[Musicxml Import / GUI] Frame text formatting is interpreted as custom formatting

What kind of text are you editing? Can you post a sample score (.mscz file).

Yes it works for me every time I've tried it but I can't say I've tried it on every type of text. It sounds like you are doing something wrong.

I just realized it's a nightly. I did manage to download the last nightly and do a little testing on this. I discovered that if you use the toolbar on the a letter of the text to change its font then try to change the font in the inspector, the changed font will only be effective until the letter you applied the font to. What this does is make the inspector do nothing if you use the toolbar on the first letter of the text.

Try to click the Remove Custom Formatting button below the inspector's font field and see if this fixed the problem. If so, I suspect I've discovered your problem.

From looking at what you did, I'm sure I'm on the right track. You used the inspector to change the font and the toolbar to change the size and make it bold. This does the same thing as changing the font I described. Use one or the other for the entire text item, preferable the inspector. Then if you need to make a word italic for example, you can use the toolbar for that afterwards.

Aside: I don't know the specific circumstances, but sometimes typing in the font name has not worked well for me and it reverts to what the font was previously. I've learned that on my system if after typing in the font name i press the "down arrow" on the drop down list after typing in the font name instead of pressing enter or deselecting that it works no matter what. I.e., on the right of this:

I merely mention this just in case it might help the OP'er as a workaround with whatever they're experiencing

For anything on the toolbar to work, you have to have something selected. You can't put the cursor at the beginning of the text and change the font because nothing will happen to the text. If you use the toolbar to properly change a text's font the inspector only works until it runs into the letter where you first changed the font (this includes bold, italic...). In the score you posted, the text was changed using the status bar (or at least that's how MuseScore interprets what it is seeing) so you need to use the remove custom formatting from the text in the inspector to use the inspector.

Now if the musicxml exported from the other program does not tell MuseScore this, then it's possible this is a bug in MuseScore. Perhaps @Leon Vinken could look into this. He's the musicxml guru around here. He would need to see the musicxml exported from the other program. If you used the Import PDF tool then I'll leave that to Leon to tell you what he needs.

The crux of the situation is that when you imported the text (along with everything else) what MuseScore saw was interpreted (right or wrong) as custom formatting like you get when you use the toolbar.

It is by design that the inspector does not override custom formatting applied using the toolbar. That is the purpose of the "Remove custom formatting" button in the inspector.

I've changed the title to something I think will get Leon's attention as well as more accurately describe the real issue. He can then decide if it's a MuseScore bug.

When you import a PDF using the import tool it's turned into xml then imported by MuseScore.

The MusicXML importer imports formatting for frame texts. After import, IMHO, MuseScore should behave as if the user manually overruled a style setting. I would have to check if it actually does this.

Just did a quick check. MusicXML import handles font changes in frames as if they were made using the toolbar in the GUI, which means they are by definition custom formatting. The reason is that MusicXML supports different font settings for different parts of a text and this is the only way MuseScore supports that. Thus, in my opinion, this behaves as designed. The interaction between the inspector and the toolbar seems non-trivial to me.

Thanks for looking into this Leon.

I take it to mean the that the interaction is important. What you do with the toolbar is important to what you see. Since it's possible to change the font with the toolbar then export it, MuseScore assumes custom fonts were added by the toolbar in case someone changes a word to italics or makes part of the title superscript and so forth. If there is special font applied MuseScore doesn't try to determine how it was applied it's assumed to be from the toolbar. This way all special font's are maintained. This might be a bit wordy but I hope you understand.

Leon is the expert on musicxml. To change the font using the inspector there is the remove custom formatting button that will allow you to start over if you don't like what's been done by the toolbar. This is only highlighted if there is formatting from the toolbar.

The one thing I find unclear (hard to discover and understand) in the inspector / toolbar interaction is that using the toolbar affects what the inspector does. I find the behaviour non-intuitive and hard to understand. Please check attached file, try using the inspector to resize the various subtitles and observe:

1) Default subtitle: no custom formatting, can be resized (as a whole) using inspector
2) Subtitle resized using inspector: no custom formatting, can be resized (as a whole) using inspector
3) Subtitle resized using toolbar: custom formatting, can NOT be resized (as a whole) using inspector
4) Subtitle partially resized using toolbar: custom formatting, only first (non custom formatted) part can be resized using inspector

In the third case the inspector seems to be broken (it has no visible effect). What actually happens is that it changes only the text part NOT changed using the toolbar (which does not exist in this case).

So, yes, I think the user interface could be improved, but that is not really related to MusicXML, so I am not volunteering.

Changed back to active to enable discussion of the GUI behaviour.