the SHIFT motion of linking to another chord. The point is, if the user changes those above shortcuts to ... just for example (not too important just for demonstration) WASD, the user can move texts and dynamic markings with WASD, pretty neat. But the user can't move a slur this way, or a crescendo. It makes sense since in the shortcuts they don't say "or line" also. But this is the request!

Request/Suggestion: Let those very same shortcuts also move lines and explicitly rename them to show that they do so. This would consolidate the behavior to be more universal across the functions. And in addition, it would need to allow editing to move the nodes: e.g. allow for the nodes of a slur to be moved by those same shortcuts and don't bake them in with arrow keys undefinable by the user. Let the shortcuts be the definitions for that motion, which is by default the arrow keys. The main issue here would be to get down properly the small motions, the larger ctrl+motion, and then the important Shift chord change for nodes in correlation to all these shortcuts, so there'd probably need to be one additional set for what's baked in for the SHIFT+L/R motion for nodes of lines.

It would be really nice if someone knowing how the shortcut system works would work this through and implement this cleanly so that there were three sets of motion that could be defined by the user (this would allow for one particular pair of keys, like the WSAD for demonstration work as WSAD, CTRL+WSAD, and SHIFT+WSAD for all types of motion related to text/lines/articulations, and node points.)

And thanks.


Comments

Workaround: In Linux, utilize a program called AutoKey which allows for assigning to a specific program class (like MuseScore) a set of actions associated with user-define actions. So with the above example WASD, those also can be linked to the arrow keys. The extra steps required are to have Shift+WASD also linked to Shift+Arrows, and Ctrl+WASD to Ctrl+Arrows. It takes some work, but it's nice once set up if using custom keyboard commands.

Apparently in Windows there's also the free AutoHotKey, which would require the built-in WinActive and IfWinActive functions so that the setup only affects MuseScore, or any applications the user specifies.