Resetting position of staff text requires confusing sequence of actions

• Oct 29, 2019 - 22:58

I am not sure if this a bug or just a curious design feature.

I have a note with a trill line on it and also staff text. I thought the staff text might look better below the trill line and so selected the text and adjusted its Y offset in the inspector. I was wrong, the text looked worse below the trill line and so I clicked the Y offset reset to default button expecting to get back to where I started The staff text did not move back to its original position but instead collided with the trill line.

After some experimentation I found that to get back to the starting situation, after resetting the Y offset, I then had to deselect the staff text, select it again and click the minimum distance reset to default button.

More detailed description of actions to reproduce

OS: Windows 10 (10.0), Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.3.0.8479, revision: d3bff12

  1. Insert a note
  2. Add a trill line to the note
  3. Add staff text to the note

Result: staff text is positioned above the trill line

  1. Click on staff text to select it

Inspector shows:
Automatic placement on
Min distance = 0.50
Y offset = 2.00sp

  1. Change Y offset to 0.00

Staff text moves down below trill line

  1. Reset Y offset by clicking x to right of offset spinner

staff text moves up and collides with trill line

Inspector shows
min distance = 0.50 (reset to default button greyed out)
Y offset = -2.00sp

  1. Click elsewhere to deselect staff text
  2. Reselect staff text

Inspector shows
min distance = -1.33 (reset to default button is active)
Y offset = -2.00 (reset to default button is greyed out)

  1. Click on min distance reset to default button

Staff text moves back to original position

Inspector shows
min distance = 0.50
Y offset = -2.00sp


Comments

For the record, the much simpler way to reset an element is Ctrl+R.

But yes, when you manually adjust something in a way that causes it to overlap another element, this causes MuseScore to automatically adjust the autoplace min distance in order to allow the new position. This effectively disable autoplaces, at least to the extent specified by that min distance. So if you only reset the offset, you still ahve partially disabled automatic placement, and you'd have to reset that as well. So you can either reset both, or just use Ctrl+R.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks. I will add CTRL+R to my frequently used shortcuts.

What really confused me was that the change to the min distance did not show up in the inspector until I had deselected the staff text (which of course makes all the staff text setting disappear) and then reselected it. Even then it was not until I was experimenting and compared it's settings with those of an identical note + trill + staff text that I had not moved that I noticed the min distance was different.

Is there was room in the inspector for a "return everything to the default position" button that does the same as CTRL+R? This would avoid having to switch between clicking inspector buttons and keyboard when experimenting with positioning.

In reply to by SteveBlower

The Inspector won't update while elements are being edited, that's a deliberate lockout that does indeed create confusion but I guess avoids some sort of problem internally. So yes, you need to click off then on again.

The reset command is already in the Format menu, wouldn't hurt I guess to add to Inspector also. But FWIW, I mostly use the keyboard in the Inspector - eg, click in a spin box then use up/down arrows. And in most cases, the reset button right next to where you are changing is the only relevant thing to reset anyhow. Maybe simpler would be to force the offset reset button to also reset min distance.

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